22/11/2021 - VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2021. RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE
ON HOW WE TOLD RESILIENT ITALY FOR THE ITALIAN PAVILION

Like all things, this last edition of Venice Architecture Biennale came to an end. But this time, something special happened: we had the privilege of working on an ambitious project for the Italian Pavilion following the theme of “Resilient Communities and Regeneration of Urban Suburbs”.
With few words and a lot of Italy, we have chosen to tell the story of our cities, provinces, and regions through sixteen videos capable of accompanying the viewer from afar, bringing him slowly closer, showing through the footage first the countryside, lakes, and lakes hills surrounding the cities, their suburbs, to arrive at the centre of the theme, the projects under construction or not yet realised. A global concept is presenting the whole of Italy as a unifying element and allowing the viewer to move from watching one video to another, at any time and in any order, but without losing the general concept of all the films: resilience.
Therefore, the story of each short film was thought of as being divided into three sequences: a first part of the introduction, a central expositive sequence, and a final sequence showing the project proposals. The first two, the introduction and the exhibition, were built from resources filmed on-site, with drones and ground cameras. At the same time, the final sequence was produced based on the project of each municipality through images partly filmed and partly computer-generated, using 3D animations. All of this was accompanied by timely guide titles, with little motion graphics and a few infographics. And this is where the second part of our production process began, namely the phase of comparison and constant communication with the respective administrations, to draw up together with them and their various professionals, mainly architects, a clear and real concept, with which each of them told us about their approach and their current projects.
Sixteen concepts that we turned into as many storyboards to start drafting the “script” of the films, planning the areas, the themes, the shootings. And here we were lucky enough to work on a subject as beautiful, rich and strong as Italy itself, which made the filming a true testament to beauty, history, productivity, Italian genius and resilience. Powerful contents, which, thanks also to the passion, vision, study and planning that all the various administrations and their collaborators have shown us, have enabled us to create a true experience.
The videos were inserted into a path created by architects Paolo Di Nardo and Simone Chietti, like a real tour of Italy, with the screens arranged according to themes (water, green, earth) side by side in a unique and evocative atmosphere, moving from one video to another, from one municipality to a province, from one project to the next. An immersive journey, thanks also to interactive projections. A journey into the operational resilience that sixteen administrations are representing the whole of Italy is pursuing. And seeing those images, the first reaction will be that of the desire to discover, to go to those municipalities, some less known, others better known, and to find oneself immersed in those splendid realities that surround us, discovering a better future, which is a possible future and indeed already underway. Because resilience is a journey that we have already begun.