Italian Architecture

The Colosseum will undergo a renovation with a new, retractable floor platform. In ancient Rome, thousands gathered to watch enslaved gladiators, criminals, and wild animals fight to the death. These fighters and caged animals would emerge from the ground through secret tunnels beneath the arena’s wooden and sand-covered floor. Colosseum director Alfonsina Russo told the Times that the plan is to host concerts and theater productions on the new floor.

For this end of the year special roundup, ArchDaily has compiled a selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture, submitted by established and well-known firms. Including conceptual, in progress and, even in some cases, under-construction projects, this curated list covers a wide spectrum of programs and approaches.

CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and a team led by Australian real estate group Lendlease have imagined the new science campus of the University of Milan. The proposed project, a winning entry from the international competition will extend over 190,000 square meters and is due to open in 2025.

Stefano Boeri, together with a team of consultants, has created the architectural and communicative concept behind the anti-Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Under the slogan "With a flower, Italy comes back to life", the approved proposal, requested by the Italian Special Commissioner for the Covid-19 emergency Domenico Arcuri, includes the campaign logo, the temporary pavilions, and mobile information totem in public spaces.

Stefano Boeri Interiors has unveiled images of his latest circular wooden installation, in an open-air setting of contemporary art. Entitled TREE-ROOM, the project in which “humans and living nature come together, between meditation and contemplation”, is designed for Arte Sella and is located in the garden of Villa Strobele in Val di Sella, in Northern Italy.

The second edition of EDIT Napoli, dedicated to independent designers, ran from 16 to 18 October 2020, in Naples, Italy. The first onsite fair of the country during this pandemic era was created by curators Domitilla Dardi, design curator of the MAXXI museum in Rome, Architecture sector, and Emilia Petruccelli, buyer and entrepreneur, in collaboration with the Assessorato alla Cultura e al Turismo del Comune di Napoli.

Factum Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the use of digital technology for cultural heritage conservation, in collaboration with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Iconem have recorded the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice, Italy, in its entirety. For more than 10 days, the team using photogrammetry and LiDAR technologies scanned the 10-hectare island. The project entitled ARCHiVe, linked with EPFL's Venice Time Machine aims to “efficiently and effectively aid in the preservation of Venice's fragile cultural heritage”.

In the second part of his interview with Archdaily, Hashim Sarkis reflects on the future of architecture as he tackles the timeless question of the 2021 Venice Biennale. The curator of the Biennale, which proposes the question of “How Will We Live Together?”, discusses the role of the profession in the midst of all these new paradigms, stating that “Architects do change the world […] by creating […] wish images for what the world could be”.

Etherea, the installation conceived by Edoardo Tresoldi for the Coachella festival in 2018, has landed in Rome for "Back to Nature”, an exhibition project curated by Costantino d’Orazio. The large transparent mesh sculpture will dialogue with the trees of the Parco dei Daini, in Villa Borghese, until December 13, 2020.

Scheduled originally from August to November 2020, the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale was postponed, like every other event this year, and will be held from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021, due to the pandemic. Questioning “How will we live together?” the original statement of curator Hashim Sarkis, called upon architects “to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together”. Relevant today more than ever, with the current worldwide circumstances, the theme of the Biennale is in fact the focus of interest of the global scene.