Workshop of Architecture in Venice
28 June – 16 July 2021
in memoriam of Prof. Enrico Fontanari
organised by Università Iuav di Venezia and UNISCAPE
Islands in the stream
This year W.A.Ve. celebrates its twentieth birthday and for the occasion, in collaboration with UNISCAPE, proposes to students and professors the theme of the island. When two years ago, with Manuel Palerm, UNISCAPE’s president, we thought about this topic, we could not have foreseen the implications that it might have.
The occasion originated from another celebration, that of the 20 years since the signing of the European Landscape Convention and from the relation between UNISCAPE and many islands all over the world, starting from the Canary Islands to the Galapagos, Chiloè, Egadi and many others. Then the relation with Venice, a city made of islands, it was clear how obvious were all the literary implications surrounding this particular condition.
But we could never have thought that, few month later, we would have to deal with a particular declination of the theme, the one of the individual isolation, experienced by each one of us during the long months of the lockdown. In light of what has happened perhaps it is not entirely true that “no man is an island” as John Donne and Hemingway wrote, or, at least, the risk that every man may become an island is always around the corner.
So, from a design perspective dealing with islands today means going back to investigate the particular relationship that is built in these places between architecture and landscape, finding, once again, in Venice a fundamental paradigm, but also reflecting on a condition that concerns us all. As always W.A.Ve. will involve about 1200 Iuav and foreign students, and 25 architects, with even more collaborators, from all over the world.
As we still are in the transition phase from the epidemic, works will be held in blended form, even if the students (in conditions of maximum security) will return to the classrooms, unlike what happened in the last edition that was entirely online. Also this year we will have as supporters Fondazione Iuav and Rete Ferroviaria italiana, that will bring issues related to Sicily and Sardinia to which the company is committed.
The great workshop of architecture continues its path, therefore it enlarges the network of those who return or those who, having attended it once, have good memories of it. And those who believe that architecture, especially in this era of transition, must increasingly take care of what – people or places – surrounds it and constitutes its natural accomplishment.
Alberto Ferlenga – Rector Iuav
UNISCAPE W.A.Ve staff:
Chiara Giuliacci
Giulia Mela
Marianna Lombardo
coordination:
Tommaso Zanaica