ITALIAN PAVILION at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
Taking Care - designing for the common good curated by TAMassociati
TAKING CARE is the keynote that TAMassociati (Massimo Lepore, Raul Pantaleo, Simone Sfriso) - the curatorial team of the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2016 - has chosen in keeping with the theme of Reporting from the Front proposed by Alejandro Aravena to recount an architecture created with communities and capable of sharing needs and aspirations. “Taking Care”, say the curators, “is an action that arises in the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2016 and then takes root and spreads outside it to generate a new civic awareness”. It is a highly social vision of architecture, but also the root of its being. The theme is divided into three sections, ‘Thinking’, ‘Meeting’ and ‘Acting’, resting on three specific issues involving the common good. It urges visitors to recognize it, when it is found around them, the institutions to promote it, even with limited resources, and designers to embody it in architecture.
The exhibit design of the Pavilion is notable for the Pop language of an original graphic novel and prominent illustrations, as well as the low-cost policies adopted and the recycling of the materials (including the reuse of wood from the Irish pavilion at Expo 2015) indoors and in the grounds of the Tese delle Vergini.
A pop language
When talking about the outer city, all too often the tone is sombre and resigned. But in the Italian Pavilion we want to speak of the life hidden in the peripheries: stories, love, intelligence, enthusiasm… For this reason we have chosen a “Pop” language, which, through the graphic novel, creates a special empathy with the stories we tell. The graphic novel helps relocate the story in a different place, with the main character being given the task of bearing a message of optimism for the future.
Low Cost/Social Value
The exhibition installation is low cost. Today low cost basically means increasing efficiency and eliminating the superfluous, while optimizing services and costs to the benefit of end users and society. Low-cost design can be an extraordinary opportunity to focus on the question of the real nature of consumption and develop a different philosophy of creating value starting from parameters of real social utility. It is increasingly necessary, as the exhibition design seeks to show, to simplify in order to restore technology and costs to economy and efficiency. In the context of the Biennale, a large temporary event, care to reduce waste is a fundamental theme of the installation. In the Pavilion, the display reuses lighting equipment supplied for a previous art exhibition. The exhibit design retained some plasterboard partitions already installed, it reused the laminated wood panels of the Irish Pavilion at the Milan Expo. A simple gesture, but consistent with what the exhibition aims to show in terms of a concern for resources.
Italian Pavilion exhibit design in the old Venice Arsenale: -Taking Care designing for the common good- main entrance