UNFOLDING YOUNG (?) GINO VALLE @ Unfolding Pavilion Venice Biennale
The proposal is to put together two unrelated items, both interesting and appropriate, but both with an acceptable level of threat:
- Little Italy set its field of research on the Italian architects born in the 1980s, meaning under 38;
- The location for the 2018's Unfolding Pavillion is the Giudecca social housing, one of the Gino Valle masterpieces. The proposal is to use them as a pretext and make them clash, to possibly prime, just like nitroglycerine, a more unpleasant (but hopefully stimulating) debate on the heritage left by the previous generations of architects to the current condition of our discipline. The proposal exposes the context and the conditions of a “young” (is/was under 38 ever considered “young”!?) Gino Valle to unevenly and rudely compare them to the context and conditions of the current generation.
Gino Valle was born in 1923. By the age of 38 (in 1961) he had already finished dozens of buildings, including some masterpieces like the Zanussi offices in Porcia, the Vriz tower in Trieste (remember Reyner Banham fighting to defend it in “The Architectural Review”?), several bank offices and villas - according to the Croset/Skansi monograph only (Croset, Skansi, Gino Valle, 2010, Electa).
Did he already built more and better than all of the Little Italy network together?
Probably, but that's not the point.
The proposal aims to stimulate the visitors to think about the relationship between the non-architectural conditions of Gino Valle's generation (not only the economical one but also values, meanings, references, themes, methodologies, networks, imaginaries, aims, concerns, expectations and desires) and how the work of that generation intellectually plunged into debt the following ones.
The proposal includes:
a) exhibition-installation
// from the 25th to 30th May 2018, room L2, west wall (dimensions 314x250 cm, installation depth 82.5 cm) of the triplex apartment of the Giudecca complex
// it's based on the modular grid that characterizes the Giudecca of 165x165 cm
// it includes the original project by Gino Valle for Villa Foghini (still unpublished) and its modifications and a selection of 12 postcards of the projects by Gino Valle built until 1961,
// the project of Villa Foghini is represented through (a.1) a short text, (a.2) a selection of the original drawings, (a.3) the photographic campaign of the project, (a.4) the graphic rapresentation of the modifications of the villa and (a.5) three-dimensional model made in plastic with a 3d printer in scale 1: 100
The materials are placed inside black frames with charcoal grey background and protective glass (dimensions 50x70cm and 40x30cm) as show in the collage.
// the photographic campaign collects the images of 12 built projects, arranged in chronological order, displayed in the form of a mosaic of mixed postcards from the past and present.
b) Symposium
// Saturday 26th May at 11.00
Theme:
Unfolding young Gino Valle. The architecture of the young Valle (Nani and Gino)
Speakers:
// Pierre Alain Croset // Kay Bea Jones // Luka Skansi // Ferruccio Luppi // Giovanni Corbellini
Moderators:
// Gabriele Pitacco, Claudia Ciulla, Marco Gnesda
