Concrete Jungle - Terraferma veneziana

Rome, February 20, 2023. Concrete Jungle is the title of the fifth of nine site-specific interventions for “Spaziale presenta,” the preparatory component of “Spaziale: Everyone Belongs to Everyone Else,” the project by the collective Fosbury Architecture (Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, and Claudia Mainardi) for 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.

This fifth intervention will take place on the Venice mainland, the inland area bathed by the same waters as the lagoon and forever linked to the ancient city, and will involve the participation of the design and research agency Parasite 2.0 (Eugenio Cosentino, Luca Marullo, and Stefano Colombo) as the designer, and the artist and designer collective Brain Dead, represented by Elia Fornari, as advisor. The incubator of the project will be Museo M9.

The image of the city as a Concrete Jungle – an expression borrowed from metropolitan subcultures – portrays the urban environment as a symbol of the perennially ambiguous relationship between the artificial and the natural in the human-nature relationship. In the wilds of metropolitan space, the human being, returned to an animal state, faces a daily struggle for survival. At the same time, the urban condition pushes the individual to escape in the hope of rediscovering an ancestral and unspoiled dimension of the landscape.

Climbing is unquestionably one of the activities that best conveys this dual tension: in the challenge between the human body and the mountain face to be climbed, man, driven to reach the summit, is constantly forced back into a harsh confrontation with the hostile environment.

“As with all human dynamics, free time is structured by social, cultural, and ethnic groups,” stress the curators, Fosbury Architecture. “We believe that design can be a powerful tool for dismantling the latent discrimination in activities that often prove more divisive than recreational.”

In its breadth, the project for the Italian Pavilion is founded on Fosbury Architecture's 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.

In the period from January to April, leading up to the opening of the #biennale #architettura 2023, “Spaziale presenta” will see the activation of nine site-specific interventions in as many locations chosen throughout Italy.

“Spaziale: Everyone Belongs to Everyone Else,” in the Italian Pavilion from May 20 to November 26, 2023, will be the formal and theoretical synthesis of the processes triggered in the nine regions in the previous months, providing a distinctive and original portrait of Italian architecture within the international context. The works in progress of “Spaziale presenta” and the activation of the nine interventions will be narrated step by step on the website www.spaziale2023.it and on the Instagram account @spaziale.presenta.

The curatorial project of the Italian Pavilion at the #biennale #architettura 2023 and all related details will be announced at a dedicated press conference (February/March 2023).