Program

Austrian Pavilion
Giardini della Biennale

A dialogue between Quarticciolo and new Viennese neighborhoods

August 30

11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Quarticciolo Ribelle presents itself
Book presentation of Zerocalcare la foresta contro il deserto
Presentation of all the activities of the PoloCivico Quarticciolo

3.30 p.m Guided curator’s tour through the pavilion

4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
OPEN ASSEMBLY
A dialogue between Quarticciolo and new Viennese neighborhoods

Lively ground floor zones, mixes of living, production, and culture, usable green areas, and spaces for the community make a good neighborhood, but these are often difficult to realize in new districts. The pressure of “usability” is too strong and there is often a lack of initiative on the part of residents. The AGENCY asks about the future of neighborhoods. What creates solidarity? Which initiatives need which spaces? How do you get inhabitants to take care of a neighborhood? In search of answers, the AGENCY looks to Rome, to an existing neighborhood.

Quarticciolo is a fascist Borgata that was designed by the architect Roberto Nicolini in the 1940s and became one of the garrisons of the resistance in Rome. Here, the Casa del Fascio, the abandoned former police headquarters, later became a housing occupation. “Quarticciolo Ribelle” was born and a public gym was started, followed by an after-school program, a brewing laboratory, a medical clinic, and a printing workshop – all self-organized activities that reacted to the disappearance of public services from the neighborhood. Recently, the government reacted to drug dealing by calling for the militarization of the area – the Red Zone – in order to clear away all illegal activities: drug dealing as well as the self-managed social network. Reuniting the city’s social movements, the neighborhood answers: we already have a plan!

Guests: activists of Quarticciolo (Rome), Elke Rauth, Christoph Laimer (dérive - Verein fürStadtforschung, Wien), Robert Temel (Architektur- und Stadtforscher, Wien)

Elke Rauth is the Director of urbanize! International Festival for Urban Explorations and a member of the Editorial Board of dérive - Magazine for Critical Urban Research.Through the self-organized housing project Bikes and Rails in Vienna she is part of the habiTAT Mietshäuser Syndikat (Tenement Houses Syndicate). Elke Rauth is interested in the city as socio-political space, the expansion of radical democracy, and the organization of the post-capitalist transition in theory and practice.

Christoph Laimer is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of dérive - Magazine for Critical Urban Research. He is a member of INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action), Bikes and Rails, and habiTAT Mietshäuser Syndikat (Tenement Houses Syndicate). In 2021, he published the book Gemeinschaftliches Wohnen und selbstorganisiertes Bauen together with Andrej Holm.

Robert Temel is an independent architectural and urban researcher and consultant in Vienna. He studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and completed the postgraduate program in sociology at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. He is concerned with the use and production of architecture and the city with a focus on housing, urban design, and public space.

Since 2013, he has been a spokesperson of the Plattform Baukulturpolitik (Platform for Building Culture Policy) and a member of the Advisory Board for Building Culture at the Ministry of Culture. Temel is author of Baukultur for Urban Neighbourhoods. Process Culture through Concept Tendering (BBSR 2020), Ein Stück Stadt bauen. Leben am Helmut-Zilk-Park (Building a piece of the city. Living at Helmut Zilk Park, Stadt Wien/ÖBB 2019) and “Design instead of participation. The Vienna Sargfabrik as a sample project of urban life” in Together! The New Architecture of the Collective (2017).

Meeting Point: Main entrance to the Giardini della Biennale

11 a.m.

Social tour of Venice with Quarticciolo

Meeting point: Main entrance to the Giardini della Biennale

Austrian Pavilion
Giardini della Biennale

3 p.m. - 6 p.m.

UAH! GOES BIENNALE
Talking about Unconventional Affordable Housing!

Guests: Constanze Wolfgring (Vienna, Milan), Francesca Serrazanetti (Milan), Gennaro Postiglione (Milan), Angela Barbanente (Bari), Massimo Bricocoli (Milan), Elena Marchigiani (Trieste), Daniele Petrosino (Bari)

The exhibition repeatedly raises the question of existing buildings. How can former administrative and office buildings work as spaces for unusual living concepts? How can existing residential buildings be adapted for new ways of living, working, and loving? What can we do with derelict sites and dilapidated buildings? And could existing buildings be a decisive resource in the realization of a BETTER LIVING for all? The pavilion hosts a research team from Italy together with a network of design studios from European universities. UAH! – Unconventional Affordable Housing – explores new possibilities for contemporary housing and living at the interface between affordability and unconventionality. Starting from a reflection on existing housing practices, policies, and projects, the project experiments with transformative reuse in three Italian contexts – Bari, Milan, and Trieste –, methodically carried out as “research by design.” The projects, research, and research questions are critically discussed in six ASSEMBLIES.
www.uah.polimi.it

Constanze Wolfgring is a research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano, where she earned her PhD in urban planning, design, and policies. Her research focuses on housing policies, urban regeneration, ecological transition policies, social inequalities, and innovative housing solutions, with a focus on Italy and Austria.

Francesca Serrazanetti, PhD in architecture, is an adjunct professor and research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests focus on the relation between architecture and people, permanence, reuse, unconventionality, and the performativity of space. She is an editor of the architecture magazine Casabella and a co-founder of the multidisciplinary magazine Stratagemmi.

Gennaro Postiglione is a full professor of interior architecture and Vice Director of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His research focuses on domestic interiors – and the relationships between dwelling culture, domestic architecture, and modernity –, on transformative reuse through research-by-design, and on unconventional housing models. He is the Principal Investigator of the project UAH! Unconventional Affordable Housing.

Angela Barbanente is a full professor of urban and regional planning at Politecnico di Bari. Her research focuses on the analysis of processes and practices of territorial transformation – investigated through the lenses of theories of social learning and social mobilization – and on the role of institutions and regulatory systems in these processes. From 2005 to 2015, she served as the Regional Councilor for Territorial Quality in Apulia.

Massimo Bricocoli is a full professor of urban planning and policy design and Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His work focuses on the interface between welfare and urban policies, housing policies and projects, urban ethnography, and urban regeneration in both academic and applied research. He is the Scientific Coordinator of OCA, Observatory on Housing Affordability, in Milan.

Elena Marchigiani is an architect and an associate professor in urban planning at the Department of Engineering and Architecture at Università degli Studi di Trieste. Her research focuses on planning tools, urban projects, and policy design in the fields of social housing and neighborhood regeneration, welfare and inclusive mobility, the building of collaborative processes, town planning and city management, and territorial and landscape planning and design.

Daniele Petrosino is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Political Sciences at Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. He holds a PhD in sociology and was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting scholar at McGill University and the University of Barcelona. His research focuses on ethnonationalism, ethnic relations, migration, identity, and social inequalities.