Event realized for the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2023,promoted by Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture Italian Pavilion – Biennale Architettura 2023Curators: Fosbury ArchitectureCommissioner: Onofrio Cutaia  Spaziale presenta Sot GlasDesigner: Giuditta VendrameAdvisor: Ana ShametajIncubator: Trieste Film FestivalTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Sot Glas is the title of the third of nine site-specific interventions for “Spaziale presenta,” the preparatory component of “Spaziale: Everyone Belongs to Everyone Else,” the project by the collective Fosbury Architecture (Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, and Claudia Mainardi) for the Italian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. This third intervention will take place in the city of Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and will involve the participation of artist, designer, and researcher Giuditta Vendrame as designer, and filmmaker Ana Shametaj as advisor. The incubator of the project will be the Trieste Film Festival. Sot Glas [sot from the Friulian word for “under,” and glas from the Slovenian word for “voice”] is an installation that reactivates the 500 meters of underground tunnels of the Kleine Berlin air raid shelter built during World War II: an iconic defensive site, as murky as the subconscious of the collective history of the communities that lived in this border region.A painful border – as much a source of division as it is a point of contact, confrontation, and contamination with other cultures – which explores the meaning of belonging, redefining the shape of the boundary and consequently the beginning and end of a country and its community. “Never more than today have walls been built to protect physical borders, and never more than today have borders been dissolved by the digital,” – summarize the curators, Fosbury Architecture – “investigating the meaning of belonging means redefining what form the border takes and consequently where a country and its community begins and ends.” In its breadth, the project for the Italian  Pavilion  is founded on Fosbury Architecture’s vision that architecture is a research practice beyond the construction of buildings and that design is always the result of collective and collaborative work that goes beyond the idea of the architect-author. According to this vision, “space” is understood as a physical and symbolic place, a geographical area and abstract dimension, a system of known references and a territory of possibilities. In the period from January to April preceding the opening of the Biennale Architettura 2023, “Spaziale presenta” will monitor the activation of nine site-specific interventions in as many places, each representative of the Italian territory. “Spaziale: Everyone Belongs to Everyone Else,” in the Italian Pavilion from May 20 to November 26, 2023, will be the formal and theoretical synthesis of the processes triggered in the nine regions in the previous months, providing a distinctive and original portrait of Italian architecture within the international context. The works in progress of “Spaziale presenta” and the activation of the nine interventions will be narrated step by step on the website www.spaziale2023.it and on the Instagram account @spaziale.presenta.The curatorial design of the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2023 and all related details will be announced at a dedicated press conference (February/March 2023).

GIUDITTA VENDRAMEGiuditta Vendrame is an artist, designer, and researcher. Across a variety of mediums – including spatial interventions, film, performance, and installation – her practice explores and investigates citizenship, space, and mobility, as well as the intersections between design and artistic and regulatory practices. ANA SHAMETAJAna Shametaj is a filmmaker and theater director. After the conservatory for piano and a degree at the Accademia Paolo Grassi in Milan, she founded the artistic collective Kokoschka Revival in 2013, for which she is a director, designer, and author.

FOSBURY ARCHITECTUREFosbury Architecture (FA) is a collective practice founded in 2013 by Giacomo Ardesio (1987), Alessandro Bonizzoni (1988), Nicola Campri (1989), Claudia Mainardi (1987), and Veronica Caprino (1988). FA is a spatial agency interpreting architecture as a tool that mediates between collective and individual needs; expectations and resources; sustainability and pragmatism; environment and human beings. FA is a research group aiming at expanding the boundaries of the discipline, redefining its role, and rethinking its production processes in the perspective of current challenges. FA was curator of the monographic exhibition Characters at the Magazin Gallery in Vienna (2022), as well as of Urban Center in Prato at the Centro Pecci (2021/2022) and Milan 2030 at the Milan Triennale (2019). The collective has participated in numerous national and international Architecture Biennales, including Lisbon (2019), Versailles (2019), Chicago (2017), and Venice (2016). In addition, FA’s work has been exhibited in the group shows Take Your Seat supported by the ADI Design Museum in Milan; The State of the Art of Architecture at the Milan Triennale; Re-Constructivist Architecture at the RIBA Gallery in London; Adhocracy at the Onassis Center in Athens; and Mean Home at the British School in Rome.FA has worked on numerous exhibition layouts, including Verde Prato (2019) at the the Centro Pecci, which was awarded an honorable mention for the TYoung Prize 2021. The collective edited, with Alterazioni Video, the publication Incompiuto, La Nascita di uno Stile(2018) supported by the then MIBACT (the current Ministry of Culture) and awarded an honorable mention for the Compasso d’Oro 2020.

Portrait of Giuditta Vendrame, IASPIS Open Studios Spring 2022, photo by Jean-Baptiste Béranger; Portrait of Ana Shametaj, photo by Luca Chiaudano; part of “Sot Glas” project team at Kleine Berlin, photo by Eleonora Angelini; Fosbury Architecture © Luca Campri

Spaziale presenta Intervention no. 1Post Disaster Rooftops EP04Designers: Post DisasterAdvisors: Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia CaleoTaranto, Puglia Intervention no. 2Siren LandDesigners: BB (Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio)Advisor: TerraformaIncubator: FAI – Fondo per l’Ambiente italianoBay of Ieranto (Massa Lubrense, Napoli) Intervention no. 3Sot GlasDesigner: Giuditta VendrameAdvisor: Ana ShametajIncubator: Trieste Film FestivalTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia