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The pavilion that will represent Italy at the Expo 2020 Dubai uses creativity and innovation to focus on the "beauty that connects people'', the Italian News Agency, ANSA, quoted a statement as saying.
Italian beauty has long brought together populations and is a key part of shared Mediterranean cultural heritage. The pavilion sees it as a possible bridge towards the future, as well, it noted. The international competition for the design of the pavilion attracted 19 proposals. The winning proposal was submitted by a group including CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, Italo Rota Building Office, F&M Ingegneria and Matteo Gatto & Associati.
The design centres on the hulls of three Italian ships, turned over and raised on pillars to form the cover of the pavilion. Each will be painted in a different manner and the hulls will be appear from above like three petals in the colors of the Italian flag. The architectural project pays homage to Italian explorers who sailed the seas to distant lands for centuries, weaving together relations around the world.
It also tells of the beauty of Italy, which is the result of cross-cultural fertilisation and knowledge bred of exchanges, talent, and art. The overturned hulls are meant to symbolise sustainability and a link to the ancient tradition of seafaring populations and fishermen from Europe and the world.
The Italian pavilion will cover around 3,500 square meters, be over 25 meters tall, and be located in an area of high visibility within the site of Expo 2020.
"The project of Ratti, Rota, Gatto and F&M," Ansa quoted Paolo Glisenti, General Commissioner for Italy at Expo 2020 Dubai, as saying, "allows us to realise not only an exhibition space, but a space that represents the best of Italian ingenuity, offering a memorable experience to visitors, and showing the world multidisciplinary competences, talents and intelligences that can become promoters of new educational, professional and entrepreneurial opportunities.'' He added that the ''Italian pavilion will be realised with the contributions of partner companies - large, medium and small - called to provide the best structural, engineering, technological and scenographic components, that are able to demonstrate the most innovative competences committed today to sustainability, to the circular economy, to digital architecture." "Turning over and reusing the ships was an act that had a profound appeal to us: not only because it is laden with historical value, but because it represents the realisation of a circular architecture from the project's beginning. The ships that become part of the Pavilion can continue to be used in different ways even after the end of the Expo," explains Carlo Ratti, founding partner of CRA design practice and director of the MIT Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"The exhibition path will be marked by a gradual ascent until a point where it becomes possible, with some help from the imagination, to observe Italy from the sky," explains architect Italo Rota, founding partner of Italo Rota Building Office: "There will be a 'Prologue' with large spaces inspired by the forms of important Italian piazze, and a Grand Finale that will be almost like a cathedral to nature, to light, to the music of the universe, like the sky over the Mediterranean and the Desert." Technical partners for Italian Pavilion will be selected on the basis of how well they embody Italian skills using the most advanced and sustainable technological innovation and how well they can participate directly in the realisation of the pavilion through different forms of contribution.
Expo 2020 Dubai is being organised under the theme 'Connecting Minds, Creating the Future', with this being expressed into three subthemes: Mobility, Sustainability, and Opportunity.
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