Italian Pavilion 18th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia - Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else

“Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else”¹ is the title of the Italian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of culture and curated by Fosbury Architecture(Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, and Claudia Mainardi).
 
For the first time, a curatorial group made up of architects born between 1987 and 1989 brings with them to Venice the demands of a new generation of designers under 40 (nine groups of designers and as many advisors, professionals from different fields in the creative industries, for a total of about 50 people with an average age of 33) who grew up and were trained against a backdrop of permanent crisis and who have therefore made collaboration, sharing, and dialogue the basis of all their activities. A generation that is aware, on the one hand, of the impact and responsibility of the construction sector in the face of the environmental crisis and, on the other, of the crisis of significance of architecture and design in the transformation of cities and territories. A generation of designers who, compared to their predecessors, have grown up in a regime of scarcity in terms of resources and opportunities, who sense as crucial the issue of sustainability, and who know that this is the only context in which they will be able to operate now and in the future.
 
Fosbury Architecture is a voice for those Italian designers who are “sustainable natives” and have already accepted all these challenges, for whom transdisciplinarity is a tool for expanding the boundaries of architecture, and for whom the built artifact is a means and not an end in itself. “Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” originated from these assumptions and is based on the vision that architecture is a research practice beyond the construction of buildings and that design is always the result of collective and collaborative work that goes beyond the idea of the architect-author. According to this vision, space is understood as a physical and symbolic place, a geographical area and abstract dimension, a system of known references and a territory of possibilities.
 
Spaziale thus refers to an expanded notion of the field of architecture: to intervene in space is to operate on the fabric of relationships between people and places that forms the basis of every project.
 
“Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” brings to the heart of the Italian Pavilion a wide-ranging collaborative process, an inclusive project involving highly esteemed figures and local communities, showcasing the best research carried out by Italian architects under 40 in relation to specific territorial needs.
For the first time, in fact, the Italian Pavilion has been construed by the curators as an opportunity to implement new projects: an activator of concrete actions for the benefit of local territories and communities, beyond the idea that an exhibition should only be an “exhibition.” For this reason, a substantial portion of the public funds allocated to the Pavilion were used to initiate new processes or to bolster existing projects by adding a new chapter.
 
Fosbury Architecture identified and invited nine spatial practices to collaborate, designers called upon to develop nine pioneering projects for the Italian Pavilion: nine architectural practices – Italian architects or groups, aged under 40, representative of original research, active in Italy and abroad – selected on the basis of the approach with which they operate, the territories in which they intervene, the means they use, the questions they raise, and the answers they suggest, and representing a roster, albeit an incomplete one, of Italian professionals working along the perimeter of what is considered architecture today.
To make the nine projects genuinely transdisciplinary, the curators paired each designer with an advisor, drawn from other fields of creativity: visual artists and performers, experts in food systems and artificial intelligence, writers and filmmakers.
Nine stations were then pinpointed, sites that are representative of situations of fragility or in transformation in our country, where each transdisciplinary group was called upon to intervene.
Lastly, each design group collaborated and will collaborate with a series of incubators—local actors such as museums, associations, and cultural festivals—with the aim of rooting each project in its territory of reference.
In this way, the nine projects linked to the Italian Pavilion will shape the stages of a new geography, becoming symbolic destinations of a renewed Italian Journey.
 
The work of each group responds to a series of pressing issues in the Italian context and for the discipline in general: challenges that are ‘impossible’ if addressed globally but when addressed in local contexts are able to produce immediate and tangible responses.
In Taranto, the cohabitation with disaster will be chronicled on the city’s rooftops by the collective Post Disaster in dialogue with Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo.
In the Bay of Ieranto, FAI’s natural oasis near Naples, the architects BB – Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio – together with the Terraforma Festival will enact a reconciliation with the environment.
In Trieste, multicultural coexistence will be analyzed along the Italian-Slovenian border by Giuditta Vendramewith Ana Shametaj.
In Ripa Teatina, in the province of Chieti, the collective HPO with Claudia Durastanti will get the community involved in reclaiming unfinished heritage.
On the Venice mainland, between Mestre and Marghera, Parasite 2.0 with Elia Fornari will address the issue of social inclusionby working on democratizing recreational activities.
In Cabras, in the Montiferru area of Sardinia, the group Lemonot will work with Roberto Flore on the sustainable transition of food systems.
In Librino, a district in Catania, Studio Ossidiana will collaborate with Adelita Husni Bey on a project of regeneration of the peripheries.
In Belmonte Calabro, representing Italy’s inland areas, the collective Orizzontale with Bruno Zamborlin will raise the question of bridging the digital divide.
Lastly, in the plain between Prato and Pistoia, the designers (ab)Normal and CAPTCHA in collaboration with Emilio Vavarellawill investigate the limits of landscape protection and its reproducibility.
 
Within the Italian Pavilion, therefore, it is not a finished project that will be presented, but the launch of a series of initiatives that will have a long-term impact.
From an exhibitionary point of view, the Pavilion will present the formal and theoretical synthesis of the processes initiated in the nine regions in the months preceding the opening, from January to May, providing a diverse and original portrait of Italian architecture in the international context. 
The extension of the Pavilion outside the Arsenale will correspond to a reduction in the exhibition installation to make room for the representation of the activated processes throughout the Italian peninsula. Local projects will not stop with the opening of the Italian Pavilion but will continue with a dense series of activities in the different regions throughout the duration of the exhibition and beyond.
The unfolding of all activities in the various regions can be followed on the online and social media platforms that were activated beginning in January 2023.
 
Instead of remaining anchored to a self-referential exhibition dynamic, the curators have preferred to seize the opportunity of the Italian Pavilion to put into practice an academy that extends throughout the country and to finance—through the funds allocated and raised—useful projects for communities that have participated in the entire process: first, Fosbury Architecture have not acted as curators-authors but as mediators between different constellations of agents, local and beyond, actors in a collective project that has already brought to life a true Laboratory of the Future. 
 
“Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” becomes, in a concrete way, the instigator of processes that will go beyond the six-month duration of the Biennale Architettura 2023, making the legacy of the exhibition and the Italian Pavilion tangible, and making the consumption of resources used to produce them meaningful.
 
The Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of culture contributed an amount equaling €800,000 to the production of “Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” which was formalized, as is customary, through an agreement with Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, finalized on October 26, 2022.
 
The Italian Pavilion was also made possible thanks to the support of Banca Ifis as the main sponsor, Bottega Veneta as sponsor, and Rilegno as supporter, whose contributions total more than €230,000.
We would like to thank the main technical sponsor Fohhn, and technical sponsors Epson, Flos, NM3, and Fedrigoni, whose contributions total more than €150,000.
Special thanks to Amorim.
 
The interventions at the various local stations were made possible, beyond the allocation of resources from the Italian Pavilion, primarily thanks to the involvement of numerous partners and sponsors, to whom a heartfelt thanks is extended for embracing the project.
 
For the duration of the exhibition, the Italian Pavilion will be accompanied by a Public Program entitled “Mondo Novo”², which will be articulated through a number of events – seminars, lectures, laboratories, workshops – at different venues.
Within this program, a series of five meetings will be held at the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, in Venice, thanks to the support of Bottega Veneta.
 
“Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” will be conveyed in its breadth by a catalogue edited by Fosbury Architecture, published by Humboldt Books, which will bring together dialogues between the designers and the advisors: Post Disaster (Peppe Frisino, Gabriele Leo, Grazia Mappa, Gabriella Mastrangelo) with Silvia Calderoni, Ilenia Caleo; BB (Fabrizio Ballabio, Alessandro Bava) with Terraforma (Ruggero Pietromarchi); Giuditta Vendrame with Ana Shametaj; HPO (Alessandro Argentesi, Luca Cei, Mara Femia, Filippo Ferraro, Gregorio Giannini, Gabriele Giau, Giulio Marchetti, Oreste Montinaro, Dario Rizzi, Giorgio Scanelli, Riccardo Simioni) with Claudia Durastanti; Parasite 2.0 (Stefano Colombo, Eugenio Cosentino, Luca Marullo) with Elia Fornari – Brain Dead; Lemonot (Sabrina Morreale, Lorenzo Perri) with Roberto Flore; Studio Ossidiana (Giovanni Belotti, Alessandra Covini) with Adelita Husni Bey; Orizzontale (Jacopo Ammendola, Juan López Cano, Giuseppe Grant, Margherita Manfra, Nasrin Mohiti Asli, Roberto Pantaleoni, Stefano Ragazzo) with Bruno Zamborlin; (ab)Normal (Marcello Carpino, Mattia Inselvini, Davide Masserini, Luigi Savio), Captcha Architecture (Margherita Marri, Jacopo Rosa) with Emilio Vavarella; in-depth studies edited by Mirko Zardini, dpr-barcelona (Ethel Baraona Pohl, César Reyes Nájera) with Anna Puigjaner Barbera and Markus Miessen, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Nina Bassoli; infographics by Fosbury Architecture; photographic essays by Sara Scanderebech, Luca Campri, Eleonora Agostini, Barbara Rossi, Giacomo Bianco, Giovanni Galanello, Alessandro Iovino, Adrianna Glaviano, and Mattia Balsamini.

¹ The phrase "everyone belongs to everyone else" chosen by Fosbury Architecture—a quotation from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—makes explicit reference to the inevitable interconnection between people and their destinies, between all the actors involved in a large and ambitious project such as the Italian Pavilion, and, ultimately, between us all.
 
² The reference is to Mondo Novo, painted by Giandomenico Tiepolo in 1791, at a time of great change: from the French Revolution to the fall of the Venice Republic, La Serenissima. The painter carries out a reversal of representation, and the thronging crowd in the foreground prevents us from seeing what is behind it. Amid the frenzy of the characters, there is a feeling of deep unease and the imminent end of an era. With the same trepidation and uncertainties today, we study the horizon in search of clues to help decipher the future, in the hope that it will be a space where “Everyone belongs to everyone else.”

Designers
(ab)Normal, BB (Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio), Captcha Architecture, HPO, Lemonot, Orizzontale, Parasite 2.0, Post Disaster, Studio Ossidiana, Giuditta Vendrame
 
Advisors
Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo, Claudia Durastanti, Roberto Flore, Elia Fornari (Brain Dead), Adelita Husni Bey, Ana Shametaj, Terraforma, Emilio Vavarella, Bruno Zamborlin
 
Stations
Bay of Ieranto (Massa Lubrense, Naples), Campania; Belmonte Calabro (Cosenza), Calabria; Librino (Catania), Sicily; Montiferru (Oristano), Sardinia; Prato – Pistoia, Tuscany; Ripa Teatina (Chieti), Abruzzo; Taranto, Puglia; Venice mainland, Veneto; Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia

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