Edition: 15. International Architecture Exhibition - Reporting from the front directed by Alejandro Aravena (28 May - 27 November 2016)
Titolo del Padiglione Italia: Taking Care. Progettare per il bene comune
Curator: TAMassociati
Commissioner: Federica Galloni
Catalogue: Taking care: progettare per il bene comune, designing for the common good, 15. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura La Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione Italia, a cura di TAM Associati, Becco giallo, Padova 2016
The title of the15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (28 May - 27 November 2016) is "Reporting from the front". The theme - chosen by Alejandro Aravena - investigates the need to combine architecture with the need for a better quality of the built environment and thus of people's lives.
"Taking Care. Progettare per il bene comune" is the title of the exhibition that TAMassociati have created in the Italian Pavilion. The theme of "taking care" fits in well with this line and is intended as tangible proof of how architecture can help spread and make effective the principles of culture, sociality, participation, health, integration and legality in any place and on any scale.
"Taking Care," the curators say "is an action that was born in the Italian Pavilion with the explicit intention of taking root, germinating and reproducing itself outside of it, to generate a new civic awareness". It is a strongly social vision of architecture, but also a root of its being. The proposal is developed in three sections, 'Think', 'Meet' and 'Act', built around three precise questions involving the common good. To visitors: 'where to recognise it, if it is all around us'; to institutions: 'how to enhance it, even with limited resources'; to designers: 'when to produce it, through architecture'.
'Thinking' is a re-cognition of the theme of the common good, its value and the relationship that it weaves with the built environment: a path enriched by the contribution of personalities from different cultural and professional backgrounds, to look 'beyond' the current definitions.
'Incontrare' is a review of 20 architectural projects, all carried out by 20 Italian firms, in Italy and abroad. As a whole, they tell of how subjects, when co-authors, can create spaces and places that are useful to the community, thus giving equal importance to both the processes and the built work. The section identifies 10 fields of investigation - legality, health, housing, environment, education, culture, play, science, food, work - accompanied by a gallery of photographs that give visible form to the idea of the common good in Italy.
'Agire', the exhibition's climax, translates into a concrete call to action. In fact, 'Agire' hosts the aliases of 5 mobile devices conceived for direct intervention in marginalised areas of our country. They are drive-on modules designed by 5 Italian studios in collaboration with 5 associations that have always been involved in programmes to combat social and environmental degradation: AIB (Italian Library Association), Emergency, Legambiente, Libera, UISP (Italian Union of Sport for All).
The choice of the TAMassociati team was made by the Minister of Culture from among 9 curatorial proposals received by the Directorate-General, which managed the selection, which had been expressly asked to deal with the theme of suburbs and city development. The 10 personalities invited were: Stefano Boeri, Antonella Bruzzese, Maristella Casciato, Fabrizio Gallanti, Isabella Inti, Carlo Ratti, Matteo Scagnol, Simone Sfriso - TAMassociati, Benedetta Tagliabue, Paola Viganò. The selection is therefore also in continuity with the action of the government which, with the ministerial reform, has created a Directorate-General dedicated to contemporaneity and has approved norms that incentivise the municipalities, also economically, to transfer many cultural initiatives from the historical centres to the urban peripheries.
Taking Care – Official website
Taking Care – Press kit (IT)
Taking Care – Press release (IT)
Taking Care – Press kit (EN)
Taking Care – Press release (EN)
Taking Care – Press conference
Related event: Social Architecture Workshop
Related event: Peripheries in action
