Can a displaying event be the trigger for care and transformation?
Beyond mere display, the architecture exhibition is research, knowledge, contents and even space production as much as it is representation of something that lies outside of the exhibition space. Transgressions that often can lead to Transformations should for sure be considered as some of the effects of the contemporary architecture exhibitions. In 2012, Toyo Ito brought together the contributions of his recent experience in the areas affected by the 2011 tsunami in the Japanese Pavilion titled “Architecture. Possible Here? Home-for-All” at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale. This exhibition was not conceived as a presentation platform but as a catalyst for future interventions and it has, in fact, become the trigger for a wider project of architectural and social transformation in the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami. This paradigmatic case represents here the opportunity to address further examples of exhibitions, capable of activating processes of care on cities, communities and urban fabrics. Due to its performative agency the architecture exhibition possesses, indeed, the capability of literally influencing the behaviour of its actors. In the ephemeral character of the exhibition lays one of its more powerful strengths. It concentrates an enormous amount of energy in a certain place at a certain moment and this phenomenon has a big transformative potential. In 2020 two projects of this kind were realised in Bolzano: a small self-built project carried out by the architecture agency Campomarzio with a group of university students and a local theatre that was presented as the “Bolzanism Museum” and formed the base-stage for a performative guided tour of the residential neighbourhood of west Bolzano; almost simultaneously, the collective Orizzontale, invited to Bolzano by the cultural association Lungomare, purposely left the exhibition space of the association and acted between architecture, landscape planning, public art and the production of homemade furniture for public spaces with a particular attention to the effects of the pandemic on the public space and on the interaction between residents and their urban common goods.
“Home for All is a pavilion on a destroyed site, a place where local people can start a new course comparing, observing and questioning old and new paradigms.”
“An exhibition concentrates an enormous amount of energy in a certain place at a certain moment and this phenomenon has a big transformative potential.”
“Leave the exhibition space and act between architecture, landscape planning, public art and the production of homemade furniture.”
BIO
Roberto Gigliotti
(Arch. MLA) is associate professor of Interior and Exhibit Design at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen Bolzano. His research interests focus on the exhibition of architecture and the public space of the contemporary city. He is currently working on the research project “Architecture in the age of display” with Nina Bassoli and Léa-Catherine Szacka. In the past, he participated to research projects as “Educating Through/With Design: Enhancing Creative Learning in Museum and School Settings” and “Graphic Design, exhibition context, curatorial practices” with Giorgio Camuffo and Maddalena dalla Mura. In 2013, in the frame of the research project “Exhibiting Architecture”, he organised the international conference “Displayed Spaces. New Means of Architecture Presentation through Exhibitions”. He is vice-president of ar/ge kunst Bolzano and founding member of Lungomare. 2015 he collaborated with Studio Lupo&Burtscher to the exhibition design of the “Casa Semirurale” in Bolzano.
Three recommended readings
- Various (2012), Architecture. Possible Here? – Home-For-All, Publisher Toto
- Jaque A. (2020), Superpowers of Scale, Columbia University Graduate School
- Aubin C., Minguez Carrasco C. (2019), Body Building, Performa