Research

The exhibition collects some projects developed in the last forty years for the city of Venice that have not been completed and are kept in the Projects Archive of the Iuav University of Venice. The projects on display represent some of the "missed opportunities" for Venice, they stage the contradictions that have characterized it in the relationship between new and old and portray the resistance to renewal in different portions of the city. The themes chosen are among those featured in the homonymous paper book Venice and highlight the close relationship between Iuav and La Biennale di Architettura con la città. Both institutions, through the seminars and studies promoted by the Iuav and the competitions linked to the international exhibitions of the Biennale, have proposed and conducted debates on interventions in the city, as shown by the projects on display. Many of the areas affected by the ideas and projects concern what were then perhaps still perceived as marginal areas, Cannaregio Ovest, the Arsenale, Piazzale Roma, just to name a few; as knots to be

redefined after their progressive divestments, with the loss of their productive character. Places that belonged to a story that looked to the future of Venice in the 1980s. Finally, places where projects, ideas and censures over time are stratified. The projects concern many of the Iuav masters, such as Carlo Aymonino, Giancarlo De Carlo, Gianugo Polesello, Aldo Rossi, and other great national and international architects, such as Costantino Dardi, Francesco Cellini, Franco Purini, Rafael Moneo, Steven Holl, Peter Eisenman. The exhibition also reflects a didactic purpose, wanting to accompany young students of Architecture to familiarize themselves with areas and design themes of the city where they study, to confront the language of representation of that time, to know how the different ideas for the city have multiplied over time, to understand how some topics are still very topical and not completely solved. What emerges is that Venice can be read as a forge, as the place of experimentation, a city of a thousand faces, many of which unfortunately are absent.

Giancarlo De Carlo (1919-2005) (1919-2005) worked on the theme of living - from the private house to the collective residence - following a line of research recognizable since his professional debut, which took place in the Fifties with the projects developed for the Plan INA-Casa.The exhibition, set up with the materials conserved at the Projects Archive of the Iuav University of Venice, illustrates the continuity with which De Carlo approached the research on residence. The outcomes are architectural complexes conceived as systems of connection between the parts, to be understood not as finite and identifiable objects in a closed system, but as real similarities to the fabric of the historic city, which is defined over time by subsequent additions. In the exhibited projects, each volume is thought of as the center of a network of relationships, and develops as in a narrative process that the architect chooses to follow in its infinite possibilities of expansion. In De Carlo's works, the settlement principle does not translate into the search for the single harmonious figure.

It is generated by spaces between buildings, conceived as catalysts of social life, a sort of centrifugal force from which every project is born. The result is a multi-faceted and multi-faceted vision of reality. Through the chronological arc of twenty years (1949-1969), the exhibition shows how the criticism of the dogmatic principles of the Modern, is present in De Carlo's production well before it became part of the international cultural debate. The relationships that the architect establishes beyond the Italian borders through the meetings of the Team X group and in many other occasions starting from the CIAM of Otterlo in 1959 do not trigger a new design method in De Carlo's elaboration, but rather sharpen the direction and expand its scale. The exhibition features original drawings, photographic materials and documents from the Giancarlo De Carlo archive, conserved at the Projects Archive. Will also be presented prints kindly reproduced thanks to the collaboration of the Photographic Archive of the Milan Triennale.