Prossima Apertura / Vuoto Around Tables Venice Biennale

Prossima Apertura / Vuoto Around Tables

17th International Architecture Exhibition of Venice

Within the 17. International Architecture Exhibition, prophetically titled “How we will live together” by Hashim Sarkis, we were invited to participate by the curator of the Italian Pavilion, Alessandro Melis, in the beautiful setting of the Giardino delle Vergini at the Venice Arsenal.

We presented in the exhibition the result of the project Prossima Apertura, recently concluded, and the call Around Tables, connected to the research project Vuoto.

Prossima Apertura is the urban transformation project of the Toscanini neighborhood in Aprilia (LT), winner in 2016 of the Periferie Competition organized by MiBACT and CNAPPC and in 2020 of the INU Urbanism Award in the Environmental, Economic and Social Regeneration category.

The project proposes an integrated approach to urban regeneration in which architecture, psychosocial research, public art and communication work together to build a collective sense of common spaces.

The physical renewal of the sites is supported by a program of integrated activities aimed at listening and engaging the inhabitants, in a perspective of shared and incremental construction of the new public space.

Here are presented two devices that are the result of this process: the banner, which signals the process of transformation, generating curiosity and announcing the activities that follow; and the large circular table, built together with the inhabitants, around which the new community of the Toscanini neighborhood gathers.

Around Tables is an open call associated with our presence at the Venice Biennale, with a poster designed by Atto to be distributed in the Italian Pavilion.

Around tables will collect within the new issue of Vuoto an open archive of public spaces, a collection of projects, texts, audios and videos that manifest the dual nature of the city as a place of both gathering encounter and dispute.

The table represents the device and the ground upon which encounters and collective confrontation take place, the space in which the experiences are shared and brought together but also the space in which conflicts and collisions are tackled and solved (or not).