To know how to use what we know
How will we live together? How will we live well together? Creating harmony between men and their environment. An imminent future made of light, culture, beauty, harmony and space contract.
These are, in summary, the concepts that the Padiglione Venezia at the Biennale Giardini is going to highlight at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition. The project, strongly advocated by Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, has been curated by Giovanna Zabotti in coordination with commissioner Maurizio Carlin, will lead through an experimental continuum of places and spaces, visionary places and everyday reality all together. La Biennale, a free space for experimentation, provocation, thought, becomes a breeding ground for questions: What is the city? Why do we live together? New stations, different places in the broadest sense of the word.
The main protagonist of this edition will be architect Michele De Lucchi who, along with his studio AMDL CIRCLE, will present their Education Stations. As the title suggests, the theme of spaces for learning and training is approached using the design criteria of Earth Stations, visionary architectures that inspire thinking in the direction of a desirable future for our planet and future generations. Specifically, the Education Stations are five buildings for education that match with as many stages of one person’s growth, from childhood to adulthood. They result from thoughtful consideration of the educational role of built space and from the study of how the environment affects our psyche.
Architecture and context are crucial educational elements and intervene profoundly in the building of one’s personality. This is why any environment cannot be designed as a neutral box but should reflect the idea of learning we want to bring forward. Through people's interactions with spaces, objects, and atmospheres, we aim at creating a psychological and relational harmony that is both rewarding and growth-inducing to individuals and communities. After all, we may have all the wisdom in the world at our free disposal, but if we are not attracted to its use and do not learn to manage it in the best way, it is all wasted. Knowledge alone is no longer enough today, but it is key to know how to use what we know… and where to search for it.
Emilio Casalini's Economia della Bellezza (Economy of Beauty) is displayed in one of the side rooms of the Pavilion: a flow of connections between knowledge, material and immaterial resources, individual talents and personalities, attentive communities, concrete actions, post-pandemic planning and systemic change. Beauty becomes both a tool and a goal at valorizing the endless nuances of our identity. It parallels to a social architecture capable of managing the entire system and governing complexity through harmony.
The focus of this study is Venice, with its 1600 years of history: an overall scheme to foster the immense heritage of this extraordinary city and of Italy as a whole, also through a narrative process that has been yet enormously undersized.It is about managing the complexity of contemporary communities through the principles on which architecture is conceived in the true sense of the word. Interpreting this complexity is a glass work crafted by the artists Marina and Susanna Sent.
Alongside the main exhibition, the winning works from the second edition of Artefici del nostro tempo (Creators of our time) will also be on display. This initiative was backed by Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and fostered by the City of Venice. More than 800 entries were submitted in the seven disciplines in competition, through which the young artists have answered the question: How will we live together?, the main theme of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition.
