Dear All,
It’s been a tough year, wishing you a relaxing time with your beloved ones, hoping to see you soon in Venice
Cari Tutti,
è stato un anno duro, vi auguro momenti di relax con i vostri cari, sperando di vedervi presto a Venezia
Whatever reason will bring you to visit Venice in the winter season, it will be worth it!
Remember also that from December 17th up to January 9th, Palazzo Ducale and Museum Correr will be open until 11.00 pm.
“O Venezia benedetta,
No te vogio più lasar.”
Inscription by Isabella Stewart Gardner in her travel book
(Blessed Venice,
I don’t want to leave you anymore)
How will we live together? Biennale Giardini 2021
This year, due to the Covid emergency, the Biennale of Architecture was postponed to May 2021 and will run until November 2021.
I had the privilege to visit the exhibition in the early days of its opening. It’s a stunning experience, including 112 participants from 46 countries coming from all over the world.
The whole exhibition is organised into five scales, three at the Arsenale and two in the central pavilion at the Giardini venue.
The Arsenale displays the first three scales, distributed as follows:
•Among Diverse Beings: Designing for new bodies & Living with Other Beings
•As New Household: Catering to new demographics, Inhabiting new tectonics, Living apart together
•As Emerging Communities: Appealing to civicness, Re-equipping society, Coming together in Venice, Co-Habitats
At the Giardini venue, you will embrace the other two scales: Across Borders and As One Planet.
In addition to these two shows, there are several installations scattered throughout the city of Venice, and also five related installations at Forte Marghera Park centred on a slightly different theme: How will we play together?
Significantly the curator of this Biennale is Hashim Sarkis, Chair at MIT. The Biennale Architettura displays multiple responses to the initial opening question that unfolds myriads of implications.
In his intense preface, Sarkis states that the question was asked because “we are not happy with the answers that are coming out of politics today.”
Architecture thus can offer alternative practices on how space is conceived. We need a new spatial contract. It has to be universal and inclusive.
Here’s some pictures to introduce you to this challenging journey!
Giuseppe Penone, Ideas of Stone, Elm, 2008
How will we live together?
What are you waiting for?
TO BE Continued…
Today it’s my Birthday, they say I was born on March 25th A.D. 421, according to historical chronicles that report the first stone used to built the Church of St James in Rialto, thanks to an ex-voto of a carpenter miraculously saved from a terrible fire.
I have too many memories of what has happened so far, sometimes I get confused, as each recollection entails another one and in the end each one of you out there, distracts me with another story, century after century the stories still go on.
If I have to take into account other events, today it’s also Dante’s Day, the father of the Italian language – the author of the Divine Comedy – it seems that the poet managed to come to Venice long time ago on September 1321, as ambassador for Messer Guido Novello, took malaria from a mosquito bite and died few days afterwards in Ravenna, the city with the splendid Byzantine mosaics.
They are going to celebrate me properly inside the Basilica of St Mark, my patron saint, whose story is part of my legend; his relics were stolen from Alexandria of Egypt by two Venetian merchants who covered the saint’s remains with pig’s meat in order to avoid the Muslim soldiers’ inspection, and since then he’s been buried here, despite the big fire that destroyed the whole structure in 972. Some fiction writers had also tried to link St Mark’s legend with the body of Alexander the Great, following the Macedonian star engraved in the stone of Saint Apollonia, fantarcheology or myth?
Year after year, ebb after ebb, flooding after flooding, I’m going back to my happy returns, telling just a tiny part of what I saw…
1600 anni
Oggi è il mio compleanno, dicono che sia nata il 25 Marzo 421 AD, secondo le croniche storiche che testimoniano la prima pietra usata per costruire la Chiesa di San Giacometto a Rialto, grazie all’ex-voto di un carpentiere scampato miracolosamente a un terribile incendio.
Ho troppi ricordi di quanto è successo finora, a volte mi confondo, visto che ogni ricordo si ricollega ad un altro e alla fine ciascuno di voi là fuori mi distrae con un’altra storia, secolo dopo secolo le storie continuano.
Se devo tenere conto di altri eventi, oggi è anche Dantedì, il padre della lingua italiana – l’autore della Divina Commedia – pare che il poeta riuscì a venire a Venezia molto tempo fa nel Settembre del 1321, come ambasciatore di Messere Guido Novello, prese la malaria dopo una puntura di zanzara e morì subito dopo a Ravenna, la città con gli splendidi mosaici bizantini.
Mi faranno una festa come si deve dentro la Basilica di San Marco, il mio santo patrono, la cui storia fa parte della mia leggenda, le sue reliquie vennero rubate da Alessandria di Egitto da due mercanti veneziani che coprirono le spoglie del santo con carne di maiale per evitare un’ispezione dei soldati musulmani, e da allora è sepolto qui, nonostante il grande incendio che distrusse l’intera struttura nel 972. Alcuni scrittori di narrativa hanno anche cercato di collegare la leggenda di San Marco al corpo di Alessandro il Grande, seguendo la stella macedone incisa nella stele di Sant’Apollonia, fantarcheologia o mito?
Anno dopo anno, marea dopo marea, inondazione dopo inondazione, mi rivolgo ai miei felici ritorni, raccontando solo una piccola parte di quello che ho visto…