L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2014 www.italoamericano.com L'Italo-Americano 3 Fundamentals: 2014 Biennale di Venezia goes straight to the core of architecture to discover our present identity through the past This year though, the 14th edi- tion of the Biennale di Venezia opened just when the city was dealing with a big scandal involving mayor Giorgio Orsoni and 35 other people, all arrested for their part in a bribery case. Yet, the Biennale not only appeared to be little affected by the scandal, but its slogan and the words used by its curator, famous 70 year old Dutch archi- tect Rem Koolhaas, sounded like a direct rebuke to all of this: "Fundamentals will be a Biennale about architecture, not architects". So, an exhibition about actual works and not about famous people, brands and names. Koolhaas went on to say: "After several Biennales dedicat- ed to the celebration of the con- temporary, Fundamentals will focus on histories – on the inevitable elements of all archi- tecture used by any architect, anywhere, anytime (the door, the floor, the ceiling etc.) and on the evolution of national architec- tures in the last 100 years. In three complementary manifesta- tions – taking place in the Central Pavilion, the Arsenale, and the National Pavilions – this retrospective will generate a fresh understanding of the rich- ness of architecture's fundamen- tal repertoire, apparently so exhausted today". The 2014 Biennale di Venezia wants to celebrate architecture through the analysis of its past: by discovering our roots we get a better idea of who we are nowadays and what is the bag- gage of history that we carry. In other words we get in contact with our identity during a histor- ical moment in which resources seem exhausted and architects take inspiration from memory. In order to do this, Koolhaas asked each country to express their own point of view on a theme: Modernity and its influ- ence on national architectures during the past 100 years: "Ideally, we would want the represented countries to engage a single theme – Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 – and to show, each in their own way, the process of the erasure of Continued from page 1 Imagine a game that can be played with one hand while holding an espresso or glass of wine in the other. Imported by Italian immi- grants to the U.S. in the 19th century, bocce ball is the ideal leisure sport for many city- dwellers during summery weather, and Italian-Americans have kept this longstanding tra- dition rolling for years! The New York Times has recently dedicated a special photo gallery to this urban sport by searching its historic archive. "Let the suburbs have their badminton nets and Frisbee games. The urban folks will take bocce", they wrote. With roots dating back to ancient Rome, the game requires only the bocce balls, "pallino" or jack, and an open rectangular space for the court. When the mass wave of Italian immigrants arrived in New York, they learned to be cre- ative about the term "rectangu- lar space". They played in the City's parks as well as under the bridges and highways, using either street or indoor playgrounds, as seen in the New York Times black and white photographs. Today, one can play bocce ball in many different locations all across the United States, on the occasion of Italian festivals as well as in more competitive tournaments. While rolling a ball down a court may seem easy, the rules of the game can be quite com- plicated, thus requiring great concentration. Workmen in the 1940's understood this well as they meticulously measured whose ball was closest to the jack after playing a round of bocce ball on the building site of the future United Nations Headquarters, cigars resting on their pursed lips. And even the youngsters developed a keen understanding of the craft as they watched attentively while their experienced fathers and uncles played in Brooklyn. From the bocce ball work- men and children to Senator George S. McGovern playing bocce ball in front of riveted onlookers while running for president in 1972, the New York Times photography archive displays the grand pas- sion and simple joy of bocce ball in New York throughout the years. JANe HusoN The NY Times Keeps the Bocce Ball Rolling Rem Koolhaas presenting the guiding principles of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale: Fundamentals national characteristics in favor of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language in a single repertoire of typologies". Today globalization has changed the world of architec- ture and it no longer makes sense to talk about "Chinese" architecture, "Swiss" architec- ture, or "Indian" architecture. As modernity has absorbed national identities and left little space for cultural diversity, architects that once expressed the style of a particular country today are interchangeable. Even if international collabo- ration were to succeed in trans- forming the contemporary per- ception of architecture as a sin- gle world community, the chance still exists of discovering unique national features that have survived globalization, and at the same time maintaining a global perspective on the mod- ern aesthetics we all are immersed in. This way, the word "globalization" takes on a positive meaning, with an emphasis on the constructive potential of a richly connected world, in which national identi- ties are saved in order to enrich everybody's culture. Forty countries are participat- ing in this year's exhibition, which runs from June 7th until November 23rd.

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