9. 5 STUDENTS FOR 5 DAYS with SouFujimotoArchitects
10. Main partner: eni
11. Sponsor: Autogrill
12. Lighting technical sponsor : iGuzzini
13. Supported by: Arcus
14. Educational partner: Il Gioco del Lotto
15. Sponsor MAXXI Architettura: Alcantara
ENERGY. Oil and post-oil architecture and grids
curated by Pippo Ciorra
22 March 2013 - 29 September 2013
www.fondazionemaxxi.it Rome 21 March 2013. Three exhibitions in one to recount sixty years in the history of Italy (and elsewhere) with a “visionary” view of the future, through the current burning issue: the impact of energy on architecture and the landscape, from the oil boom to renewables. The exhibition ENERGY. Oil and post-oil Architecture and grids has been organized by MAXXI Architettura directed by Margherita Guccione and curated by Pippo Ciorra and will be open from 22 March
through to 29 September 2013.
Over 80 historic drawings and projects, three master photographers and seven architectural firms of
international repute for an itinerary in three steps (Past, Present and Future) that sets out with a description of post-war Italy and the economic boom – with the “eruption” of cars and speed, the first filling and service stations, motels and motorways burst upon the scene – and proceeds to traverse the present through the attentive and sensitive gaze of three photographers and explore the future by way of visionary projects seeking a zero impact supply of energy, like the filling station inspired by a forest or the motorway that itself supplies energy throughout its length.
ENERGY is divided into three sections Storie/Stories (recounting the past), Fotogrammi/Frames
(investigating the present) and Visioni/Visions exploring diverse hypotheses for the future).
STORIE/STORIES. Curated by Margherita Guccione and Esmeralda Valente. On show are original drawings, models, projects and photographic, cinematic and journalistic images (drawn from major archives such as those of eni, main partner of the exhibition, Autogrill, IUAV, Istituto Luce, RAI Teche and MAXXI itself) recounting the Italian road and motorway architecture from the 1940s to the present, from the small scale of individual filling stations to the invention of the bridge buildings typical of motorway services, from service stations to motels. Works of research and quality, from the golden age of energy growth and the country's race towards innovation.
FOTOGRAMMI/FRAMES. Curated by Francesca Fabiani. On show are works by Paolo Pellegrin,
Alessandro Cimmino and Paola Di Bello who have used photography to “investigate” architecture associated with oil on a journey through the contemporary Italian landscape defined by the places of production, supply, utilization and sale of energy. Paolo Pellegrin, one of Italy’s leading contemporary photo reporters, has compiled a reportage dealing with one of the places of energy production, a gigantic refinery near Ravenna. Energy in the city distributed in the form of electricity and fuel is at the centre of the work of Alessandro Cimmino, a young architectural photographer. Lastly, Paola Di Bello has produced a work with a sociological outlook:a video with 60 portraits of passers-by in front of a filling station in three old Milan suburbs where the “non-place” petrol pumps become the characterising element of that landscape. Following the exhibition the works produced will enter the MAXXI Architettura Photography
Collections.
VISIONI/VISIONS. Curated by Pippo Ciorra. What will the spaces and the devices permitting access to energy for movement and all other needs be like in the future? Where will we get “fuel” from? And what will the nature of that “fuel” be? Visioni/Visions presents the exhibition-specific projects of seven major architectural studios from around the world, invited to investigate energy distribution in the third millennium. The exhibition will feature the visionary projects of Guillermo Acuña Arquitectos Asociados (Chile) with a multimedia installation allowing the visitor to “interact virtually” with the energy flows of the city of Santiago de Chile; Lifethings (South Korea) with Energy FARMacy, an imaginary refuelling clinic; MODUS architects (Italy) who have imagined a futuristic motorway supplying energy throughout its length; Noero Architects (South Africa) with a work on a fishing village near Cape Town that self-produces energy on a domestic and community scale; OBR Open Building Research (Italy) presenting an interactive installation in which the
public will produce real energy… pedalling; Sou Fujimoto Architects (Japan) with Energy Forest, a filling station that works as a forest; TERROIR (Australia/Denmark) with a work in which the identity of the place and the most advanced technology combine to create sustainable energy. In the research section VISIONI/VISIONS also documents some of the most interesting current research in the field being conducted by architects and scientists. A special guest, Rem Koolhaas’s OMA/AMO will be presenting its Roadmap 2050 project: a seven-metre long wallpaper redrawing Europe from the point of view of energy. Alongside this project will be Energy Bridges, the Berlin-Palermo “ecological corridor" by Ian+/Freddy Paul Grunert and Botanica, a design project by Studio Formafantasma presenting a new reading of plastic materials.
The exhibition has required great efforts into the research of historical materials and the production of the photographic projects and the new installations. General coordination is by Elena Motisi and exhibition design by Silvia La Pergola.
From Energy onwards, the lighting in Gallery 1, currently using halogen sources, will be replaced with LED lamps in the interests of the most advanced technology and energy saving, thanks to the contribution of I Guzzini.
The catalogue is published by Electa and curated by Pippo Ciorra, with texts by Laura Baird; Simone Colafranceschi; Dorothea Deschermeier; Francesca Fabiani, Lisa Findley; Margherita Guccione; Freddy Paul Grunert, Fabrizio Tamburini e Bo Thidé; Hans Ibelings; Bjarke Ingels; Adam Jasper; So Ik Jung; Jeannette Plaut e Marcelo Sarovic; Giuseppe Sammarco; Paolo Scrivano. Coordination by Alessio Rosati.
MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Info: 06.399.67.350; [email protected] | www.fondazionemaxxi.it - www.romaexhibit.it opening hours: 11.00 – 19.00 (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday, Sunday) |11.00 – 22.00 (Saturday) closed: Mondays, 1 May and 25 December | tickets: €11,00 adults, € 8,00 reduced The press pack and images of the exhibition may be downloaded from the reserved area of the Fondazione MAXXI site at http://www.fondazionemaxxi.it/?page_id=5176 inserting the password areariservatamaxxi.
22 March - 29 September 2013 Giovanna Melandri, President of Fondazione MAXXI
In all of its architecture exhibitions, the MAXXI has focused greatly on the themes and topics that bring architectural culture closer to its space and time. The SPAZIO and RE-CYCLE exhibitions, its commissions to photographers and many other projects all bear witness to the museum’s painstaking research aimed at the conceptual space where creative work and technical know-how come together in real life. The exhibition ENERGY, Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids is fully a part of this strand, thereby confirming the museum’s attention not just toward the masterpieces and the masters of architecture, but the more delicate processes of the changes taking place in the territory. In keeping with the museum’s youthful tradition, this exhibition, which is born from the collaboration with some of the major Italian companies, is not limited to showcasing architectural drawings and models, but assembles a thought-provoking mosaic of works and studies that often encroaches upon the worlds of art, planning, science and communication. The initial theme of the exhibition is among one of today’s most heatedly debated issues: in the future, which spaces and devices will allow the individual citizen access to energy for movement and for all of their other needs? Where will we get “fuel”? What will “fuel” be like? Above all, we ask how architecture will contribute to the new scenarios, taking for granted that the range of forms and sources of energy will not remain unchanged. So the exhibition starts from a strong point: the remarkable quality of the production of Italian architects involved in these themes during the “golden age” of energy growth, in the early decades following the Second World War. And more generally speaking, the virtuous alliance for modernity that in those years brought together technicians, intellectuals and some of the most innovative and visionary figures, like Enrico Mattei. For the first time the industrial culture saw the involvement of architects in the country’s race toward innovation, responding eagerly and creatively. Much of the exhibition starts out from its acknowledgement of the major archives (eni, Autogrill, IUAV, the MAXXI itself) and then reminds visitors how the issue of energy is close to everyone’s lives and that it requires excellent planning. The beautiful projects of the 1950s represent a great premise for describing the present-day scenario, recounted by three superb photographers, as well as that of the future, dealt with by seven architects from every continent. From their work we expect to learn not just how we will move around in the future, what we will put in the fuel tank of our “vehicle,” and how refueling will be carried out, but how the new production and distribution of energy will affect the landscape, the built-up environment, the perception of urban space and the relationships between people. ENERGY has a twofold strategic value for the museum. On the one hand, it once again uses exhibitions and site-specific commissions to architects to add to and qualify its collections, which are by now quite solid for the 21st century. On the other, it enhances its collaboration with the institutions and companies that work in important sectors such as the one here, and that therefore play a pivotal role in Italy’s future. It does not involve them merely as sponsors, but builds virtuous cultural rapports, ones that envision an exchange of knowledge, a sharing of archives, a common construction of research paths of which in Gallery 1 we only see the most evident aspect of cultural relations that go much farther. Lastly, ENERGY bears witness to the MAXXI’s straightforward and direct commitment to “talent scouting” and the construction of a fertile and active dialogue with the finest emerging architectural (and photographic) energies, wherever they may be on the planet, and however their modus operandi may be consolidated. With the small group selected by curators for the exhibition, the MAXXI virtually searched for its interlocutors in North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe, and it found three of the finest photographers in Italy, as well as interesting architects in Chile, Japan, South Korea, Australia, South Africa and Italy. If we compare the museum’s initial mission and its vocation toward innovation and exchange between cultures with architecture’s current need to harness all its best energies and produce new ideas, then we can look with confidence to the approach and to the themes raised by this event. Once again, our initiative will foster a discussion that will certainly transcend the museum walls and the boundaries of the disciplines and sciences involved.
ENERGY. OIL AND POST-OIL ARCHITECTURE AND GRIDS
22 March - 29 september 2013
Margherita Guccione, Director MAXXI Architettura
With the exhibition ENERGY, MAXXI Architettura is presenting and transmitting in concise yet exhaustive form the range of activities underpinning the Museum of Architecture: study and research, documentation, promotion and exposition. Energy is a research exhibition that intends to present to the public the most relevant aspects of the theme through a layout recounting the role played by energy in the processes of development and transformation that have affected the Italian landscape with ever greater intensity, since the middle of the last century and which will characterise the landscapes of the third millennium. The theme of energy is in fact developed in relation to the transformations of the territory within the ambit of three discreet moments that integrate to provide the visitor with a diachronic vision embracing past, present and future. In a single itinerary, the sources and the forms of energy are studied, described, photographed and imagined, drawing on past history, images of the present and projects and visions for the future. Each of the three moments has been tackled in a specific way, experimenting with diverse registers in terms of scientific approach and exposition: the search for archive materials recounting the story of the networks and architectures associated with the distribution of energy in the Italy of the period following the Second World War; photography capturing the everyday panorama through the authoritative gaze of three contemporary photographers; the promotion of new ideas through proposals capable of imagining how in the future energy growth will determine the new landscape, the built environment and the modes of human relations. Painstaking research investigating a wealth of archive materials has represented an opportunity to develop important relationships with other institutions such as the ENI Historical Archive, the IUAV Project Archive, the Accademia di San Luca and La Sapienza University. The MAXXI Architettura collections themselves contain works by masters such as Pier Luigi Nervi, Vittorio De Feo and Michele Valori. The theme embraces an broad range of innovative and experimental manufactures: service stations of various kinds from the standard to the exception; motorway service areas, characterised by the original Autogrill format; motels, reception structures; residential quarters and tourist villages for the workers of the major forms associated with energy, urban realities expressing the culture of the period. Everyday presences, of an absolute familiarity in the lives and imaginations of us all, the service stations, the autogrills, the motels and the villages for the employees of major oil companies such as ENI are also frequently cornerstones of our highest architectural culture, among which are concentrated a number of the most advanced design research projects of the post-war years such as the Settebagni motel by Mario Ridolfi, a tower lashed and frayed by the new wind of the Italian economic boom, the autogrill bridge buildings by Nervi and Bianchetti, in which structure takes on form, the service stations by Nino Dardi and Vittorio De Feo, mirrors of their respective, albeit distant, formal and compositional research, and lastly the ENI village at Borca di Cadore by Edoardo Gellner, a fine example of the insertion of a modern idiom within a mountain setting. Taking advantage of the evidently stimulating potential of the energy-infrastructure-territory relationship to prompt new creative processes, today seven architectural groups of international repute have each been asked to present MAXXI with an original experimental project associated with the distribution of energy in its most diverse and up-to-date forms, with particular and necessary attention being paid to sustainable and renewable sources. While the historical section reveals the virtual hegemony of oil and methane as the energy resources of the last century, contemporary architects are today called upon to respond to the challenge of alternative energy sources prefiguring the human environment of tomorrow. The site-specific installations by the seven architectural firms asked by the museum to interpret the theme of energy in the third millennium, free from the ties of real world design, are flanked by a selection of pure research works into the prospects of the development of new energy sources, such as the project developed by the IaN+ studio with the artist-curator Freddy Paul Grunert, investigating an inescapable relationship for formally prefiguring new settlement models of tomorrow, existing research and works of art, examples of a concrete relationship actuated between energy and the composition of architectural space.
Past and future are then connected, physically as well as ideally, through the action of reading and interpreting the contemporary landscape in the filed by three photographers specifically for this exhibition. The diverse pictorial accounts of specific contemporary energy sites presented by the photographers, from the petrochemical plant at Ravenna in the reading of a photo reporter such as Paolo Pellegrin or, as in the shots by Alessandro Cimmino, ordinary petrol stations recounted through architecture and lastly, as in the work of Paola De Bello, through the faces that animate them on a daily basis, continually modifying their image. These are works that expanded the cone of observation from the extraction of natural resources to their capillary distribution throughout the country, capturing in a synthesis of just a few frames, the complex relationships between the anthropic and natural environments. The photo shoots were specifically commissioned by MAXXI Architettura that, in a formula that has already been employed on a number of occasions, he acquired the new works for the architectural photograph collection. There are, therefore, numerous reasons underlying the realization of an exhibition capable of offering the public multiple sensations and perspectives, presenting more or less specialist levels of reading, in line with the museum’s intention to appeal to as broad a public as possible, without foregoing the quality of the research, the transmission of critical thinking, a confrontation with reality and the stimulation of new creative expressions. As testified by the plurality of origins of the architects participating in the exhibition ENERGY – South Africa, Australia, Korea, Japan and Chile – in its promotional and research activities MAXXI Architettura is confirming its ability to pick up on the most current debates and to recognise and select the innovative figures and themes animating the global contemporary architecture scene with an international outlook that makes it a museum with an international vocation.
ENERGY. OIL AND POST-OIL ARCHITECTURE AND GRIDS
22 March - 29 september 2013 Energetic Cure
Pippo Ciorra, Senior curator MAXXI Architettura
The first exhibitions held at the MAXXI, at the start of the last decade, were mounted in the old barracks, when the new building was still just a huge and promising construction site, a direct offshoot of the Ministry and not an independent body. In these past ten years, apart from the shift from Museum to Foundation, there have been myriad exhibitions, but there has, above all, been an unpredictable phenomenon that has witnessed a change in the very concept of curatorship. Until the late 20th century, the curator was still a rather undefined figure, poised somewhere between a scholar, a museum director, a conservator and a critic, whose profile was gradually determined by way of the exhibitions he or she realized. The contemporary art world was obviously more evolved, thanks especially to the practice of certain charismatic figures who, in the second part of the past century, bestowed (some of them still do) importance to the role. In architecture, we were still stuck at Arthur Drexler (and a few others) and the felicitous forays of figures from other professional fields. The exhibitions we can recall, in Italy and elsewhere, were the work of Johnson, Gregotti, De Carlo, Portoghesi, Nicolin, Tafuri, Rossi, Wigley and others, according to a line of “non-specialists” that comes all the way up to the most recent Biennials. These were all people who were not particularly interested in the development of the professional figure of the “curator of architectural exhibitions,” but that considered such exhibitions to be an instrument that could be used to further the development of their investigation and communicate their viewpoint. Suddenly, in recent years, the situation has changed radically: curating, from being a practice, has become a discipline with hypothetical scientific assumptions (?), at the heart of an infinite multitude of educational projects, this time not limited to the theme of art, but rather always also addressed to the area of architecture and related disciplines. In other words, all of a sudden we realized that when we work on an exhibition we are not just trying to organize a sequence of materials and ideas that are functional to the communication of some concept; we are also making a specific critical contribution to the “theory” of curating and to the definition of the ideal architecture curator. Within this picture, the presentation of a show of a curatorial nature such as ENERGY. Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids seems to be an important opportunity to make even clearer the “MAXXI approach” to the curatorial obsession that shakes up museums, universities, magazines and public lectures (including the ones we ourselves organize). From this viewpoint, an exhibition such as ENERGY reveals its ambivalent nature. On the one hand, it aims to consolidate the idea that in a museum like the MAXXI, which by definition is not just for people who work in the area of architecture, each exhibition must be the fruit of careful curatorial thinking, and it must breathe life into a many-voiced dialogue with the public. This must occur by finding constant links with the other disciplines and the other arts, with current issues, science and other languages. On the other hand, the manner itself in which the theme is chosen and the exhibition sequence conceived above all serve to clarify that our range of action is not so much the history of curating, but that of architecture and therefore of the way and the values that we communicate through drawings, projects, buildings, models, images, words and many other things. We are certainly interested in the way we conceive our display sequences. The meaning that we try to produce through exhibition plans and displays must come to terms each and every time with the thinking that is evolving constantly in regard to display spaces and the vibrant role of the museum in the city’s physical space and in the immaterial space of the history of ideas. Even more than this, however, also in view of the current condition of architecture in Italy and the world, we are interested in playing an active role in the definition of tools and goals that designers can pursue in a global scenario that generally tends to confine them to an area that is closer to that of communication and art than building—it seems that no more than 3% of buildings in the world are designed by architects. We are fully aware, as clearly shown by the exhibition, that to prepare well for the future we must continue to consider and investigate the closer roots of contemporary architectural thinking, enriching the archives, turning them into accessible and knowledge-rich sources, thus subtracting them as far as possible from the isolation of history, to instead get them to react with the contemporary context. Which is precisely the case with this exhibition.
Hence, with our work, more than nurturing a sort of paradoxical (disciplinary) autonomy of curatorship, which seems to be taking shape quickly—perhaps at the same pace as the number of “new museums” growing in China—we seek to recuperate the active role that architectural thinking and its above-mentioned exponents once held in the activity of the great Italian exhibition venues up until the 1980s. The way in which this reasoning is reflected in the exhibition program for ENERGY is rather immediate. First of all, the exhibition starts from a series of projects linked to the topicality of the issue of the environment and the specific contribution that can be made to this field by architectural thinking. The exhibition comes after RE-CYCLE and it will be followed by other projects of use to framing the possible ebbs and flows in the relationship between architecture and the world. The starting idea for this investigation is a rather simple one. After two or three decades of economic abundance and expressive happiness, architecture today is in search of new ideas and possible answers (and new “masters” as well). It is doing so by coming to terms with art, with politics, with science; it is forced to do so—perhaps rather reluctantly—by entering the discussion that has to do with the environment, lifestyles, the future of the planet and its inhabitants. Until now this dialogue has been hegemonized by technological issues, with results that are no doubt interesting, but with the effect of making the contribution of creativity and thinking to the space of such an important area for the everyday lives of people appear even more useless. Among other things, the technological answer tends to make us think that we can forever behave in the same way (i.e. the environment, the resources, etc.), only if we use more sophisticated and efficient technology, even if it is more costly in terms of planning and realization. Now is the time to clarify that the environmental issue is an “aesthetic imperative” (Lance Hosey in Design
Observer), that we cannot reconsider earth and resource consumption without a new lifestyle, and that there is no new lifestyle without an aesthetic form. Our task (or at least one of the tasks of the curator and of the museum) is to contribute to the research into that aesthetic form and the promotion of spatial, expressive urban studies that head in that direction. Quite how all this converges into ENERGY. Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids is equally simple. The exhibition is born out of the belief, a rather obvious one, that during the 20th century there was an indissoluble link between modernity and architecture, linked to the road and movement. In particular in Italy, on the road
projects have always represented an avant-garde territory, a territory of particularly frank modernity, perhaps because of the virtuous relationship with industry, perhaps because of the “safety distance” from the historical centers and from the much-feared contamination of the heritage with “contemporary architectures,” perhaps because of the stimulating relationship with the landscape and the half-conscious legacy of the avant-gardes. On the one hand, this relationship produced an awesome repertoire of images and buildings, by now historicized, which the exhibition intends to in part bring back to light. On the other, it is inevitable to note how the product of this relationship has today somehow entered a “crisis,” or that it is in any case less interesting and progressive. Its raw material – oil – in fact stands accused from various viewpoints, and even its chief motive, “movement,” begins to be looked at with suspicion by the supporters of “zero kilometer” strategies. So we have decided to organize a series of coordinated exhibition actions that will allow us to re-evaluate the legacy of that golden age and make it available to those who approach these issues today, as well as to revive a collaboration between architecture, energy grids and movement on new and expanded grounds. The result of this is a three-part exhibition, one in which we continually move from past to present to future, in which the different sections are constantly communicating in space (that of the museum) and in time. As for the legacy of the “age of highways,” the museum has chosen to serve as a junction between its own archive and those of some of the most important companies and institutions (eni, Autogrill, IUAV, etc.), and it has built a pathway made up of drawings and projects that bear witness to a remarkable wealth of material. Drawings, models and reproductions of the projects of some of the most important Italian architects will be of use to the public to understand how the delicate and unstable balance between conservation and modernity was achieved in Italy also thanks to the quality of the contribution of companies and the designers who built the new landscape of movement. The essays by the curators and authors who have been invited will help us to reconstruct the premises and the coordinates of that landscape, but also to compare it with what has been taking place in the rest of Europe, and, most importantly, in North America, the real home of Autopia. In spite of the limited amount of space and the limited budget we thought it would be impossible to go back to one of Italian architecture’s favorite ‘crime scenes’ – the road and everything that is connected to it – without paying tribute to those who before us grasped the importance of these landscapes in the construction of an aesthetic coherent with our time, that is to say, the photographers. Indeed, the photos taken by Luigi Ghirri, Gabriele Basilico and Olivo Barbieri forced Italian architects and scholars to stick their necks out of their
comfortable and rigorous studies and actually go see the strange spaces and the strange architectural creatures that their friends’ pictures unexpectedly “beautified.” Or at least made interesting and exciting. The ordinariness of the road as the scene of post-urban life in Ghirri’s work, the wide highway perspectives in that of Basilico, the frozen vision from the sky of streets and monumental ways in that of Barbieri, have indicated new fields of the essential application of knowledge to those who deal with design and urban planning. Or fields to venture across in order to find the material needed to renew their knowledge. Even in the MAXXI’s own specific history, work to record the landscape (Atlante Italiano 003) began with a photographic investigation at the heart of which lay precisely the themes that we are dealing with today with a different, newer spirit. Now that ten years have passed we like to return to the subject with new concepts and a new generation of photographers who have been willing to discuss the same themes by framing them within a less heroic and more analytical and deconstructed vision. Pellegrin investigates the origin of grids; Cimmino studies the light that filters from its terminals; Di Bello comes into contact with the human varieties that mingle there and that in some way are aesthetically determined. Visions, the section of the exhibition dedicated to architects and contemporary research, immediately embodies the curatorial choices we mentioned at the beginning. The project determines a theme that goes beyond the mere disciplinary sphere of architecture and instead invades the space of life and things. It then asks the architects to express a viewpoint and their proposals on what the future form of grids that distribute energy will be. This was asked of seven architects chosen on the grounds of geographical – five different continents – and generational – they do not belong to the group of starchitects who have dominated the scene for the past twenty years – criteria. This should guarantee variety and innovation in respect to what is already known about architecture. The exhibition then asked the architects – as it did the photographers – to carry out a specific task for the exhibition, to create an installation through which to communicate their ideas on the subject. This allows us, on the one hand, to skip over with a single step the tedious debate on “work and representation of the project,” given that the representation is the project, and on the other, to conceive the exhibitions as a “dynamic cure” for the collection that is enriched with a small yet new, unpublished and inherently coherent acquisition. Visions is also the most efficient device for breaking the disciplinary limits of the exhibition. Apart from the efforts of the individual architects who obviously ventured into the contemporary energy labyrinth, the section also welcomes several forays into the fields of art and scientific research, characterized by the great potential impact on network architecture. We have thus decided to show the OMA AMO studio’s research into the energy set-up Europa 2050, which tells us that we are not preparing to replace energy resources but to add to them. We have then taken a step in that complicated direction where art and science meet, inviting an outside curator to collaborate with an Italian studio to tell the story of a virtuous highway from Berlin to Palermo. Naturally, no one can overlook the fact that many artists have for years been working with remarkable intelligence and sensitivity on the energy theme. Starting from the sublime and multi-purpose pages written by Pier Paolo Pasolini in Petrolio, to the work of artists like Simon Starling, capable of bestowing a perfect form to the energetic paradox. The exhibition ends, symbolically, with a dizzying return to reality. In particular, the reality in question is a beautiful project just drawn up by the Morphosis studio for the last building of Metanopoli. The long horizontal skyscraper by the Thom Mayne studio unfolds with energy and a yearning for the future in the Milanese outskirts, and it above all serves to underscore how the topic being examined at this exhibition is all but exhausted. On the current architectural stage the capacity for dialogue between the most far-sighted designers and private partners is crucial, especially when we deal with questions like these, ones that involve the relationship between energy and space, so close to the heart of our times.
ENERGY. OIL AND POST-OIL ARCHITECTURE AND GRIDS
22 March - 29 September 2013 STORIE/STORIES
The Stories section introduces the theme of the relationship between architectural culture and the energy industry by way of architecture linked to infrastructural development which, in the post-Second World War period, shaped the face of modern Italy: service stations, Autogrill, motels, villages as a whole, form a remarkable period of innovation, typological and structural experimentation, as well as landscape design. A selection of original drawings and models are on display along with photographs and videos capable of expressing – and not just from an architectural viewpoint – the theme of the spaces of mobility, as recognizable places in a country racing toward modernity. Stories goes back over the events surrounding Italian road and highway architecture from the 1940s to the present day, presenting the episodes truly at the cutting edge, but also revealing the wealth and array of approaches to the topic. On the one hand, Agip’s small-scale nature and modernity, on the other, the architecture of striking objects, the typological invention of the Autogrill bridge-like buildings, the uniqueness of the solutions designed by the most prominent names in Italian architecture, radical reappraisals of the theme of the standard building. Together with material from some of the major Italian archives, both public and private, for the first time ever a selection of drawings from the eni Historic Archive are being showcased here, a heritage that in its uniqueness and unity bears witness to the evolution in the planning, industrialization and construction of the oil distribution network in Italy. The exhibition tells four stories the invention of a typology: 1. autogrill between architecture and landscape
M. Baccioccchi
Progetto per un chiosco piccolo con pensilina, 1959 (Archivio storico eni)
2. motels new district models
Mario Ridolfi
Progetto per Motel Agip a Settebagni, Roma, 1968/1969 (Accademia di San Luca)
Città residenziale Anic Gela (CL), 1960/1961 (Archivio progetti IUAV)
ENERGY. OIL AND POST-OIL ARCHITECTURE AND GRIDS
22 March - 29 September 2013
FOTOGRAMMI/FRAMES
Curated by Francesca Fabiani
Frames is the section of the exhibition dedicated to an analysis of the present day: a photographic journey across the landscape of Italy today, which provides a reading of the places where energy is produced, supplied, consumed and sold. Three Italian photographers were commissioned to carry out a project whose goal was to investigate the ever-changing and ongoing condition of the places of energy that waver between the Italy of yesterday and tomorrow, and the relationship they forge with the context (both urban and rural) and with the people that cross them. With a view to providing a multifaceted vision of the theme, we chose to identify three very different authors in terms of training, their way of reading reality, and their aesthetic canons, matching the three approaches that were to be developed: a newspaper and magazine reporting approach, thus examining the context analyzed head-on; a documentary approach, whose goal was to discover the territory's physical presence from an architectural viewpoint; and, lastly, a more sociological interpretation, in order to explore the behavioral/existential dynamics of the subjects inhabiting these landscapes. At a time in history when behaviors and desires tend to be standardized, thereby reducing our capacity to form an opinion by obliging us to look, judge and exploit places by way of predetermined patterns, once again photographers and their work will provide us with new critical perspectives. Each of them has expressed a different image of the "landscapes of energy" that define our contemporary life. By the time the exhibition has come to an end the works produced will enrich with new gazes and new themes that substantial "archive of the present" constituted by the Photography Collections of MAXXI Architettura.
Paolo Pellegrin (Rome, 1964) - one of the leading newspaper and magazine reporters on the international scene - has chosen to tell the story of what is usually unseen: the place where energy is produced. Pellegrini's project involved an oil refinery plant near Ravenna, and he divided his series of photographs into two stages: large panoramic external views and a series of images taken inside the megastructure. The panoramic views portray the plant's 270 hectares and how it fits into the territorial context. The rigorous use of black and white and the objectiveness of a style that does not give way to the flattery of facile interpretations, enhance the location's sense of alienation which can be hard to decipher: poised between archaic modernity and a post-atomic decadence reminiscent of Blade Runner, the idea that this scenario could belong to our present time leaves viewers somewhat taken aback. Peculiar geometries that we reassuringly assimilate with something familiar—cathedrals, buildings or skyscrapers—determine the skyline of this enigmatic—and eerily beautiful—city. Even the human figure has disappeared: no one inhabits this space, as if the gigantic organism had gotten the better of it and was self-fueled thanks to mysterious processes. In the series of photographs taken in the bowels of the plant, the register changes, and the gaze focuses on the equipment whose work is crucial to the plant's existence. Pipes, manometers, gas cylinders become flawless still lifes that, after we have given up any hope of understanding how they actually work, can be enjoyed as a pure play of form and light.
Alessandro Cimmino (Naples, 1969), a young interpreter of architectural photography, has elaborated a story in two acts which, by gradually approaching a subject and consequently modifying its scale, offers the viewer a double-edged reading of the "landscape of energy" (J=Joule): on the one hand, energy in the city distributed in the form of electricity, and, on the other, the energy-fuel supplied by filling stations. The triptych featuring an image of Naples by night reduces the city's urban and architectural configuration to a luminous constellation: "a map inside which the shape of space is uniquely given by propulsive force: it is the city that live, moves, consumes." The second half of the photographer's work consists of a series of diptychs depicting gas pumps. The night-time enhances the invasive effect of these urban "totems"—all the same, yet all different—which seem to respond to internal self-referential aesthetic rationales, with no relationship with the architectural syntax that governs the surrounding urban landscape. So familiar and yet, if we look more closely, so obviously enveloped by the context, they loom over the quiet city streets like spaceships descending from space. The ambiguous relationship with the backdrop (residential buildings or the highway landscape) produces an alienating effect that undermines the hierarchy of the spatial elements and redefines new environments.
Paola Di Bello (Naples, 1961) has produced a work of a sociological and conceptual nature. The video entitled Framing the Community presents 60 portraits of people passing by a gas pump, based on a research method that sees the "stakeout" as being one of the possible strategies that may be used to identify and record the different micro-stories that unfold like rituals in the city. Unaware of the fact that they were the subject of a work in which the key role was played by the filling station in the background, most of the people involved were willing to have their pictures taken, so that they themselves became the main characters of the scene. The gas pump, which not too long ago represented the most reliable and optimistic image of out country's modernization, is a mere backdrop here, a secondary and not especially appealing presence in the daily life of an urban neighborhood. At first sight the place is more than anything else a non-place, an anonymous space in the anonymous outskirts of the city where nothing ever happens. Based on this premise, Paola Di Bello began to observe the community of citizens that flow through there, discovering the true nature of the place: "In the old outskirts of the city places such as this become endearing, worthwhile, pleasant. It's easy to hang out there, the wide sidewalk allows for communication. And so the place is transformed from global to local, from depersonalized to attractive, from being a non-place, to actually being a native of this place." That's as if to say: luckily, in some cases, places are still connoted by presences and relationships, and not the other way around."
ENERGY. OIL AND POST-OIL ARCHITECTURE AND GRIDS
22 March - 29 September 2013 VISIONI/VISIONS
Curated by Pippo Ciorra
Visions comprises the exhibition-specific installations of seven architects on the theme of the relationship between energy for movement and architectural form. The designers were asked to tell how they imagine the “service station” of the future to be and how distribution and access to energies will impact the landscape and the urban space. Each architect has interpreted the topic with an installation characterized by models, videos, sketches and drawings needed to illustrate his own vision. The architects come from different geographical areas and show how the conception of the future of energy is modified by the various contexts of provenance. Their belonging to a generation that is “naturally sensitive” to environmental and ecological issues makes them inclined to dealing with the environmental emergencies from the point of view of creativity and form, as is the intention of the museum and the exhibition program. Alongside the projects in this section a space has been dedicated to some ongoing research useful for testifying to the growing collaboration between designers and scientists as well as to the interest and the energy with which European institutions are dealing with innovation, analyzing these issues in greater depth. PROJECTS ON DISPLAY
GUILLERMO ACUÑA ARQUITECTOS ASOCIADOS | THE NOE PROJECT SCL
Santiago, Chile Designers: Guillermo Acuña, Alberto Andrioli Collaborators: Hugo Urtubey, Jose Hernandez, Francisco Hernandez Site: Santiago, Chile Year of design: 2013
The extreme polarization between the origin of the energy and its destination is the result of the strategy of an invisibility that organizes it. The loss of energy is a direct result of the inadequate geometry of the urban network. Whatever the type of energy under consideration, its movement involves a loss proportional to the energy displaced. The electrical network and its urban wiring system is a perfect example of how the city and its loss of residual energy could be paradoxically considered as central of production and not just consumption. Extending this line of reasoning to all other forms of energy that move inside the urban territory, envisions a new model of generation, distribution and autotrophic consumption. In this new idea of a productive network, the distance between generation and consumption disappears to enhance the energy exchange as to optimize their ways and the quality of their movements.
LIFETHINGS | ENERGY FARMACY
Seoul, Korea
Designer: Soo-in Yang, LIFETHINGS Year of design: 2013
Food energy is essential to humans. Transportation accounts for 13% of all energy related to the US food system. In South Korea the average distance food is transported from production to consumption is 7,085 tons/km per person. If food were to be produced locally, the energetic consumption could be greatly reduced. We imagine a new social system to dispense energy where individuals are diagnosed on their mobility energy use pattern at an energy clinic and are given a prescription for the right amount to be dispensed at a nearby Energy FARMacy. The Energy FARMacy reshapes the traditional gas station with underground tanks, open ground space and canopy. In their new configuration, the canopy hosts farms for mobility and food energy production, ground space becomes a place for exchange of energy including a market and electric car charge pods, and underground tanks are used as urban aqua farm. Various forms of participation in the Energy FARMacy allow for extra prescriptions or coupons for shared car minutes.
MODUS ARCHITECTS | HIGHWAY! CULTIVATING ENERGY 2050
Brixen, Italy Designers: Sandy Attia – Matteo Scagnol, MODUS architects
Collaborators: Giorgio Cappellato, Paolo Magnabosco, Martina Salmaso, Andreas Trentini Site: A4 Highway Trieste – Turin, A22 Highway Modena – Brenner, Italy Year of design: 2013
Heads up Highway! projects itself into a near future where electricity is the reigning source of energy. While fossil fuels are processed, measured and transported in terms of their volume (mass), electrical energy demands surface area. And while these fossil fuels are invisible within the folds of the earth, the elements needed to produce and transport electrical energy pervade large areas of the environment. The project grapples with the physical ramifications of this paradigmatic shift extending across the Italian highway system, enlivening and exploring its transformative potential. Since its inception, the highway system has remained largely the same and is generally perceived as a “necessary evil” blighting the Italian countryside. With Heads up Highway!, the 6.650km of highway are reactivated to become a new landscape producing and distributing energy; a continuous 160 million square meter surface superimposed on the existing highway system becomes a sinuous electrical park spread across Italy.
NOERO ARCHITECTS | PRODUCTIVE (RE)PUBLIC
Cape Town, South Africa Designers: Jo Noero, Aaron Factor and David Long Collaborators: Melanie van Beuningen, Korine Stegmann, Evandro Schwalbach and Uno Pereira
Site: Hangberg, Hout Bay Harbour, Cape Town, South Africa Year of design: 2013
The current rate of energy consumption in the world is untenable so as is the unfair and unjust free market mechanism of the global economy. As a counterpoint we seek to find ways of liberating the single most renewable and sustainable energy resource in the world namely human energy, imagination and creativity. The model chosen to investigate this idea is the informal sector in Africa in which, despite massive difficulties, people are free to operate in a spirit of untrammelled exchange. The area of investigation is a small fishing village outside Cape Town called Hangberg where the envisioned small-scale productive infrastructures will contribute in creating autonomous, robust and self-sustaining communities. This energy infrastructure opens up ways of addressing new forms of locally produced energy, offering a different way of thinking about a productive public space as well as new ways living in the world which is both liberating and sustaining at both the individual family scale and at the larger community level.
OBR OPEN BUILDING RESEARCH | RIGHT TO ENERGY
Genoa, Italy Designers: Paolo Brescia and Tommaso Principi Design Manager: Andrea Debilio
In a time when it is our duty to investigate alternative non-oil based energy sources, smart grid represents the most sustainable hypothesis in environmental, energetic and economic terms.Right to Energy is a form of energetic democratization in which everyone can transform and exchange energy, which will finally be free and accessible to all. The nodes of the energetic network are the power stations of the future: intermodal and social centers, in which we will be able to exchange energy and data, interacting with one another as in a market, or rather in an energy mall. In the energy malls one can pass
from long-distance “volumetric” vehicles – i.e.: flights, trains, and cars – to short-distance “corporal” equipment– i.e.: the bicycle as corporal device to experience the environment, transforming and accumulating energy to be reused later. Right to Energy investigates the places of energy exchange, from collective to individual, through which revealing the landscape and promote a renewed sense of community.
SOU FUJIMOTO ARCHITECTS | ENERGY FOREST
Tokyo, Japan Designers: Sou Fujimoto Architects Year of design: 2013 Energy Forest is an energy station with forest-like qualities. Just as a tree brings together many different living things, Energy Forest brings together people and creatures. In this place, light, wind, and vegetation mix with the activity of people, vehicles and animals, forming the complexity of the 21st Century energy station. In previous eras, the energy station was a place of communication. At Chand Baori, the 9th Century water-well in India, people seeking water gathered and shared in communication. In the 20th Century, as energy and fuel were rationalized, the energy station was shaped considering speed and convenience. As a result, the energy station lost its function as a communication place, becoming a place of transience, a drive through point. Movement in the Modern era has been a study in functionality and rationality, assuming the basic importance of efficiency: shortest distance / shortest time. Energy Forest embraces a richer form of movement based on the valuation of variable routes / comfortable time.
TERROIR | ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURES
Tasmania, Australia Designers: Gerard Reinmuth, Scott Balmforth, Marianne Brandt Bundgaard, Camille Pincemin, Marie-Louise Holst, Rodrigo Bernabeu Velazquez Collaborators: Adam Jasper Site: Various sites in Australia
Year of design: 2013
“The Australian film Mad Max showed a lawless future in a post-apocalyptic world. It took the genre of the mid-20th Century American road movie, full of hope and hubris, and turned it into a morally ambivalent comic opera of despair. Likewise, we would like to transform the road. Our project envisages an Energetic Architecture that is not a series of disconnected filling stations but an energy network co-extensive with the freeway itself. The road which posed the problem becomes the solution; a continuous organism that provides its own sustenance. The proposed network distributes power obtained from all sustainable sources: wind, solar, geothermal and tidal autonomous powerstations. We propose installations that offer motorists a poetry of site and technology, a poetry of industrial adaptation and invention mothered by desperate necessity. As we doubt the likelihood of international consensus building a sustainable future, these installations are monuments for the post-apocalyptic civilisation that we may not ourselves survive to see.”
RESEARCH
Visions also presents Research strands into the question of Europe’s energy future: the project examines the relationship between the diverse geoclimatic conditions of the European countries and their potential energy sources; an ecological corridor from Berlin to Palermo based on an integrated system of agriculture-transformation-distribution of bio-hydrogen and, lastly, a foray into the world of design which pays “tribute to post-plastic” materials
IaN+ / Freddy Paul Grunert
I ponti dell’energia – Energy Bridges
OMA / AMO
Roadmap 2050
Studio Formafantasma
Botanica Crediti: Studio Formafantasma photo:Luisa Zanzani
5 STUDENTS FOR 5 DAYS con Sou Fujimoto Architects
MAXXI, 11-15 MARCH 2013
The quickest five to respond to MAXXI’s open call arrived from all over Italy: the students who for five days joined the team that built together with the well-known Japanese studio Sou
Fujimoto Architects the great Energy Forest model designed for the exhibition ENERGY. Oil and
post-oil architecture and grids, running at MAXXI from 22 March 2013. From Monday 11 March, it was possible to follow the students Davide, Elena, Lorenzo, Luca
and Massimo at work via the MAXXI online channels, from the main website to the museum’spages on the principal social networks (Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Instagram and You Tube) and those of the partners eni and Autogrill. Day by day were counted their experience through video clips and photo stories that attracted thousands of views, allowing them to come into contact with the museum’s “virtual” public.
Energy Forest is a project imagining a refuelling station of the future that works as a forest. The large model (3.60 x 3.15 metres with a height of 1.82 metres), with its over 3,500 scale figures, 800 sets of furniture and 100 trees will be added to the MAXXI Architettura collections. Curated by MAXXI Architettura Coordination Elena Motisi Social Media project Prisca Cupellini Link utili:
Autogrill è il primo operatore al mondo nei servizi di ristorazione e retail per chi viaggia. Presente in 38
Paesi con circa 62.800 collaboratori, gestisce più di 5.300 punti vendita in oltre 1.200 location e opera
prevalentemente tramite contratti di concessione all’interno di aeroporti, autostrade e stazioni ferroviarie,
con presenze selettive nelle città, nei centri commerciali, nei poli fieristici e nei siti culturali. Il Gruppo è
attivo in due settori di attività: il Food & Beverage e il Travel Retail & Duty-Free. La ristorazione
costituisce il business storico del Gruppo, che viene sviluppato prevalentemente in Europa e Nord
America. Il Travel Retail è gestito dalla controllata World Duty Free Group e presenta una forte
concentrazione in Europa ma si caratterizza anche per una presenza in Medio Oriente, nelle Americhe e
in Asia. La Società gestisce, direttamente o in licenza, un portafoglio di oltre 350 marchi: un mix calibrato
di brand globali e locali, che consente di rispondere efficacemente alle mutevoli esigenze dei mercati e
dei consumatori, proponendosi a concedenti e clienti come un provider globale di servizi per i
viaggiatori.
Autogrill Group
Autogrill is the world’s leading provider of food & beverage and retail services for travellers. Present in
38 countries with approximately 62,800 employees, it manages more than 5,300 points of sale in over
1,200 locations. It operates mainly through concessions: at airports, along motorways and in railway
stations, with a selective presence on high streets and at shopping centers, trade fairs and cultural
attractions. The Group operates in two business segments: Food & Beverage and Travel Retail & Duty-
Free. Food & Beverage is its historical business and is well developed mainly in Europe and North
America. Travel Retail & Duty-Free is managed by the subsidiary World Duty Free Group and is
concentrated mostly in Europe, however with a significant presence in the Middle East, the Americas and
Asia. Autogrill manages a portfolio of more than 350 brands, directly and under licence: a tailored mix of
global and local brands that allows swift response to the changing needs of the markets and makes the
Group a global service provider to landlords and consumers alike.
Eni partner of the “Energy. Oil and post-oil Architecture and grids”
exhibition at the MAXXI
22 March – 29 September 2013
Thanks to its constant dialogue with the communities in which it operates, Eni is a partner capable of grasping the needs of a community and expectations of its territories, placing firm emphasis on the promotion and dissemination of culture –key factors in the growth and development of society. In this context, Eni supports the exhibition “Energy. Oil and post-oil Architecture and grids”, at the MAXXI - the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, from 22 March to 29 September 2013. The "Energy - oil and post-oil architecture and grids" exhibition explores two different aspects of modernity. On the one hand there is the painstaking task of historical reconstruction, using photographic documentation, graphics and videos of the '"street architecture" that stands out as one of the most successful manifestations of Italian innovation. After the historical reconstruction, the here and now is considered. This aspect explores new guidelines in the design of service stations of the future and the potential offered by new scenarios in the field of energy production and supply. The exhibition thus explores the past, offers visitors glimpses of the future and explains how the production and distribution of energy resources affects the landscape, the perception of urban space and interpersonal relations. The historiographical section of the exhibition has been constructed with the help of the Eni Historical Archive, with material drawn from its rich historical and cultural heritage: plans, drawings, images, film clips describing the design, planning and uniqueness of the service stations and other examples of corporate architecture. By supporting culturally significant initiatives like this, Eni intends to highlight its own identity as a large-scale energy enterprise - one of the biggest in the world - by promoting cultural initiatives in harmony with the needs of the areas in which it operates. This is an activity deeply rooted in dialogue and sharing.
Company contacts:
Press Office:Tel. +39.0252031875 – +39.0659822030
Web site: www.eni.com
http://cultura.eni.com
iGuzzini illuminazione | Company profile
“architecture is pure volumes in light_ Le Corbusier” iGuzzini illuminazione was established in 1959 under the name Harvey Creazioni. The initial production of enamelled copper objects was supplemented by decorative luminaires. Today, fifty years after its establishment, it is a leading company in the production of high-end indoor and outdoor architectural luminaires for international markets. Its headquarters are based in Italy (Recanati) over an area of 150,000 sqm, including offices, production departments and logistic area. It has 16 European and non-European subsidiary companies as well as exclusive distributors all over the world. Its consolidated turnover in 2011 is approximately €186,000,000 and it has 1,177 employees. It is led by Adolfo Guzzini, President and Antonio Santi, CEO, and is part of the Fimag family-run holding company together with Teuco Guzzini (sanitary units, bathroom furniture) and F.lli Guzzini (design household accessories). These three companies make up the Guzzini Group, one of the most significant examples of the Italian entrepreneurial history, characterised by constant dynamism, and innovation at 360°: from services to clients and marketing tools, from communication to distribution networks. Its activity is characterised by the designing of an efficient use of the light: this translates not only into the production of innovative high-performance luminaires designed by major international architects and designers but also in its ability to combine them into lighting systems suitable for and able to blend into the most diverse architectures. Since iGuzzini is well aware that better light quality improves the quality of life indoors and outdoors, it has been committed to spreading an actual culture of light for over thirty years now. This work was started in 1977 and has witnessed contributions from expert lighting designers and light-makers such as Luigi Manzoni, Van Malotki, Louis Claire, Piero Castiglioni, Tino Kwan; and it has translated into keen training initiatives for designers, architects and all the people interested in technical lighting. Proper lighting saves electric energy, makes our towns safer, adds value to buildings and shop fronts and - last but not least - curbs light pollution. The different application fields include urban lighting, museums, offices, commercial areas and hotels. iGuzzini luminaires are lighting some of the most prestigious settings in the world: the Borghese Gallery Museum, Palace of Exhibitions and Aurelius’ Domus in Rome, the Beaubourg in Paris, Luxor Temple in Egypt, the Hermitage Museum and Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg, Richard Rogers’ National Assembly of Wales, the new International Airport Complex in Carrasco, the Linked Hybrid complex in Beijing, the Rolex Tower in Dubai, the innovative Sanofi Aventis headquarters in Massy,Francia, and Ron Arad’s Holon Museum in Israel. Over the year iGuzzini has constantly invested in research as well as technological and production innovation with partners including Harvard University, M.I.T (Boston), La Sapienza (Rome), Milan Polytechnic, CNR (National Research Council), Central Institute for Restoration, and Lighting Research Center (Troy, NY). The great attention it pays to design has led to collaborations with some of the most renowned architects and designers in the world such as Giò Ponti, Rodolfo Bonetto and Bruno Gecchelin, followed by Renzo Piano, Gae Aulenti, Piero Castiglioni and then Norman Foster, Daniel Libeskind, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Mario Cucinella, Massimiliano Fuksas and Ron Arad, the designers of some of iGuzzini’s most significant luminaires. The company has received a number of awards, from Compasso d’Oro in 1989 for the Shuttle luminaire designed by Bruno Gecchelin and the one awarded in 1991 to the Guzzini Group “for having developed over time a very coherent designing and manufacturing philosophy where the culture of design has represented a common denominator and an element of distinction”, to the 1998 Compasso d’Oro for the Nuvola product designed by the Piano Design Workshop. In 1998 iGuzzini was awarded the Guggenheim Prize for its constant commitment to culture and in 2001 the Leonardo Prize for quality. Contacts
iGuzzini illuminazione spa
62019 Recanati, Italy Via Mariano Guzzini, 3 phone (+39) 071.75881 fax (+39) 071.7588295 video (+39) 071.7588453 >> [email protected];
Alam per comunicare, Milano Phone +39 02 3491206 Fax +39 02 3490928 >>[email protected]
ARCUS: INTERVENING IN SUPPORT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE
In the month of February 2004, the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities was responsible for the constitution of Arcus SpA, a limited company devoted to supporting art, culture and the performing arts, in accordance with Law No. 291 of 16 October 2003. 291. The company capital is wholly underwritten by the Ministry of the Economy, while the company’s day-to-day activities are based on the programmes established by annual decrees adopted by the Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities – who also exercises the shareholder rights – together with the Minister for Infrastructures. Arcus may also develop independent projects.
Arcus’s declared aim is that of providing innovative support for significant and ambitious projects within the world of cultural heritage and activities and its possible interrelations with the country’s strategic infrastructures.Within the ambit of Arcus’s mission, supporting projects entails identifying important initiatives, contributing to the completion of planning, intervening in organizational and technical aspects, participating – where appropriate or necessary – in the financing of the project, monitoring its development and contributing to its successful outcomeIt is important that Arcus’s modus operandi is clearly understood, as explained above: the company intervenes to provide organizational and financial support for significant projects, but in no way is it comparable to an agency for the distribution of funding, nor may it be numbered among the “scattershot” distributors of public or private funds.Arcus is, therefore, an original instrument for the support and launching of significant and innovative projects within the panorama of Italian culture. Economic support, where provided, must be seen as wholly instrumental within the ambit of a cultural project that is conceptually valid and operationally shared.
In more detail, Arcus provides assistance for initiatives relating, for example:
To achieve its aims Arcus draws on resources detailed in article 60 of Law 289 of 27 December 2002 (Financial Law 2003). The legislation provides for 3% of the funding for infrastructures being devoted to expenses relating to interventions safeguarding and in favour of cultural heritage and activities. Arcus is identified asthe recipient structure for these funds. Furthermore, in accordance with article 3 of Law No. 43 of 31 March 2005, the above-mentioned percentage is increased annually by afurther 2%. Moreover, the company may receive finances provided by the European Union, the stateand other public and private bodies.
Arcus also works to bring potential stakeholders into contact with the various projects.When necessary, therefore, the company contacts foundations with banking origins or otherwise,local authorities, exponents of local bodies and civic society, the universities and private individuals in order to aggregate around the initiatives increasing resources and coordinated financing.
Arcus’s ambitious project is therefore that of becoming the “glue” that renders operative the systemic capacity for the promotion and planned support of initiatives designed to enhance the cultural heritage and activities, with a view to ever better conservation, fruition and valorization. By taking appropriate measures, Arcus favours the necessary convergence of the various stakeholders, thus contributing to the success of the various cultural projects identified.
to the establishment of projects for the restoration, redevelopment and improved fruition of the cultural heritage;
to the preservation of the landscape and cultural heritage through actions and interventions also designed to mitigate the impact of existing or forthcoming infrastructures;
to support the programming, monitoring and evaluation of interventions in the cultural heritage sector;
to promote planning within the cultural heritage and activities sector and that of the performing arts;
to identify and support projects valorizing and protecting cultural heritage through interventions with significant technological contents;
to support projects relating to cultural tourismin thebroadest sense of the term;
to promote the birth and constitution of cultural catchment areas in relation to emblematic examples of cultural heritage within the ambit of an integrated and systemic vision capable of linking local cultural heritage, infrastructure, tourism, allied industries and transport;
to intervene in the broad-based sector comprising initiatives designed to render the cultural heritage fully accessibleto the differently able.
Alcantara® is a registered trademark of Alcantara S.p.A.
Alcantara S.p.A. – Via Mecenate 86, 20138 Milan Italy – Tel. +39 02 58030.1 - Fax. +39 02 5063886
Alcantara and MAXXI: Artistic Excellence and Creativity A timeless material, unique of its kind and with vast expressive potential, Alcantara partners with art and architecture to open itself up to new interpretive languages. After the success of the initiative CAN YOU IMAGINE? Progetto Alcantara® - MAXXI, an experimental research that became an exhibition open to the public from October 7 to November 13, 2011, the partnership between the Italian company that has been producing the homonymous trademark material for nearly forty years and the national Museum of 21st century arts goes on. If the first phase of the multi-year project involved 11 top international designers who were asked to interpret the qualities of Alcantara in as many installations, the second step requires that the same qualities of the material are highlighted according to a specific topic by international designers under 35, chosen through a contest by invitation that on May 15, 2012 announced the 8 finalists. Sebastian Herkner (Germany), Lanzavecchia + Way (Italy & Singapore), Mischer’ Traxler (Austria), Society of Architecture (Korea), Matteo Zerzenoni (Italy), Vittorio Venezia (Italy), Paradisi Artificiali (Italy), Mana Bernardes (Brazil): these the eight finalists. The projects will be exposed next November 2012 in the exhibition Shape Your Life! Progetto Alcantara – MAXXI, curated by Giulio Cappellini Art Director of Alcantara and Domitilla Dardi MAXXI Architecture Design Curator. Considering the increasingly nomadic and dynamic concept of living, that sees us spend more time out of the house than in the house, the challenge of the exhibition is precisely to interpret the new scenarios of (con) temporary lifestyles, that “outside” where we now spend most of the time. The task of the young designers is therefore to create “equipped habitats”: objects and environment covered in Alcantara where people can “feel at home when they are out of the house”. SHAPE YOUR LIFE! Progetto Alcantara® - MAXXI confirms the lively partnership between the interdisciplinary MAXXI museum and a company that firmly believes in research and in constant dialogue with creativity. Alcantara was founded in 1972. The company’s managing headquarters is in Milan while the manufacturing plant and the research centre are located in Nera Montoro, in Italy’s Umbria region. Alcantara is a unique and innovative upholstery material, the result of a unique and proprietary technology that is the choice of companies which are leaders in their various fields of application. It offers an extraordinary combination of sensorial experiences, aesthetics and functionality associated with an ethical and social awareness that define an extremely exclusive contemporary lifestyle: it is the lifestyle of those who want to completely enjoy the products they use every day, in full respect of the environment. Alcantara is a registered trademark of Alcantara S.p.A. Alcantara has attained “Carbon Neutral” certification: in order to do so, it recorded a 49% reduction of
carbon dioxide emissions in one year derived from the material’s entire manufacturing process and the
balance was compensated for by financing international projects related to renewable energy. Furthermore,
as of 2009, the Company Sustainability Report documenting the process carried out by Alcantara in
regards to this theme has been made publicly available.
The Game of Lotto in support of art and culture in Italy
Il Gioco del Lotto (Lotto game) has a centuries-old tradition. During the course of history, in fact, it has gone from clandestinity to being celebrated, opposed but then legalized because it brought in revenue destined, in part, to works of piety and public good. The first reliable news about Il Gioco del Lotto dates back to 1620 in Genoa. Later on in the second half of the XVII century, the "Lotto della Zitella/Lotto of the Old Maid" became popular. This version of the game also became famous throughout Europe. In the State of the Church, Il Gioco del Lotto enjoyed alternating fortune. On 9 December 1731, in the framework of the interventions to support public financing, it was definitively institutionalized. The first drawing held on 14 February 1732 in the square of the Campidoglio was a huge success. This newfound availability of money allowed Pope Clemente XII to promote urban renewal in Rome, with the construction among other things of Trevi Fountain, the façade of St. John in Lateran, the Palazzo della Consulta al Quirinale and the façade of St. John of the Florentines. The importance of the proceeds from Il Gioco del Lotto for culturally important works was no less important in the following decades, rather it would be consolidated with the extraordinary museum project promoted by the popes in Rome: the establishment of the Vatican Museums in 1771. There were many other cities that benefited from the revenue from Lotto such as the port of Ancona, the remodeling of the bridge of Tiberius in Rimini and the rebuilding of the aqueduct in Perugia. Subsequently, the historical ties between Il Gioco del Lotto and cultural heritage were definitively consolidated in 1996 with the introduction of the second weekly drawing on Wednesday. A part of the proceeds from the game was destined, on the basis of a three-year program, to the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activity for the recovery and conservation of our artistic, cultural and landscape heritage (law no.662/96). For several years, Il Gioco del Lotto has been involved in projects and activities in support of initiatives characterized by educational and social values. For this reason, Il Gioco del Lotto has linked its name to the most important cultural institutions with the desire to contribute and enrich the community with quality initiatives. It was within the context of increasingly greater focus on activities aimed at enhancing the territory that Il Gioco del Lotto in the past participated in the recovery of places with significant social impact in the city of Rome. Today it has chosen to work alongside important institutions such as the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Scuderie del Quirinale, Vittoriano, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini and since its inauguration, MAXXI. All these are only a few of the most significant examples of how Il Gioco del Lotto actively contributes to the growth of Italian cultural life. For years, it has been committed to enhancing our artistic heritage with promotional and communication initiatives aimed at bringing all citizens closer to their culture.
Lottomatica is the largest lottery operator in the world in terms of receipts and it is the leader in the gaming sector in Italy. In its capacity as the exclusive concessionaire of the State, since 1993, the Company administers the main lottery in the world, "Lotto", and since 2004, the Instant and Deferred lotteries. Lottomatica is successfully continuing its growth strategy through the diversification of its game portfolio (Sports games, entertainment equipment, Videolotteries, pari-mutuel betting), supplying all the relative technical services. Taking advantage of its distribution network and significant processing expertise, Lottomatica also offers automated payment services. The Company, of which the De Agostini Group is the majority shareholder, distributes games and services through the most extensive real-time online network in Europe.
