WIRED for "Venice Biennale of Architecture"

BY CHIARA ALPAGO-NOVELLO. ILLUSTRATIONS BY BORJA BONAQUE, INFOGRAPHS BY LAMOSCA, PHOTO-PORTRAITS BY ANDREW ZBIHLYJ

It’s written I TAL IA it’s read AILAT I .A mirror on a future that’s possible. In the Wired Hall at Venice’s Architecture Biennale. How will our life be? What will be feed

on? Which medicines shall we inhale? Where will we live? Find out the answers at a day in the life of Italy....in 2050

14 V IS IONAR IES, 14 ARCHITECTS, 1 SHARED FUTURE

P R E S E N T S

32 BIENNALE UK.indd 232 BIENNALE UK.indd 2 6-08-2010 16:47:256-08-2010 16:47:25

Sometimes you write a book that’s like a duel: when the shooting is over, you see who’s left standing, and if it’s not you, you’ve lost. When I wrote “The Barba-rians,” twenty years ago, I looked around and they were all still there, on their feet. It had the look of a defeat, but I wasn’t convinced. So I sat down and waited. The idea was to watch them fall one by one, belatedly but defi nitely dead. It would just take pa-tience. Sometimes they’d die very elegantly. Some crumpled suddenly to the ground. I wouldn’t take it as a victory; it’s likely that they went down on their own, not thanks to my bullets: but certainly my aim wasn’t bad, I feel I can say, in partial consolation.

The last to fall, after tottering for a long time, very slow-ly and with great dignity, fi lled me with emotion, because I knew him well. I believe that in the past I even worked for him (my pistols loaded with words, as always), or her: profundity. The concept of profundity, the practice of profundity, the passion for profundity. Maybe some-one remembers them—they were animals, still fi t, at the

time of “The Barbarians.” They were nourished by the stubborn conviction that the meaning of things was situat-ed in a secret cell, safe from the easiest judgments, preserved in the freezer of a remote obscurity, accessible only to patience, hard work, determined inves-tigation. Things were trees—you had to plumb their roots. You went back in time, you excavated signifi cance, let the evidence settle. Even in the case of feel-ings you aspired to the profound; you wanted beauty itself to be profound—in books, gestures, traumas, memories, and at times even looks. It was a jour-ney, and its goal was called profundity. The reward was meaning, which was also called ultimate meaning, and it granted us the sonority of a phrase to which, years ago, I think I sacrifi ced a sea of time and light: the ultimate and profound meaning of things.I don’t know when, exactly, but at a certain point this way of seeing things began to seem unsuitable. Not false: unsuitable. The fact is that the mean-ing conveyed by profundity too often turned out to be useless, and some-times even damaging. Thus, in a sort

of timid prelude, we came to question whether there real-ly existed an “ultimate and profound meaning of things.” Provisionally, we took up softer defi nitions that seemed to mirror the reality of the facts better. For example, an idea of meaning as a becoming that could never be fi xed in a defi nition seemed to us a good compromise. But today I be-lieve one can say that we simply weren’t bold enough, and that the mistake wasn’t so much to believe in an ultimate meaning as to confi ne it to profundity. What we sought ex-isted, but it wasn’t where we thought.It wasn’t there for a disconcerting reason that the change that occurred in the past thirty years threw in our faces, issuing one of its most fascinating and painful verdicts: profundity doesn’t exist, it’s an optical illusion. It was the childish translation into spatial and moral terms of a legitimate desire: to place our most precious posses-sion (meaning) in a stable place, safe from contingencies, accessible only to privileged gazes, attainable only by a privileged path. That’s how treasures originate. But in hiding it we had created an El Dorado of the spirit—pro-fundity—which in reality seems never to have existed, and

Believe it or not, I wrote this article in July, 2026, that is, sixteen years from now. Let’s say I’ve made some progress. Take it that way.Here’s the article.

which in the long term will be recalled as one of the useful lies that human beings tell each other. Rather shocking, no way around it.In fact, one of the traumas infl icted by the change is, pre-cisely, that we fi nd ourselves living in a world that lacks a dimension we were used to, that of profundity. I remem-ber that in the early days the sharpest minds interpreted this curious condition as a symptom of decadence: they noted, not wrongly, the sudden disappearance of a good half of the world they knew—above all, that which tru-ly counted, which contained the treasure. Here was the origin of the instinctive tendency to interpret events in apocalyptic terms: the invasion of a barbarian horde that, not having available the concept of profundity, was rear-ranging the world in the only dimension it was capable of, superfi ciality. And the result was a disastrous loss of meaning, of beauty, of signifi cance—of life. It wasn’t a stu-pid way of reading things, but we know now with some precision that it was short-sighted: it took the elimination of profundity for the elimination of meaning. In reality what was happening, amid infi nite diffi culties and uncer-tainties, was that, with profundity eliminated, meaning was shifting, coming to inhabit the surface of facts and things. It wasn’t disappearing, it was moving. The rein-vention of the surface as a place of meaning is one of the tasks we have completed: a job of spiritual craftsmanship that will pass into history.On paper, the risks were enormous, but it should be re-called that the surface is the place of stupidity only for those who believe in profundity as the place of mean-ing. Once the barbarians (that is, us) unmasked this belief, the automatic association of surface with lack of meaning became a mechanical refl ex betraying a certain soft-headedness. Where many saw a simple surrender to superfi ciality, many others sensed a diff erent scenario: the treasure of meaning, which had been confi ned to a se-cret, private crypt, was now distributed over the surface of the world, where the possibility of reconstructing it no longer corresponded to an ascetic descent into the under-ground, controlled by an élite priesthood, but depended on a collective skill in recording and assembling tiles of the real. It doesn’t sound so bad. Above all, it seems more suitable to our abilities and our desires. For people who are incapable of staying still and concentrating but are, on the other hand, very quick to move and to collect frag-ments, the open fi eld of the surface seems the ideal place to play the game of life: why should we play, and lose, in those underground burrows that they insist on teaching us about in school?So we don’t seem to have given up on a noble, lofty mean-ing in things: but we have begun to pursue it using a

diff erent technique, that is, by moving over the surface of the world with a speed and a talent that human be-ings have never known. We have begun to create fi gures of meaning by arranging points of the real in constella-tions through which we pass with unheard-of agility and lightness. The image of the world that the media refl ect, the geography of ideals that politics off ers, the idea of knowledge that the digital world puts at our disposal have no hint of profundity: they are collections of subtle, even fragile, facts that we organize into shapes that have a cer-tain power. We use them to understand the world. We lose the capacity for concentration, we can’t do one thing at a time, we always choose speed at the expense of close attention: the meeting of these defects generates a tech-nique for perception of the real that systematically looks for the simultaneity and superposition of stimuli: it’s what we call having experience. In the case of books, of mu-sic, of what we call beautiful when we look at or listen to it, we are increasingly aware of the ability to articu-late the emotion of the world simply by illuminating it, without bringing it into the light: it’s the aesthetic that we want to cultivate, the aesthetic on account of which any boundary between high art and low art is disappear-ing: for there is no longer a low and a high, but only light and darkness, sight and blindness. We travel swiftly and seldom stop, we listen to fragments and never the whole, we write on telephones, we don’t marry forever, we watch movies without going to the cinema, we listen to readings on the Internet instead of reading books, we stand in slow lines for fast food, and all this activity without roots and without weight still produces a life that must seem to us extremely sane and beautiful if, unlike anyone before us al

essa

ndr

o b

aric

co T

he n

ewco

mer

of W

ired

Sept

embe

r iss

ue is

a T

urin

, 52

year

old

gra

duat

e in

philo

soph

y, fo

unde

r of t

he

scho

ol H

olde

n, a

fi lm

dire

ctor

, mus

ic cr

itic .

.. By t

he w

ay, h

e is o

ne o

f the

mos

t im

port

ant I

talia

n w

riter

s. Ha

ve w

e alre

ady s

aid

it?

0 0 2

T H E B A R B A R I A N SB Y Alessandro Baricco

S P E C I A L I S S U E V E N I C E B I E N N I A L

FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

32 BIENNALE UK.indd 3-432 BIENNALE UK.indd 3-4 6-08-2010 16:49:056-08-2010 16:49:05

I had only just met the man, he had introduced him-self saying he was to curate the Italia Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale. He went on to say that he wanted to tell of a diff erent sort of Italy, an Italy with no fears for the future, because he tries to build a better future every day. He also said he wanted to do it with us. With Wired. I remem-ber him saying “why shouldn’t we be afraid?” which struck me and left me nonplussed for a moment or two. He wasn’t really expecting me to answer his question about why we shouldn’t be afraid of the future, right there and then was he, or was that why he was waiting there? Or could the real reason he was actually there be because Wired attempts to provide the answer to that particular question on a monthly basis through the stories we tell? I went for the second option. And said Yes.

There are stories than never end. They go round in huge circles and then turn back on themselves. The sto-ry of the Barbarians, for example. The new Barbarians. The Internet generation. In 2006, Alessandro Baricco started to write about them, in a series for La Repubblica, an amazing uncharted journey that found its own way, page after page, taking in wine, football and musical prodigies as it went. He even talked about people who «breathe in the world through Google’s lungs». This phrase made a deeper impression on

me than any other: “breathing in the world through Google’s lungs”, so-mething that many people must have really thought barbaric. I didn’t under-stand it very well at the time.

That journey was turned into a bo-ok: three years later I bought it at an airport and read it at a single sitting. That time it seemed prophetic, or vi-sionary. It was as if Baricco had been the fi rst to clearly envision the fact that a new world was about to sweep away the old, the past that was clinging on by its fi ngertips. Gone, vanished. Albeit slowly, but inexorably, you only needed to look around you to witness the revo-lution. It was all clear, all but the end: the book ends with the Barbarians at the gates to the Great Wall, there has always been a Great Wall in the hi-story of man, but what happens once they fi nally get to the other side? It was obvious, though, in the end the Barba-rians win and get through, that’s what always happens with new cultures.

And now to the Biennale. The challenge to tell of a diff erent Italy. Lu-

ca Molinari must be slightly afraid of the present, I thought, if he has decided to move our future on so far ahead, into 2050, into a realm in which prediction and science fi ction meld. Visions were needed. Who should be entrusted to co-me up with them? We made an informed choice: people aged around 40. Largely because they belong to the Internet ge-neration and the culture of the Net is ingrained in them. And also because they do not simply imagine the future, they are building it: here and now. We chose fourteen exceptional yet absolutely normal Italians. Many of them you will pro-bably meet for the fi rst time right here: you won’t regret it. I lined them up in my mind and said to myself: right, here they are. The Barbarians.

«Alessando will you tell me how the story en-ds?». «What story?». «The story about the Barbarians, in your book, go on – what happens to the Barbarians once they fi nally take over the city?». Or Italy. A good question. You will have to imagine a world steered by the culture of the Web, but not dominated by computers, quite the reverse. It will be a world in which knowledge, collaboration, commu-nication and participation are shared. This is the culture of the Web. The Barbarians’ values. A good reply.

I let myself imagine this world for a second, and then said to myself: «That’s why we shouldn’t be afraid.» �

«Why shouldn’t we be afraid?». Luca Molinari was sitting in front of me, in the editorial offices of Wired.

O U R B A R B A R I A N SB Y Riccardo Luna

in the history of the human race, we are so urgently and so passionately preoccupied with saving the planet, culti-vating peace, preserving monuments, retaining memory, prolonging life, protecting the weak, and defending lardo di Colonnata. In times that we like to imagine as civilized, they burned libraries and witches, they used the Parthe-non as a warehouse for explosives, they crushed lives like fl ies in the folly of war, and swept away entire peoples to make a little space for themselves. Often they were per-sons who worshipped profundity.

The surface is all, and on it is written the meaning. Rather: on it we are capable of tracing a meaning. And since we have developed this ability, it’s almost embar-rassing when we suff er the inevitable jolts of the myth of profundity: beyond every reasonable measure we endure ideologies, fundamentalisms, art that’s too lofty and seri-ous, any shameless pronouncement of certainty. Probably we’re wrong, but in our minds these things are welded to profundity by indisputable reasons and priesthoods, and though we now know them to be based on nothing, we are still off ended—perhaps frightened. Thus every simulation of profundity today sounds like kitsch, and, all in all, any concession to nostalgia subtly cheap. Profundity seems to have become discarded goods for old people, the least wise, the poorest.Twenty years ago I would have been afraid to write sen-tences like this. It was perfectly clear to me that we were playing with fi re. I knew that the risks were enormous and that in such a change we were betting an immense patrimony. I wrote “The Barbarians,” but meanwhile I knew that the unmasking of profundity could lead to the rule of the insignifi cant. And I knew that the reinvention of superfi ciality often has the undesired eff ect of legit-imatizing, through misunderstanding, pure stupidity, or the ridiculous simulation of a profound thought. But in the end what happened was the fruit of our choices, of the talent and speed of our intelligence. The change produced behaviors, crystallized watchwords, redistrib-uted privileges: now I know that in all that the promise of meaning survived—the promise that, in its way, the myth of profundity handed down. Surely those who were quickest to understand and manage the change include many who aren’t aware of that promise, and aren’t ca-pable of imagining it or interested in handing it down. From them we are receiving a brilliant world with no fu-ture. But, as always happens, the culture of the promise was also stubborn and talented, and capable of extorting from the indiff erence of the many hope, trust, ambition. I don’t believe it’s foolish optimism to record the fact that today, in 2026, such a culture exists, seems more than N U M E R O S P E C I A L E

B I ENNA L E D

I VE N E Z I A

FUTUROIT

ALIA

2050

solid, and often guards the command post of the change. From these barbarians we are receiving a layout of the world suitable for the eyes we have, a mental design ap-propriate for our brains, and a plot of hope equal to our hearts, so to speak. They move in fl ocks, guided by a revo-lutionary instinct for collective and impersonal creations, and so they remind me of the nameless multitude of me-dieval scribes: in their strange way, they are copying the grand library in the language that is ours. It’s a delicate job, and bound to accumulate mistakes. But it’s the only way we know to bequeath to our heirs, to those who will come, not only the past but also a future. �

Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

0 0 4E NV I R

ONMEN T

I NT E RN E T

H E A LTH

FOODSO C I E

T Y

R E S E AR CH


FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50


INTERACTION DESIGNER

WIRELESSDEVICE

SERVER

By 2050 I imagine the “Internet of Objects” will have become a reality. A wider and deeper internet than Web 2.0, on a planetary scale, capa-ble of taking on GAIA, the Earth, and enabling both humans and their “machines” to become part of social networks. This third Internet wave

will NOT simply relate to the Future, it is in fact rooted in the past: it had already made its entrance into people’s homes by 2010, speeding up the systematic reinvention of objects. Rethinking everyday objects, much as was the case with the advent of plastic, and reshaping them to fi t the future we hope to live: it is this opportunity that Italy – more than so many other systems and countries

– is cut out to grasp. A strategic opportunity, not just to avoid disappearing altogether, but also to pave the way for a new Renaissance, of which we ourselves will be the protagonists. Objects in daily use serve as our archaeological history and our mirror. So why and how should we reinvent them now? Every object should tell its own story. The story of its past (what it is made of, where it was produced, how it is used) and its future (how to diff erentiate it, how to take it apart, how to recycle it). It should be actively self-aware (being sentient or at least having some idea of the time and place for its own use), be connected and social, in other words it should belong to us humans, “living” as part of our digital and social network. Tech-nology remains a fundamental pillar of this third Internet wave, and it will take multidis-

ciplinary teams working together to cre-ate sensible products. ¶This has been the case for years in design schools. It is now time to take these approaches into com-panies and use them to power the country. Design should become just as important as craftsmanship, which is what has set our top designer brands apart thus far. The artisan sector and software engi-neering need to work hand in hand. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that over the next 40 years Made In Italy will encompass a technological dimen-sion, evolving from style to interaction. Thus, tomorrow, a social object could be associated with Italy not merely for the sake of its appearance but particularly for its level of “sociality”. In a nation of inventors (as well as engineers, inter-action designers, and creators of every sort and kind) time is always on the side of the future.

Made in Italy will be recognized not for its beauty and finish but for its capacity in getting connected and #social

The US President has said that man will land on Mars within 30 years, adding: «I expect to be around to see it». The crux of his prediction, which we can affi rm with certainty today, was not Mars, but the optimism in the words “I expect to be around”. Almost 50 years after Kennedy’s speech announcing the moon landing, a man doing the same job has made a similar announcement, but with a corollary that is more important than the announcement itself. A corollary that has less to do with Barack Obama and more to do with us all. The point is that the real certainty does not lie in man being on Mars, but in our likelihood of witnessing it. We have a lengthy history behind us and we have come realise that is impossible to imagine the future, what technological equipment we will have, how we will live: however, what we can say with some certainty in 2010 is that witnessing change will be as important as the change itself, and that this is the only thing that will not change: therefore, as President Obama

says, we will be around to witness future events, to celebrate discoveries, to mull over our disasters together. Like the mythical men chained in Plato’s cave, like us today, people in 2050 will look at each other, will size up the outside world, sometimes they will venture outside; they will have partial, distorted visions that diverge from other people’s, about themselves or their (as yet unimaginable) technologies; they will lose touch with the outside world, and may even lose all perception of what outside means. As they look, they will wonder whether they can believe what they are seeing or trust the medium through which they are seeing it, and they will even be unsure of the evidence that they are presented or regaled with; we can only hope that, as they move forward, they will come to understand a little more about themselves and about the importance of actually looking.

# Testimonny of changee will bbe aas

y

importaant as channgggeeeeeeee g

itself – tthe sole issuuuuueeeeeee pp g

that willl survive changee

IN 2050, ELECTRICITY FROM WASTE AND RENEWABLE SOURCES WILL SUPPLY AS MUCH AS 50% OF PRIMARY ENERGY DEMAND IN 2020, IN ALL OECD MEMBER STATES, RECYCLING OF SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL AND PACKAGING WILL BE COMPULSORY BY LAW (SOURCE: VISION 2050)

GIVE THINGS A SOUL

B Y Leandro Agrò

I’LL BE THERE TO TELL THE STORY

B Y Susanna Nicchiarelli

21

DIRECTOR

700S P E C I A L I S S U E

V E N I C E B I E N N I A L

FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

KEYWORD {GEO TAG} WHAT HAPPENS TO THE GARBAGE? LET’S FOLLOW IT STEP BY STEP

SOURCE: MIT SENSEABLE CITY LAB

{b}

{c}

{d}

{e2}

{e1}

The garbage TRANSMITS SIGNALS to an antenna, which calculates its position through a triangulation.

The data are collected by MOBILE PHONE PROVIDERS and sent to the municipal company’s SERVER

The MUNICIPAL COMPANY processes the data and generates real-time viewing that are then sent back to the user who can access them through diff erent applications.

{a}A WIRELESS DEVICE is introduced into the garbage.

INTERNET, VIA A DEDICATED WEBSITE

IN AREAS OPEN TO PUBLIC

THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE AT THE MIT SENSEABLE CITY LAB IN CAMBRIDGE, US. THE PROJECT, WHICH COULD REVOLUTIONIZE THE WASTE DISPOSAL SYSTEM OF OUR CITIES, PROVIDES FOR GARBAGE MAPPING THAT THE USER CAN CONSULT FROM HOME OR DEDICATED AREAS.

DATASTREAM


SCIENTIST

Speaking clothes, walls turned to giant integrated screens tunedto giant, integrated screens tuned

p g ,g ,

to the wooorld: all foor usssssss tttooooooo g , gg , g

####cccooooommmmmuuunniiccaaattteeeeee

PAPER IS 150 MICRON THICK (A HAIR’S BREADTH=100) AND ABLE TO SOAK UP PETROL 20 TIMES ITS WEIGHT

800

ANOTHER EYE AND EAR IN THE WALL

B Y Francesco Stellacci3O

ver the last couple of weeks I have been thinking about how Italy (and the rest of the world) might look in 2050. The fi rst thing I did was to compare the country today (2010) with what it was 40 years

ago (1970). There have been huge changes, albeit to diff er-ent extents according to sector. Transport, for example: planes fl y faster, but not much, cars are more effi cient and diff erently shaped, but not much. Medicine is basically the same. Houses are more integrated, but again not much has changed. In the early 70s we talked about alternative energy, just as we do now. In some sectors, on the other hand, we have moved light years ahead, particularly in regard to communication. Homes did not have comput-ers and mobile phones, the Internet and Facebook were quite simply unimaginable. This means that modernisa-tion progresses by leaps and bounds in some fi elds, while in others it stays still. Cars will be the same, but they will be powered diff erently: not by petrol, but probably by hydrogen or ethanol. There will be great changes in the communications and medical fi elds, where a revolution will fi nally take place. The relationship between man and the environment will also undergo a sea change. Communica-tion I believe that evolution is still only halfway there. We will employ an increasing number of objects with which to speak to each other. Clothes have always been com-munication tools; they reveal what our mood is and who we are. In Italy in 2050, they will do this electronically. They will communicate externally whatever we may wish them to communicate. For example someone may want to go and have a glass of beer with somebody else, or be a Pink Floyd fan or be wondering whether or not to go to the museum. This will all happen without anybody being aware of it, although they will have the ability to know whether someone close by feels the same. The walls of our rooms will be huge screens, a cross between videophones, Skype and Facebook, perfectly integrated with the rest of the world, with which we will thus be kept constantly in touch. Language will be less and less of a barrier: we will have simultaneous clothes interpreters. Everything will serve as a great communication tool, with no distinction between personal and guided communication (televisual or journalistic, for example). Medicine This is where I expect there to be a revolution. We will carry health devices with us at all times. This will change the way we eat and how we relate to our bodies, because we will know ourselves much better. Doctors will ring us and tell us to go to hospital for further checks, or even just to point out that we have not been eating healthily recently. Drugs will be tailored to each individual person. Environment There will be far more green spaces and much more clean energy. Houses will be lit by photovoltaic light, shed from the walls. There will be more bicycles, possibly hybrids, more green scooters and cars will run on hydrogen. Everything will be charged wirelessly, be more open and virtual, and yet real.

S P E C I A L I S S U E

V EN I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

THE MASTERPIECE IN THE ART OF WODKA

co

nsu

ma

Wo

dk

a Exq

uis

ite

res

pon

sabi

lmen

te

Pernod Ricard Italia

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF ARCHITECTURE DRESSED BY FRANK GEHRYCELEBRATES THE OPENING OF PADIGLIONE ITALIA

AT ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2010

WYBOROWA EXQUISITE MEETS YOU IN VENICE!

Stellacci created an ultra hydro repellent nanowire paper able to absorb petroleum. With Carlo Ratti, a colleague at the Boston MIT, he has designed robots coated with this paper that could reclaim Bp type spills.

KEYWORD {NANOWIRES} THE OIL ABSORBERS

BURNERUNFLATABLE RING

A 4000 UNIT FLEET ABSORBES 3 MILIONS BARRELS**some is used to travel, 10% can be recycled

PETROLEUM SPILLS AT SEA

COLLECTION ON SPECIAL SHIPS

FLEET

HYDRO REPELLENT PAPER

RECYCLED PETROLEUM

SELF-FEEDING

DATASTREAM


Ihope that good, traditional cooking, using local, seasonal ingredients, with no environmental footprint, will still be the norm in 2050. I can visualise a retracing of footsteps to the past that will help us move forward in leaps and

bounds: we will start again from scratch, with small shops selling niche products; we will be “sated”, fed up with hyper-markets where everything and the opposite of everything can be found, bored with tins and fro-zen foods. Even today, some of the large compa-nies are putting the emphasis on fresh produce, the “6 day shelf life” philosophy. The old local grocery shops, where half a litre of milk or an ounce of ham can be purchased will make a welcome return. Technology will have a fundamental role to play, because these shops

IN 2050, 70% MORE FOOD WILL BE NEEDED TO FEED 9,1 BILLION PEOPLE (+34%) (SOURCE: FAO)

010

will be cabled and computerised, their products certifi ed and hygien-ically sound. The credit crunch may be forcing some to scrimp on foodstuff s in favour of mobile phones and electronic gadgets, but this “return to the past” will serve to buck this trend. Conviviality, always a large part of Italian tradition, will triumph again: Sunday lunch, bringing people get together to talk and share their news, will be revived. 25 years ago, when I fi rst started working with Gualtiero Marchesi, we imagined that nutrition in 2000 would consist simply of pills. But here we are in 2010, and I am still cooking traditional fare. That seems to me to bode well, a good omen for us all.

Going forward by looking backward: ok to pills, 50 grams

g y gg y

of ham and a litre of milk at the old p , gp , g

#corner-shop. Cabled and computerized

GOODBYE FROZEN AND CANNED FOOD

B Y Davide Oldani4

CHEFS P E C I A L I S S U E

V E N I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

Showroom Milano - Via Fiori Chiari, 18 - 20121 Milano - tel. +39 02 80581823 - [email protected] - Via della Resistenza, 3 - 22070 Appiano Gentile - Italia - tel. +39 031 2287511 - [email protected] - www.dedar.com

Dubai, +9714 2997196 - London, +44 20 7368 7700 - Madrid, +34 931842467 - Moscow, +7 499 2414202 - Munich, +49 89 5442480 - Paris, +33 1 56811095 - USA, +1 404 3252726

Tessuti Passamaner ie Car te

FRUIT

VEGETABLESPOTATOESBREAD

LEGUMESPASTACOOKIESMILKYOGURTOILRICEEGGS

PORKPOULTRYSWEETS

CHEESEFISH BEEFFOOD

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

Diet is responsible for 25% of the ecological footprint of each and everyone of us. Those who follow the typical North American high protein diet, introduce daily in the atmosphere approximately 5,4 kilos of carbon dioxide, more than double of those who follow the Mediterranean diet.

KEYWORD {FOOD SUSTAINABILITY} THE “ECO” DIET SCALES

OU

RC

E: B

AR

ILLA

CE

NT

ER

FO

R F

OO

D &

NU

TR

ITIO

N

DATASTREAM


Television images will fl ash simultaneously across the surfaces of all the fl oors in fl ats. Buildings will all have become environmentally-friendly. Technology will reign supreme in homes and cities, public transport will be the best way of moving from one place to another, small, silent trains will run along the main city roads, cars will be in a minority, bicycles will be everywhere. The design of public transport will be minimalist in the extreme. Every condominium will have its own supermarket, located on the fi rst fl oor, while the second fl oor will house internet points and fi tness centres. Every condominium will have a psychologist on tap for all the commonholders. City restaurants will remain open 24 hours a day. Motorways will run through see-through glass tunnels that change colour according to the temperature, the time of day, the number of vehicles in transit. Travel information will be relayed on top of the glass. Churches will become museums where people go to read and study. Believers of all existing religions will

gather to pray in a single large garden, in the middle of which there is a statue of the sun holding out a hand. Closed circuit television will operate in all the focal points of the city centre and suburbs. Cinemas will be a thing of the past; fi lms will be projected onto gigantic open-air screens positioned in front of homes, enabling people to watch the fi lms from their own balconies using headsets to hear with and 3D specs to see with. Films will play on throughout the night. Where once there were petrol stations there will now be MP3 suppliers.

In my Italy 2050, homes will be heated by an organic matrix of domestic refuse thanks to diff erentiated collections, which are largely the norm in all Italian families, not least because they have now become law. Wind, geothermal

and photovoltaic power will be the energy sources that, along with nuclear power (alas) will supply the country’s energy needs. On a domestic level, solar heating will be particularly com-mon, especially in small housing clusters and in the country, as will geothermal heating. All the organic agricultural residue (wastage from grapes, tomato stalks etc.) will be used as biomass for power pro-duction plants. Fossil fuel powered cars will no longer exist, but will have been replaced by hydrogen-powered or electric cars (also fi tted with solar panels) and trials will be being carried out on organic fuel vehicles, or rather cars running on fuel derived from food waste. New buildings will be environmentally friendly, with solar panels, thermal insulation to minimise energy wastage and cumulative systems that derive their energy from fl oors and the opening and closing of doors (fi tted with special springs

that set off little dynamos).Both large and small cities will become huge pedestrianised areas, where the only permitted modes of transport will be underground public trans-port (electric underground trains) or ground level vehicles on magnetic tracks. There will be no traffi c and no traffi c lights, most of the roads and parking lots will have been turned back into green spaces. Metropolises will see their populations cut by half because most types of work will be able to be done at home, thanks to increasingly power-ful and effi cient computer networks. The countryside will be repopulated and families will no longer aspire to a city centre pad and a big suv, but to a house in the country with its own kitchen garden.All the tools required for daily life, made of paper, plastic or metal, will be produced from recycled materials, thanks to systems for converting processed materials back into their original stateDrinking water in Italy and in the rest of the world will come from effi -cient seawater desalination plants that will have also enabled huge des-ert and pre-desert areas all over the world to be reclaimed.

PRIMARY ENERGY DEMAND IN ITALY WILL BE REDUCED BY AS MUCH AS 32% IN 2050. RENEWABLE SOURCES WILL MAKE-UP A STAGGERING 61% OF SUPPLY. A WHOOPING 80,000 OF NEW “GREEN” VACANCIES WILL SPROUT UP (SOURCE: GREENPEACE)

A FULL TANK OF MP3 AT THE GAS STATION

B Y Fabri Fibra

A #city wheree buildings offerr aaa

y

supermarket annnnnddddd g

a psychologistt,, p

churches are tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnneeeeeddddddddd p y gp y ,

to museums anndddddddddd pppppeeeeeettrooooolllll pumps sell musssic

p

5

ARTISTARAPPER

ENGINEER

#Energy from renewable sources,

gygy

pedestrian-friendly ,

towns, hydrogen-p

fuelled public transport, , y g, y

water for one and all,p pp p

deserts goodbye

LIFE WITH NO GAS

B Y Emilia Visconti6


FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

SOLAR PANELS OFFICES SOLAR PANELS

HOUSES

MAIN POWER PLANT

GRID’S ELEMENTS

ISOLATED MICRO-GRID

EOLIC PLANT

INDUSTRIAL FACTORY

HOME-OFFICE

FOSSIL RESOURCES

RENEWABLE RESOURCES

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

CURRENT SCENARIO

SCENARIO E [R] EFFICIENCY

2005

2010

2020

2030

2040

2050

KEYWORD {ENERGY [R]EVOLU TION} MAN SHALL LIVE OF RENEWABLES ALONE: TWO EXAMPLES TO BELIEVE IT

PROCESSORS PERFORM SPECIAL PROTECTION PLANS IN MICROSECONDS

SENSORS DETECT FLUCTUATIONS AND STATICS AND CAN NOTIFY TO SHUT OFF THE GRID

ACTIVATEDIN STANDBY

SUPPLY THE ENERGY PRODUCED DURING OFF PEAK HOURS CAN BE STORED IN BATTERIES AND USED LATER ON

GRID TROUBLE

SMART DEVICES CAN SHUT OFF IN CASE OF FREQUENCY FLUCTUATIONS

COMPSUPTION MANAGEMENT THE USAGE CAN BE POSPONED TO OFF PEAK HOURS FOR SAVING PURPOSES

GENERATORS ENERGY PRODUCED BY SMALL GENERATORS OR PANELS CAN DECREASE THE ENTIRE GRID DEMAND

SMART GRID TECHNOLOGYThe key elements of the near future based upon a renewable energy system can be inserted in a smart grid consisting of a network of micro-grids capable of monitoring and repairing themselves.

{2}{1} FOR A VIRTUOUS ITALYCurrent Italian consumptions with the hypothesis of a massive use of renewable highly effi cient resources, with a CO2 reduction of 70 percent

SO

UR

CE

: GR

EE

NP

EA

CE

EN

ER

GY

[R

]EV

OLU

TIO

N R

EP

OR

T 2

010

DATASTREAM


TUMOUR SPECIFIC

LYMPHOCYTEGENERIC

LYMPHOCYTE

TCR

ACTIVATORGENE

KILLER GENE

MANIPULATION

TEAM-WINNINGB Y Ilaria Capua7

IN 2030, FUTUROLOGIST RAY KURZWEIL PREDICTS, BILLIONS OF NANOROBOTS WILL BE FLOWING IN OUR VEINS, 1000 TIMES MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE WHITE BLOOD CORPUSCLES FIGHTING ILLNESSES. MAN WILL LIVE TO TURN 150 (INDIAN SCIENTIST PUSHPA MITTRA BHARGAVA)

The eff orts of the medical and scientifi c community to prevent neoplastic disease by advocating healthy life-styles (nutrition) and discouraging dangerous habits (smoking), will undoubtedly have lowered its inci-

dence. The risk of developing cancer, currently 45 percent in men and 39 per cent in women, will therefore be lower but still not wiped out. However, perspectives, worries and hopes will certainly change. In most patients, cancers will be picked up at an early, asymptomatic stage, through screening for various types of cancer (largely driven by environmental risk factors and individual genetic variants) during a single session, in centres dedicated to early prevention, designed with the emphasis on health prevention rather than on curing disease. The population will take regular and informed part in prevention programmes, rather as parents take part in vaccination programmes for their children. Should scree-ning produce positive results, patients will undergo fast, non-invasive highly specifi c second level testing. Often the tracers used to identify diseased cells will already be loaded with therapeutic molecules. Treatment will thus frequen-tly overlap with diagnosis in a new science: theranostics. There will still be some cancers than are not picked up until a later stage. These will be treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy, surgery and stem cell transplantation, but in highly sterile environments: we will, for example, be able to circulate drugs more eff ectively by exploiting the characteristics of the vascular system of the neo-plastic cells and fresh knowledge about the microenvironments in which they thrive. Surgery will be minimal and precise: the disea-sed tissue alone will be removed, with the aid of sophisticated sur-gical instruments and clear-cut

A new science, #theranostics, will combat cancer by uniting

,

therapy and diagnosis. yy

Focus will be less on illness py gpy g

and more on health

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

B Y Chiara Bonini

8

ONCOLOGIST

{1}

{2}

{3}

genetic and functional diagnostic images. Genetic manipu-lation of the lymphocytes, the cells that direct the immune system, will be crucial in order to prevent the disease from recurring by selectively and rapidly pinpointing the neopla-stic cells. These modifi ed lymphocytes will live for years and will police the entire body, eradicating any residual cancer cells in the case of relapse, at a very early stage, even before the situation has made itself felt. All this will be made possi-ble thanks to increasingly detailed knowledge of the molecular make-up of tumours. All this will be made possible by greater investment in scientifi c research!

VIROLOGIST

In 50 years’ time, I expect that infectious diseases will have been more or less wiped out thanks to day hospitals, drugs and vaccines that are currently only available to a very small part of the world’s population. Improved global health will also prove beneficial for Italy: access to health means less desperation and a less fertile ground for spawning criminality and terrorism, lower rates of disease and greater education opportunities. Better migrant health lessens the risk of disease transmission, which in turn means reduced recourse to Italian health facilities.The use of “open access” technology has a crucial part to play in setting up virtual networks capable of capitalising on existing knowledge and finding creative solutions to logistics, distribution and training problems. I'm a paladin of the importance of information sharing in the face of virus epidemics. In 2006, my group deposited the genetic imprint of the first H5N1 virus isolated in Africa with the GenBank and made it available to the scientific community: my “daring gesture” led to international debate on data transparency and the situation improved greatly. Greater transparency over the genetic data of flu viruses enabled the A/H1N1virus to be decodified a few years later only a matter of hours after it surfaced and to make the information available to laboratories all over the world. But that is not, and should not, be enough. At the last WHO World Health Assembly, the Dutch government, backed by the Italian Ministry of Health, tabled a motion asking the WHO to take an official stance on the transparency of genetic data in microbes that pose a risk to public health. I look ahead to Italy in 2050 when, thanks to substantial input

Sharing of facts and figures, for a healthier and better world.

g g ,g

#open access science will give research and treatmentresearch and treaaattmmeent

p

the upppppeer hhhannnnddddd

DATASTREAM

from our country, the seed of open access science planted during the bird flu crisis will have grown into a flourishing tree, yielding huge advantages for research and general health: we will produce anti-epidemic vaccines and targeted drugs. We will play a forward-looking game, and a team game at that.


FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

SAFE AND EFFECTIVE TRANSPLANTSIn cases of marrow transplants, a suicidal gene is introduced to check the “stranger” lymphocyte’s toxicity: the lymphocyte continues to be able to recognize the patient’s tumoral cells, but it can be eliminated by a medicine (that activates the suicidal gene) if creates any damage.

MORE KILLERS AGAINST TUMOURSThe specifi c nature of the many existing lymphocytes is due to the TCR molecule, diff erent for each and everyone of them. If a gene is introduced that creates an antitumoral TCR, even the lymphocytes not specialized at the origin become activated to fi ght the neoplastic cells.

ONE OF THE MOST ADVANCED WEAPON TO FIGHT TUMOURS, STILL IN AN EXPERIMENTAL STAGE, IS THE GENE MANIPOLATION OF THE T LYMPHOCYES, THE IMMUNE SYSTEM “SOLDIERS”, EACH AND EVERYONE OF THEM IPER SPECIALIZED IN FIGHTING AN ENEMY (VIRUS, FUNGUS, OTHER INDIVIDUALS’ ANTIGENE… THE T LYMPHOCYES THAT ATTACK TUMOURS ARE VERY RARE)

ALERT AND ACTIVE LYMPHOCYTESApart from being rare, the antitumoral lymphocytes often are not enough. Tumours, in fact, produce molecules able to “put them to sleep” or kill them. This is why, in such a case, a gene is introduced that will increase their possibilities to survive, grow or be active.

KEYWORD {GENE THERAPY} 3 MOVES TO CREATE AN ANTITUMOURS ARMY

KEYWORD {SHARING} AND YOU BEAT THE VIRUS

Thanks to Ilaria Capua’s “provocation”, data transparency on viruses has entered a new era.

H5N1animal

H5N1human

BIRD FLU HUMANfl u

Until 12/31/2005 Until July 2010

379

2898

41

367

1609

8359

2875

17603

Virus samples deposited into the GenBank


If by 2050 we have failed to tackle the dramatical-ly emerging environmental, social and symbolic problems in a radical fashion, architecture will seem like the superfl uous art of a very grand cou-turier. If architecture has failed to take a diff erent tack, by 2050 it will simply be seen as an anach-ronistic practice bound up with distant millennia, too slow to respond to a fl uctuating present, too rigid to dialogue with the needs of a society in constant evolution.

The world around us is going through a complete sea change, throwing up desires and urgent question marks that call for responses, experimentation and visions, even from architecture.We are no longer able to deal with individualistic, au-tobiographical, suppositional and cynical architecture, blinkered to the world around it - a narcissistic sort of ar-chitecture that continues to devour land and resources willy nilly, but fails to come up with appropriate solutions for a new era. We are seeking imperfect works of architecture, rational, generous, epic works capable of opening up unexpected vistas, ones that do not simply pay lip service to a present that has already slipped into the past. We imagine an architecture capable of generating works inspired by a new political and social philosophy of reality,

going against the grain of that pecu-liar auto-destruct attitude that the human race seems to be embracing with such gusto. Architecture needs to come up with theories capable of withstanding time and wear, but it also needs to ask itself what generating shapes and spaces in a fl uctuating and unstable period ac-tually means. We must stop thinking of architecture as an ancient, proud form of defence against the outside world, but rather as a process that engenders new ex-perimental forms. We need to shrug off the paralysing melancholy of the 20th century and its modern heroes: we are heirs to a much lengthier, more sophisti-cated and complex history, and we need to revisit the ancient stories and myths and recognise them as a rich and fertile heritage that will help us produce evolved and mature fragments of the future. This does not signify a reassuring

declaration of a “return to order” dictated by a period of profound crisis – quite the reverse, it means opening up a fresh dialogue with our past, drawing on it freely and with awareness, it means retrieving forgotten matrices and us-ing them to generate new shared histories. This new millennium should be devoted to patiently and lovingly retrieving all that we have lost, by building new ar-chives, not mausoleums for long gone memories, but places for live experimentation, passionate and unbiased creativi-ty, where heritage, history and desire can come together. During the 20th century, we embarked upon a systematic destruction of resources and a ransacking of our heritage (biological and cultural), so what could architecture spark to help this new century focus on radically putting right the things we have so crudely despoiled? We have to change our relationship with Nature, moving on from the virginity of the new Eden, from the exploita-tion approach, and learn to treat Nature as a living entity, one that needs to be explored with care.What horizons are there for architecture to explore, though, leaving aside the conventional ‘need for sustain-ability’ rhetoric?Just as fast as the great metropolises grow, they are counterbalanced by a rise in the number of areas of wild, abandoned and self-suffi cient nature. Climate change, with the consequent desertifi cation processes and steady ero-sion of the coastline, will call for a completely diff erent mindset, as yet unexplored. We are used to viewing history as an ever-swelling tide (demographic, economic, well-be-

0 1 6

In 2050, a reasonable timescale and a realistic horizon, we will probably no longer feel the need for architecture.

ing), churning out assets and places. How should architecture react to parallel phenomena such as metropolitan hyper-densifi cation in some places and de-mographic regression in others? What models should be applied? What visions should be laid before the political and fi nancial decision-makers?

Architecture needs to come back into the main-stream of life, building new stories and hospitable spaces that will become shared parts of people’s histories, places that breathe new life into the way we inhabit our cities and landscape, off ering diff erent, alternative suggestions, chal-lenging the traditional modes of colonising space. Architecture needs to help imagine new collective spaces in which diversity will be welcomed, diff erences of opin-ion will be embraced and transformed into dialogues, and this diversity will be recognised as elementary genetic heritage, with a part to play in shaping temporal, toler-ant, open identities. But what are the implications for designing communi-ty, communal spaces in an economic downturn in order to achieve this? How can architecture contribute to an evolved idea of welfare that manages to combine quality of urban space with circumscribed available resources? We will no longer be able to carry on guzzling land, putting up more and more pieces of architecture, a basic political priority will be established in which architecture will be expected to play its technical and cultural part. We will not need to build new “modern” objects to live in our times, but will need to be equipped with the requi-site skills for reinterpreting the heritage at our disposal, working from the inside out, making swingeing altera-tions, densifying and frankly demolishing, freeing up spaces without feeling that they need to be fi lled in im-mediately. Empty space is increasingly becoming a planning and ex-perimental resource in a reaction to the horror vacui that devastated the previous century. In a future that is almost upon us, in which open-source provision of information, energy and resources will be free-ly available in every nook and cranny of the country, the way in which we inhabit and transform space will undergo a radical change, forcing us to come up with new settlement models and ways of sharing public and private places. The cities and regions that we inhabit will be increasing-ly seen and used as digestive bodies, living organisms, metabolisms that are active 24/7, which will change the geography of places, our experiences and the way in which we live and share public and private spaces. Architecture must be spurred on to come up with a novel form of “gentle radicalism” to bring it back into the world as a civil art/technique, conscious of its own role in society and as a purveyor of generous and destabilising visions.

It would be encouraging to think that architecture will be equal to the task of building spaces for the fragile human-ity of this new millennium to inhabit.This may be the only way in which architecture is likely to survive into 2050.

N.BItalia2050 is the most radical and complex section in the

Italia Pavilion. It provides a real challenge that plays with our perceptions on various levels, in an attempt to trig-ger unexpected responses that will open up completely diff erent perspectives in us. In this section, Italy takes on the guise of a universal laboratory, no longer just a small country seeking local responses to local issues, but a place that is open to experimentation and possible new forms of dialogue between diff erent strands of knowledge. But what does deciding to work on future scenarios actual-ly mean? The word “future” has become so toxic over the last century as to have become practically unusable. The idea was not to conjure up science fi ction-type scenarios, or unnecessary and superfl uous other-worldly visions, but to extract potential, evolved fragments of possible futures from the present that might help us to come up with use-ful, vital plans for the future.

Italia2050 constitutes what amounts to an almost arti-fi cial space, a temporary one, spurring a selected group of ideators into asking themselves what making experiments and stimulating forms of refl ection and knowledge-shar-ing really means in this day and age.

In order to bring this about, we decided to involve Wired, which brought in 14 protagonists, whom we teamed with 14 architects who have shown an almost obsessive compul-sion for experimentation over the last few years.

The scene that will greet visitors will be a strong, organic and horizontal landscape which they will have to explore to try and uncover fragments of a possible future. The ground fl oor of the exhibit has been left deliberately empty, like a waiting room. 14 steps point to an equal number of places in which to delve and become a part of the creators’ exper-iments. To the sides of the large platform there are two long fl ights of steps equipped with ramps, leading up to an overview of the proposed fragments of the future. This is an inadequate and tenuous attempt to produce a story; the story of what a day in 2050 in an Italian city might be like. A story that everyone is invited to be a part of and which aspires to becoming a digital platform that will extend the range of the display beyond its physical confi nes.

The results are still being fi nessed: this section is a work in progress and there will be other opportunities, once the exhibit is open, to evaluate the results and refl ect on pos-sible future avenues.

We are left with a powerful, yet incomplete challenge, because the only tools architecture has available today are fl imsy ones, but catalysts such as this act as springboards for shaping a diff erent future for our world. �


FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

O U R A R C H I T E C T SB Y Luca Molinari

I t a l i a P a v i l l i o n ’s c u r a t o r


AN EMOTIONS NEST

MATERIALS: deal wood.Zinc bars and screwsMEASUREMENTS: 465x542x790h cmTHE IDEA: a “primitive” space acting as a reminder that architecture cannot lose contact with physicalness, with man’s primary needs such as food and emotions.

1 2

MEN AND SEAWEEDMATERIALS: glass, seaweed and computerMEASUREMENTS: 240x90x240h cmTHE IDEA: create an interaction between the human body and seaweed, the last unexplored energy resource on the planet. A colony of virtual seaweed is kept alive through visitors’ movements.

LET’S RESCUE THE RESCUABLEMATERIALS: 90 life beltsMEASUREMENTS: 480x390x200/250h cmTHE IDEA: the life belt alludes to the need of a playful child friendly public space, but also it refers to a world the survival of which is first of all a joint responsibility.

THE HOPE STELEMATERIALS: Plexiglas, gold leafMEASUREMENTS: 89x89h cmTHE IDEA: the vision of a future where cancer will no longer be a fear is assigned to three “Rosetta steles”. A testimony to those who will come after us.

65

THE ROBOT RESCUES THE SEAMATERIALS: iron, net, steel, projectors, nanowiresMEASUREMENTS: 120x300x240h cmTHE IDEA: SeaSwarm, a robot prototype able to localize and absorb petroleum spilled into the sea thanks to a special nano-fabric cover.

OBSERVATORY ON TOMORROWMATERIALS: deal wood, mirrors, Plexiglas, filmMEASUREMENTS: 180x90x450h cm THE IDEA: the visitor, unseen, watches fragments of the future (the other displays). A prism of mirrors reflects and multiplies the entire surrounding.

87

UNIVERSE VIS-A-VISMATERIALS: woodMEASUREMENTS: 540x270x425h cmTHE IDEA: a dark space, a black hole that allows one to experience the sense of absolute vacuum where elementary particles move, bricks of our Universe.

THE DEMOCRACY SQUAREMATERIALS: Plexiglas, LCD screensMEASUREMENTS: 350x400x80h cmTHE IDEA: in 2050 politics will prosper only if the traditional parliament will be placed side by side to its own double, the citizens’ network. The democracy symbol will become a large square.

GUNDAM VS. CEMENTMATERIALS: metallic mesh, cardboardMEASUREMENTS: 400 diameter, 490h cmTHE IDEA: the real project theme for the future will no longer be the growth of our cities but their souls. The supergundam swallows them up and gives birth to a new synthesis.

LIVING THE TIMEMATERIALS: 40 Venini vasesMEASUREMENTS: 60 cm high THE IDEA: today’s architecture designs the shapes of time. Buildings will be alive 24 hours, providing services at any time. Each and everyone will be able to choose the time to live, to sleep, to work.

WANTED: THE WASTERMATERIALS: seaweed, fibers, sensorsMEASUREMENTS: 200x120x240 cmTHE IDEA: a cave makes it possible to visualize the good and bad in the world according to an ecologic print. If it is true that resources are constantly more limited, it is also true that not everyone utilizes them in the same way.

WE ARE THE MUSICMATERIALS: metal, cables, speakersMEASUREMENTS: 360x90x220h cmTHE IDEA: a concert hall where everything becomes a big instrument. An invitation to make, to interact, to question the codes and the accessibility of knowledge.

MONUMENTS WITH SOULMATERIALS: metal, 300 pieces of glassMEASUREMENTS: 510x350x520h cmTHE IDEA: 2050 monuments will be sentient architecture-objects. To dwell, to live, to watch, to exchange one’s own substance with that of things.

MORE SOBRIETY FOR EVERYONEMATERIALS: PlexiglasMEASUREMENTS350x180x75h cmTHE IDEA: the alternative to a widespread suburb is a compact, multilevel, pedestrian centre.Sober, without façades: because the real quality of life is also living in a more equal way.

A DAY IN 2050 ITALY

1

2

3 4

5

* T H E D R AW I N G I S A A RT I S T I C I N T E R P R E TAT I O N O F T H E P R O J E C T S A N D T H E L AY O U T

FLOWING COMMUNITIES SPACESarchitectureMA0visionMARZIA LAZZERINI

PLACES OF TASTE, WELL-BEING, PLEASUREarchitectureATELIER FORTEvisionDAVIDE OLDANI

THE BODY WITHIN THE CITYarchitectureITALO ROTAvisionCHIARA BONINI

CLEAN DIFFUSED ENERGYarchitecture MARCO NAVARRA/NOWAvisionEMILIA VISCONTI

INFINITELY SMALLarchitectureCARLO RATTIvisionFRANCESCO STELLACCI

MEMORY ARCHIVESarchitectureBENIAMINO SERVINOvisionSUSANNA NICCHIARELLI

MATTER/ANTIMATTERarchitectureATTILIO STOCCHIvisionACHILLE STOCCHI

THE DIGESTIVE CITYarchitectureANNA BARBARAvisionFABRI FIBRA

DEMOCRACY, MEDIA, METROPOLISarchitectureIAN+visionTOMMASO TESSAROLO

NEW EDEN, NATURE 3.0architecture ECOLOGICSTUDIOvisionALESSANDRO GALLI

SCRAPPING, RESTORING THE WIDESPREAD SUBURBSarchitectureMARCvisionNICO VASCELLARI

OPEN SOURCE LANDSCAPEarchitectureALESSANDRO SCANDURRAvisionILARIA CAPUA

VISITING LA BIENNALE H O W : tickets cost 20 ¤ (labiennale.org) W H E R E : Venice, Arsenale e Giardini W H E N : 29/8 to 21/11 A G E N D A : on October 24 Wired's editor and Alessandro Baricco will talk about Barbarians @Italia Pavillion.

ZERO-CUBATURE ARCHITECTUREarchitectureMETROGRAMMAvisionGIANNI BIONDILLO

CITY OF OBJECTSarchitectureCHERUBINO GAMBARDELLAvisionLEANDRO AGRÒ

3 4

9 10 11 12 13 14

6 8

9

710

14

13

12

11


FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

PLEASURESENSES

ENERGY INVISIBLEDIFFUSE

OPENDEMOCRACY

ZEROCUBATURE

BODY MEMORY TIME OPENSOURCE

COMMUNITYPLAY

MATTERANTIMATTER

NATUREEDEN

WORLDOBJECTS

COMPENSATESUBURBIA

2

7 10 14 13

1

4 6 8 11

3 5 9 12

KEYWORDS' MAP

A G U I D E D V I S I T to Wired Pavilion I L L U S T R AT E D B Y Borja Bonaque


Physics is at a frontier right now: the fi nest achievement of the last 100 years has been the discovery that all the matter sur-rounding us is formed of only three elementary interacting particles, which exchange other particles; we know that there

are another nine with very similar characteristics and 12 particles of antimatter. We are convinced that these 24 particles already existed when the Big Bang took place because we have managed to recreate them in laboratory experiments, but in the Earth system and in our galaxy, matter only consists of three. The puzzle we have to unravel is this: why is the universe we know made up of only three particles and, more importantly still, why just of matter? Research today (for example the LHC accelerator at CERN) is focused on fi nding new particles, including the famous Higgs boson, which should be able to explain the origins of their mass in the universe. Over the next ten years the National Laboratories in Frascati will be perfect-ing a next generation accelerator, the SuperB. This project will enable the very fi rst instants of the universe to be recreated in a laboratory setting and thus provide the answers to all the questions

IN 2050 OUR LAPTOPS WILL BE 100.000 TIMES AS FAST (DON EIGLER, IBM SCIENTIST)

020N U M E R O S P E C I A L E

B I ENNA L E D

I VE N E Z I A

FUTUROIT

ALIA

2050

as to why it is actually composed of matter, given that equal quantities of matter and antimatter were produced the moment the Big Bang occurred. Yet again our researchers, who are recognised the world over for their excellence, will be the protagonists of discoveries that will prove determi-nant for us all: once we understand matter we then know what to do with it; take nuclear or fusion energy, for example, likely to be the energy of the future. Our “pure research” has on-going practical advantages for applied physics. Early research into particles, at the beginning of the 20th century, led to the cathode television tube which is, in fact, an accelerator: in those days studying electrons was both cutting edge and completely abstract. In the medical sector today particle accelerators and detectors that were built between the 60s and the 80s are still in use, extremely sophisticated instruments that revolutionised diagnosis and therapy. If we hadn’t tried to improve on the candle we would never have invented electricity.

In physics, pure #researchhh aaaallwwwwwwaaaayyyyssss provides practical advantagggggggeeesss.

p y , py , p

Electricity would never havee p p gp p g

been invented if we had just triedddd yy

to improve upon the candlejj

SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND

B Y Achille Stocchi9

PHYSICISTS P E C I A L I S S U E

V E N I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

KEYWORD {DAφNE} A FORMULA 1 FOR PARTICLES, HUNTING FOR MATTER

Daφne is a collection of instruments (an accumulator, a linear accelerator and a collider, outlined on the right) that together function to make particle beams colliding into each other to collect information on the structure of matter. Built at the National Labs of Frascati, its data are used all over the world.

POSITRONES

NEUTRONES

POSITRONES INJECTION

ELECTRONSINJECTION

KLOE

LINAC

DATASTREAM

FONTE CATIA MILARDI, PHYSICIST AND DAφNE HEAD PROJECT


ECOLOGIST

h fThe waste party’s over. Time for p ygovernmeent to enterrr the scenne.

p yp y

The goal: cccoonnnnnnnssssuuummmmmeeeeeeee lleeeesssssss and gg

##ddeeesssiiggnng

bbbbeeeetttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttteeeeerrrrrrr

-15% IN CO2 CONSEQUENT TO ICT IN 2020, WITH ENERGY SAVINGS TO THE TUNE OF € 644 BILLION (SOURCE: VISION 2050)

220

THE RESOURCE COUNTDOWN

B Y Alessandro Galli10T

wo years ago, 29 companies got together to rethink the role they could play over the next few decades in helping to steer our society towards sustainability. The result of their endeavours, Vision 2050: The

new agenda for business, was put together by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Global Footprint Network, and presented a few months ago. The Global Footprint Network assessed the conse-quences of the hypothetical scenarios in Vision 2050 in terms of their Ecological Footprint, comparing them with the potential cost to our planet if we continue to plough a BAU (business-as-usual) furrow. The following scenarios were put forward: world population growth and stabili-sation at around 9.2 billion individuals by 2050 (source: United Nations); a 50 per cent fall in CO2 emissions com-pared with 2005 levels (source: International Energy Agency); enhanced forest productivity using better man-agement techniques and an extension of their acreage between 2030 and 2050 (source: Vision 2050); increased productivity (+2 per cent each year over past trend) of agricultural land thanks to technological advances and the diff usion of best practices (source: Vision 2050); changes to the average global nutritional regime, in terms of both diet and calorie content (source: FAO). Despite all this, the fi ndings confi rm that in the run-up to 2050, humanity will still be consuming the resources of 1.1 planets. Today (the most recent data derives from 2006) the overexploi-tation of resources stands at 44 per cent: this means that it would take 17 months to “get square” with nature or equally that we are consuming the resources of almost 1.5 planets. Does this mean that we are necessarily on course for an apocalypse of this nature? No, but we must hold onto the fact that effi ciency (and therefore technology) alone cannot save us. The aim of the Global Footprint is to bring the issue of the scarcity of resources right to the forefront of the political agenda and debate, because it is political choices that infl uence a population’s wellbeing. The “business as usual” philosophy is unsustainable, and

would mean that by 2040 we will need the resources of 2 planets and by 2050 we will need the resources of 2.3 planets. Italy – where the ecological footprint grew 116 per cent between 1961 and 2006 – can do much to prepare for a more sustainable future. Planning has a central role to play in preventing the dilapidation of the terri-tory, but also and especially in underpinning more responsible construction. The data on the life of infrastructures are signifi cant: if we construct an unsustainable bridge or building, we will be saddled with the con-sequences for over a hundred years. Do we really want to take on the future with a mill-stone like that around our necks?


V E N I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 2060 2080

20

16

12

8

4

BIOCAPACITY

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

ECOLOGICAL DEFICIT

Take the planet resources, their consumption and the average duration of manmade creations. Result: an ecological defi cit no longer sustainable.

RAILWAY, HOME, DAM COMMERCIAL BUILDING DESIGNHUMAN COAL-POWERED POWER STATIONBRIDGEHIGHWAYNUCLEAR-POWERED POWER STATION CAR (US AVERAGE)

ECOLOGICAL SURPLUS

AVERAGE DURATION

EXPECTED DURATION

KEYWORD {ECODEFICIT} ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

BIL

LIO

NS

OF

GLO

BA

L H

ECTA

RES

DATASTREAM


WRITER

DATASTREAM

There is not a single acre of “natural” nature in Italy. We would do well not to forget this. The entire Italian countryside, from the Alps to Lampedusa, has been totally altered, plotted by man. In the historic town centres and in the metropolises, in the valleys and along the

beaches, Italy as a whole is a sort of canvas, a huge hyper-territorial proj-ect. Super Land Art. The diff erence therefore lies not in the bucolic dream of a return to a nature we have never really known, but in the awareness that this anthropised landscape has been put through the mill once too often over the course of the last century. The chestnut wood is as good an economy as the hydro-electric power station, but it also forms part of the landscape, a material territorial statement. We need

to get it into our heads that development for development’s sake cannot go on indefi nitely because the land available is fi nite. It has, in fact, run out. Sustainability is one of the archi-tectural mantras of the early millennium. But what does it mean in practice? “Zero kilo-metres”, “zero emissions” and then what? A vision of the Italy of the future that fails to take in the fact that the real issue should be “zero cubage” is still stuck in the puerile narcissism of the idea of modern. We know that Italy’s population will increase, thanks also to the new forces of global immigration. But we have to quash the devastating, and actually rather petit bourgeois myth of the border once and for all. The challenge will be

to build without stealing a single square metre of agricultural, coastal, embankment or shelving land. Zero cubage is a moral imperative. Today 100 square metres a minute of the Po Valley are being concreted over in the name of magnifi cent, progressive onslaught. What it all amounts to is symbolic, artistic and material suicide. The canvas of the global work of art that is Italy needs to be treated properly. This is the challenge for

the new generation of architects: cen-sus, discern, conserve. Do not be afraid to demolish and redesign entire swathes of the territory, rebuild cities better and with greater awareness. Contract rather than usurp, change the public’s mobility habits, redesign the metropolitan spaces, extending those given over to the envi-ronment. A huge task lies ahead. Reha-bilitating the coastline from Liguria to Calabria, demolishing kilometres of use-less low-grade housing and shoring up river banks and river beds, reforesting the ridges where there is hydrogeological imbalance, freeing the Brianza area from the undiff erentiated sprawl, reclaiming the Terra di Lavoro from toxic waste, etc. Technology and green economy. Not in a romantic Arcadian approach, but in our own interest. Nature can man-age without us. We, however, cannot do without nature if we are to survive.

The challenge ahead is building without encroaching on too much land: development cannot be infi nite, #space available is fast getting over

I can remember waking up screaming in panic when I was about six years old, because I had mistaken the noise of fi reworks going off at the village party for the sound of bombs heralding a new war. Not long ago, that episode came back into my mind, when I came across that strange man from Vittorio Veneto who had appeared at the Corrida di Corrado imitating the noise of fi reworks going off at the festival itself. I fi nd it impossible to imagine the future without thinking of the past. Time piles up, it packs down like humus rather than making a straight line.I imagine building on the past. I think the idea of suburbs relentlessly eroding deeper and

deeper into the countryside is more of a probability than a possibility. Those ghastly unauthorised little blocks of fl ats and post-war houses should be covered not just with shame but with something completely different. Vegetation alone, perhaps. I did not enjoy the fi lm at all, but the fi rst fi fteen minutes of I am Legend, in which New York is silent, invaded by a jungle smashing its way up through the asphalt, far from striking me as apocalyptic, struck me as marvellous. Le Corbusier and his roof gardens. Sinking to reappear in a different guise. Like the layers of our memories. A new level. And not a hidden one. Just think of an architectural scrapping system that could develop underground like mushroom roots, bearing only its fruit up into the light.

I dreeaam a sorttt oof #arrchhiitteeeccttuurraaaalll scraappppppppiinngggg systeeemm foorr

gg

builddinggs yy

and ppost-wwwwwaaaaarrrr g

eyessoores

THE SURE-FIT PLAN WILL ENCOMPASS 1,076,204 DWELLINGS IN ITALY , LEADING TO ENERGY SAVINGS OF AS MUCH AS 2,56 MILLION TONS IN CO2. AROUND 7,3 MILLION BUILDINGS IN EUROPE WILL BENEFIT, THE EQUIVALENT OF 2,5 MILLION LESS CARS ON OUR ROADS

ZERO CUBIC CONTENT, ALL AT ONCE

B Y Gianni BiondilloNATURE, SWALLOW THE ECO-MONSTERS

B Y Nico Vascellari12

11

ARTIST


V E N I C E B I E N N I A L

FUTU

REIT

ALY

20

50

SO

UR

CE

: SU

STA

INA

BLE

RO

OF

EX

TE

NS

ION

RE

TR

OF

IT F

OR

HIG

H-R

ISE

SO

CIA

L H

OU

SIN

G I

N E

UR

OP

E-U

E S

TU

DY

UPGRADING EXISTING BUILDINGS TO BETTER ENERGY EFFICIENCY CRITERIA IS THE NEW CHALLENGE FOR A SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE, WHICH CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO CONSUME LAND. BESIDES NOT POLLUTING IS EVEN LESS EXPENSIVE

EXISTING BUILDING

RET

RO

FITT

ING

STA

ND

AR

D

1 13 46

MA

XIM

UM

R

ETR

OFI

TIN

G

EFFI

CIE

NC

Y

MA

XIM

UM

EX

NO

VO

EFFI

CIE

NC

Y

BUILDING A BUILDING B

NEW BUILDING AND BEARING STRUCTURES

KEYWORD {RETROFITTING} DOES THE HOUSE POLLUTE? LET’S PUT IT IN ARMOUR. LIVE BETTER AND SAVE.

SURE-FIT PROJECTFinanced by the European Union, it is a retrofi tting study of existing buildings for social housing (4-5 fl oors) built between 1945 and 1990. Here is how the pilot by Ipostudio works for the city of Florence.

Based upon the “integration” principle, an independent bearing system allows elevating to create new spaces for housing and to add solar and photovoltaic panels, reassembling the new and the existing dimensions in one unitary solution.

{1}

WHY IS SURE-FIT CONVENIENT?20%-25% more liveable surface30%-50% more energy effi ciency than existing housing0% new housing energy consumption = 40-60% more building effi ciency0% land consumption

{2}

NO, DON’T REBUILDAt the same energy effi ciency, retrofi ttingcosts 33 percent less

{4}

RETROFITTA ANCHE TUA Los Angeles hanno costruito un prototipo, la Zenergy House, per mostrare come rendere verde la propria casa sia allaportata di tutti (tinyurl.com/3xl6b6r).

{3}


Italy in 2050 is the Italy that I hanker after, that I seek out every day and try in my own small way to build, to promote with vocab-ularies and methods that diverge from the strictly architectural. The focus is on children and youth, the years during which the

mind is being shaped, environmental stimuli are harnessing con-nections in the brain, determining responses that then become patterns for action, behaviour and attitude that often remain ingrained forever. This will be the Italy of tomorrow. The focus will be on urban and peri-urban spaces, the areas at the greatest risk of decay. These spaces should enable, encourage and valorise the expression of various fundamen-tal requisites: direct interface with nature and open spaces (with areas given over to physical activity integrated with everyday ones); socialis-ing /integrating diversities (bolstering relations and eradicating ghettoes); integration between nuclei, single-families and single parent families and adult-only families, in a spirit of community; finding a balance between the aesthetic and the practical; finding a balance between the need for roots and the need for mobility (fast, efficient,

LIFE EXPECTANCY IN ITALY IN 2050: 88,8 YEARS FOR WOMEN, 83,6 FOR MEN (SOURCE: ISTAT)

620

safe, ecologically sound, public and child-friendly transport); spaces for play, discovery, poetry, creation that are natural as well as man-made, which will enable the “click” generation of children to experience discov-ery, adventure and what it means to participate actively: the right to play is sanctioned, on a par with education, in the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child 1959; containment of the commercial dimension (advertising publicity and spaces); containment of “artificial” noise (low volume, eco-friendly transport); ecosustainability (environmentally symbiotic technology); combining adult and child needs (including the need for adults to be able to rely on child-friendly spaces that are safe but where they can meet others, readily accessible). I am not entirely sure that any of this counts as innovative. Perhaps innovation only rests in planning and building spaces that bring all these requisites together.

We design spaces for learningg,creating,

g#experimentinnggg

p g.

Safe and easily accessible.g,g, pp

We are building the Italy yy

of tomorrow

GAMES AND POETRY,A CITY FOR KIDS

B Y Marzia Lazzerini13

PEDIATRICIANS P E C I A L I S S U E

V E N I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

In 2050, for the fi rst time, the number of 60 and 15 year-olds will be even. In our country the average age is expected to go from 29 years in 1950 to 54 years in 2050, a world record beaten only by Spain (55).

KEYWORD {GENERATIONAL PYRAMIDES} AGE GAP: THE ZERO HOUR STRIKES

1950

60+ 0-59

SOURCE: UN

2000 2050

80

60

40

20

0 0 0

DATASTREAM

5 5 5 5 5 5PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE

AGE


GENERAL MANAGER CURRENT TV ITALY

Television radio InternetTelevision, radio, Internet and newspapers will bluuur.

, ,, ,

##IInnforrmmmaattiioonn??p ppp

That’s uuuuuuus! All connected aaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd knnowwlleeeeeeddgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaabbbbbbbblee

IN 2050, THE WORLD’S POPULATION WILL GROW BY 120% IN DEVELOPING NATIONS, WITH 70% LIVING IN CITIES (SOURCE: FAO)


V E N I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

WE ARE A FELICITY NETWORK

B Y Tommaso Tessarolo14I

n 2050 Italy will be the cultural and technical hub of a new Renaissance. Nearly two centuries of full-speed social, technological and scientifi c development will at last have given way to a lengthy period of (posi-

tive) inward refl ection by a human race teetering on the brink of collapse. We will have run too long and too fast. We will have destroyed economies, political systems, traditions, histories and cultures. We will have created rules for ourselves in the belief (or under the pretence of believing) that we can live better, in a more integrated fashion, be healthier, better looking, sated with every conceivable thing, even masters of nature. But what we will have failed to realise will be the fact that the image refl ected by the progress we thought we were making was distorted, destructive and deceptive. It will only be once we have come within a hair’s breadth of the point of no return that will we have come to our senses; thanks to the Net, to the freedom of information, to bottom-up joint action. Only when Italy will have seemed to have lost its way for good and become resigned to a destiny of fear and misery will it have sprung to life again; a coun-try of beauty, culture and science, the pivot of a great revolution once more. In 2050 our social structure will be community-centred which, thanks to the unseen digi-tal technology that will have become an integral part of everybody’s lives, will enable us to share constructive information for living more harmonious and eff ective lives. Lots of small “villages”, small squares in which communities will be able to gather together physically and socialise, hubs of knowledge making up one gigantic network of autonomous entities continually exchanging information, culture and material goods symbiotically. These changes will have taken place incredibly fast once the realisation that the time for hesitation was past hit home. The revolution will begin with information. In 2050, there will be no divide between Television, Inter-

net, Radio and Newspapers: a constant fl ow of information will emanate from local communi-ties out into the interconnected world. There will be no power groups controlling what should or should not be broadcast and what should or should not be manipulated and censored. Every single citizen will be a fount of informa-tion and will be able to decide for himself which information he fi nds most interesting or use-ful. This will enable fully informed choices to be made over who will govern us at local and global level. There will still be major events of national interest: occasions that will bring the entire population together in front of a “viewer”, but these will largely be entertainment-based, with real emotions taking pride of place. In this Italy 2050, there will be abundant space for us all to cultivate our own happiness.

Cappa o lampadario? Lampadario o cappa? Toglietevi ogni dubbio perché con le nuove cappe F-light Generation li avrete entrambi. Luxia è la primogenita e, come le sue sorelle, non ama i compromessi. Sono vera cappa in tutte le componenti, dalla potenza del motore alla capacità aspirante, dalla silenziosità alla qualità dei materiali: acciaio e vetro su tutti. Sono vero lampadario per potere illuminante, eleganza, design. Sono di nuovo vera cappa, disponibile anche in versione aspirante: perchè una cappa prima di tutto deve pulire l'aria. E ancora tornano ad essere lampadario: la cappa si vede solo quando viene attivata e si fa scendere sui fuochi. E poi sono ancora cappa, e poi ancora lampadario, fino a che non la smettete di giocare con il telecomando.

TOR

TUG

A - K

ITIR

I

Cap

pa F

-ligh

t Gen

erat

ion

- mod

ello

Lux

ia

PH

OTO

: PA

OLO

PO

LI

MONGOLIAINDIAMADAGASCAREGYPT KENYATUNISIA

foko-madagascar.org environment and cyber activism

tinyurl.com/3255yr7censorship fi ghting

ushahidi.comcyber activism

tinyurl.com/2ve6k27environmental literacy

tinyurl.com/399kne4cyber activism

kolenalaila.comwomen’s rights

The Internet is above all a “square” where can be heard nations and individuals, ignored by western media.

KEYWORD {DEMOCRACY} LISTEN WHO’S TALKING

SO

UR

CE

: GLO

BA

L V

OIC

ES

DATASTREAM


Wired BiennaleAlessandro Baricco Philosopher, music journalist, director, writer (his works being translated and awarded worldwide, BTW). In 2006 he wrote The Barbarians, a forward-looking book about the invasion of those who «breathe the world through Google’s gills». For us, Alessandro has been to 2026 to see what comes next.

[ OUR BARBARIANS]

Ilaria CapuaA virologist and the director of the International Reference Centre at the Venetian Experimental Clinic for Infectious Diseases in Animals. In the name of an open access science, in 2006 Ilaria published the genetic sequence of virus H5N1 online.

Alessandro GalliAn ecologist and a Senior Scientist at Global Footprint Network that investigates human dependence on natural resources. Considering Italy’s ecological footprint, his advice is: politicians, do something. Right now.

Fabri FibraBorn in Senigallia in 1976, a musician (gold and platinum record), TV reporter (on MTV, he compeered the programme In Italy), a generator of contents and a “teen tamer”, as a famous Italian DJ likes to call him.

Marzia LazzeriniA paediatrician in Trieste and actively involved in child care in the Third World for years. On Wired no. 13, she told us about the high-protein bars locally produced in Angola, tasty and sustainable.

Susanna NicchiarelliDirector and philosopher, in 2009 Susanna bagged the first prize at the Venice Festival thanks to her movie Cosmonaut, presented in the section Controcampo Italiano. Going to be back this year... sitting in the Jury.

Davide OldaniWorking with Gualtiero Marchesi gave Davide a real head start to become today one of the most important Italian chefs. Opened D’O, in 2003, a trattoria on the outskirts of Milan. A designer of tableware and author of three books.

Francesco StellacciA degree in Engineering of Materials from the Milan Polytechnic, professor at MIT, from September, will be investigating about biomolecular interfaces and nanotech at the Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Tommaso TessaroloEditor of Mix at the young age of 22, the first online daily newspaper in Italy. Founder of N3TV at 34, the first Net Television broadcasting project, able to reach, in 4 months, the count of 300,000 unique visitors per month. Tommaso is now General Manager at Current Italia.

Nico VascellariBorn and bred in the deep North of Italy, in Vittorio Veneto. Has experimented with different media, such as sculpture, video, sound, performance and collage. Nico’s works are displayed in important collections, both public and private.

Achille StocchiBorn in Venice and now living in Paris, where Achille is a lecturer at Université Paris-Sud. A specialist in physics of elementary particles, investigator of the Big Bang, black holes, matter and antimatter. To understand the universe.

Gianni BiondilloAn architect and essayist, a popular writer of detective stories and a member of the board of editors of Nazione Indiana. Gianni has written his latest book, Ring Roads, together with Michele Monina. Two wayfarers at the edge of town, an unusual portrait of Milan.

Leandro AgròWith over 10 years of expertise in Interaction Design, Leander (his nickname) has been a web professional since 1995. In Wired’s first issue he was one of the ItAliens. Now CEO at Wide Tag, a pioneer in integrated computer systems.

Emilia Visconti di ModroneAn environmental engineer born in Cairo and living in Rome, mother of a one-year-old daughter with another on the way. Holds the post of Project Manager at EDF Energies Nouvelles, focusing on the wind farms being built and developed in Italy.

Chiara Bonini A hemato-oncologist at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and in charge of coordinating the projects on gene therapy for tumour prevention (phase III trials) thanks to Molmed, a biotechnology company spun-off from the hospital.


V E N I CE B

I ENN I A

L

FUTUREIT

ALY

2050

AIR EXPRESS SRL · Via Milano, 9 - 20090 Pobbiano di Rodano (MI)TEL. +39 02 92685.1 · FAX +39 02 92685 2500 · E-MAIL: [email protected]


Longitudine. Latitudine. Attitudine.

Precisione intrinseca.

Movimento cronografico meccanico |

Carica automatica |

Piccoli secondi con

dispositivo di arresto

(foto) | Vetro zaffiro anti-

riflesso | Impermeabile 3 bar |

Diametro cassa 40,9 mm | 18 ct oro rosso

Portoghese Chronograph. Ref. 3714: navigare per i “sette mari”, ma quale scegliere? Questo orologio vi accompagnerà comunque ed in ogni caso. Affidatevi alla precisione del suo movimento cronografico meccanico per seguire la vostra rotta,

qualunque sia l’approdo. E’ probabile che sulla terraferma il vostro Portoghese rimpianga il navigare ma è certo che non

ve lo farà mai notare. Garantito. IWC. Engineered for men.

Su www.iwc.com l’e lenco dei Rivendi tor i Autor izzat i abi l i tat i a l r i lasc io de l la Garanzia Internazionale IWC, la cui at t ivaz ione è va l idata on-l ine a l momento del l’acquisto.

Per informazioni : + (39 ) 02 3026642 – iwc.i ta l ia@ iwc.com – www.iwc.com

2001232_P0K_206x275_p_img_ZS_4c_it.indd 1 13.07.10 10:4332 BIENNALE UK.indd 3332 BIENNALE UK.indd 33 6-08-2010 16:48:076-08-2010 16:48:07

WIRED for "Venice Biennale of Architecture"

Design

Transcript of WIRED for "Venice Biennale of Architecture"