Archetypes
(2030) EXPOST. Tracing possible futures | Italian Pavilion – 14th Architecture Biennale di Venezia
The future urban landscape of the 2015 World Fair grounds needs to be defined by a clear and delimited urban proposal that counters the fragmentary dispersal of the metropolitan periphery.
This strategy will help to go from a sprawling and fragmented system, typical of World Fair urban plans, to an intensive, concentrated and self-contained model, necessary to achieve a sustainable post-metropolitan city.
The urban proposal, structured following the cardo and the decumanus of the existing layout, is made up of three urban systems which, as defined, incorporate the main features of the World Fair’s structures not only as a reference, but also as a reaffirmation of the reuse of preexisting elements as part of the urban re-qualification strategy.
The City of Italian excellencies gathers the functional, public and social program —education, production, research, communication— into a low-density horizontal element. It is a clearly defined feature, far from the arbitrariness of the surrounding limits. It is articulated around the notion of constructing public space, which makes it an autonomous system capable of determining a urban structure in itself.
The City of services concentrates the private program —offices and commercial spaces— into a high-density vertical element. In contrast with the system that shapes the public program, this element allows for the minimum occupation of public space while at the same time it organizes and characterizes the metropolitan area through a large scale urban landmark.
The Agricultural park integrates the two urban systems into a single area, re-naturalizing almost the entirety of the World Fair grounds. This large natural area integrates green and cultivated spaces producing a new form of metropolitan park. By accepting and maintaining the original borders and layout of the grounds, the park becomes an urban point of reference while it also allows for the integration of the different urban fabrics that surround the intervention and gives meaning to the other two urban systems within it.
The interaction of these three systems offers a response to the urgent need to recover the metropolitan territory through a finished, autonomous and concentrated urban form that can rebalance the relationship between nature and artifice.
