Unfolding Pavilion
The ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ is an exhibition and editorial project by Daniel Tudor Munteanu and Davide Tommaso Ferrando that pops up at major architecture events in previously inaccessible but architecturally significant buildings.
On each occasion the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ features a different theme inspired by the space it occupies, by means of commissioned original works that react to it and to its wider cultural-historic background. The ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ doesn’t necessarily care about the hosting event’s theme. It lets its occupied space inspire its own theme. Without a good exhibition space (of the finest architectural making), the 'Unfolding Pavilion’ doesn’t have any reason to exist.
Like any pop-up, the 'Unfolding Pavilion’ only lasts for a short but intense period of time. After closing its doors, its activity unfolds online with a continuously updated stream of content. Every two iterations of the 'Unfolding Pavilion’, a book is released, documenting (and retroactively critiquing) the whole process.
In its 2018 edition, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ entered Gino Valle’s Giudecca Social Housing from the 25th to the 29th of May 2018, on the occasion of the vernissage of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia. In order to do so, it refurbished one of its empty dwellings - the n.7, one of the triplex units that are accessible from the elevated walkway, with unique views over the lagoon and the historical center - so to convert it in a temporary gallery of works, and use the commons spaces of the complex as the poetic backdrop for a three days-long program of public events. After the ending of the exhibition, the temporary gallery will be converted once again in one of the available social housing units, after five years of being unoccupied, and finally returned to the citizens of Venice as such.
All the contributions to the ‘Unfolding Pavilion 2018’ were produced and/or organized by the members of the ’Little Italy’ project: a collaborative network of Italian architects who were born in the 1980s. The exhibition, public and free, hosted three different kinds of materials: first of all, visualizations of the results of the survey that has initiated the ‘Little Italy’ project; then, a selection of original works reinterpreting the Giudecca Social Housing complex, produced by the members of the ‘Little Italy’ network; and finally, a selection of the original drawings and the original model of the project, borrowed by the Gino Valle archive.
THE AUTHORS
abacO; ANALOGIQUE; Arcipelago; Babau Bureau; Boano Prišmontas; Bunker; Campomarzio; Fabio CAPPELLO + Giuseppe RESTA; Fabio CAPPELLO + Rossella FERORELLI + Luigi MANDRACCIO + Gian Luca PORCILE; Michele D’ARIANO SIMIONATO & Caterina STEINER; Roberto DAMIANI ; ECÒL; ENTER; False Mirror Office, gosplan, LINEARAMA, pia, UNO8A; Davide Tommaso FERRANDO + Sara FAVARGIOTTI; Forestieri Pace Pezzani; Malapartecafé; oblò - officina di architettura + Figura/Sfondo; Giacomo PALA + Riccardo M. VILLA + Jörg STANZEL; Gabriele PITACCO; ROBOCOOP; Emilia ROSMINI & Emiliano ZANDRI; Giorgia SCOGNAMIGLIO & Lorenzo ZANDRI; STUDIO associates + atelier XYZ + Davide Tommaso FERRANDO; StudioERRANTE Architetture + Diego BEGNARDI + Giovanni BENEDETTI; Studiospazio; TCA THINK TANK + ZarCola Architetti; Davide TRABUCCO; WAR (Warehouse of Architecture and Research).
LITTLE ITALY
Little Italy is a proactive research project by Davide Tommaso Ferrando and Sara Favargiotti, which aims at stimulating a public debate about the principal traits of the generation of Italian architects who were born in the 1980s. Such effort is pursued, first of all, by mapping and investigating the most interesting practices that are currently tackling architecture from a diversity of points of view - as designers, editors, curators, critics, researchers, photographers, artists, and so on - so to discover who they are, where they live, what they do, how they do it and why. Then, through the organization of different activities based on different formats, Little Italy aims at collecting and highlighting the specific references, themes, methodologies, networks, imaginaries, aims and concerns of an age group whose identity has been shaped by three fundamental transitions - a geographical (from Italy to Europe), a mediatic (from paper to the Internet) and an economic one (from growth to recession) - so to to better understand its contemporary condition, and therefore foresee its possible futures.
