EUPavilion
Marco Provinciali
Conceived and established in 2019 by Anna Livia Friel, Marco Provinciali and Benjamin Gallegos, EUPavilion is structured as a research laboratory exploring the relationship between architecture and European institutions. The research has developed through the organization of public events, academic activities and publications. The materials relating to these activities are available on the EUPavilion website. EUPavilion is a collaborative effort that brings together architects, scholars, photographers, designers.
Anna Livia Friel (1988) is research associate at the TU Wien. She studied architecture at IUAV University of Venice, where in 2021 she earned a PhD in Urban Studies with a research on the urban role of demolition. She has been a visiting PhD student at the American University of Beirut and at the EPFL in Lausanne and has been working as a teaching assistant at IUAV and EPFL. Before joining the “Gestaltungslehre und Entwerfen” research unit in 2022 she has collaborated with the Habitat Research Center at the EPFL.
Marco Provinciali (1988) is an architect based in Rome. He graduated from IUAV in 2016, and founded Supervoid, together with Benjamin Gallegos Gabilondo. He has published projects and essays on magazines such as: SANROCCO, Domus, The Real Review, Vesper, Ardeth. He coordinates the Interior Design program at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in Rome and has been Visiting Professor at the TU Dortmund.
EUPavilion Eight proposals presents eight projects for the first European Pavilion at the Venice Biennale proposed by European artistic and architectural practices. The participants were invited by the curators of the exhibition to reimagine the national pavilion, still today the dominant symbolic and spatial paradigm within the Giardini. At the same time, the project for the European Pavilion provided an opportunity for asking what new representative languages are needed for defining the identity of a supranational organization in a state of continuous crisis and perpetual construction like the European Union. In the light of the current debate around the strengthening of the European integration, a reconsideration of the spaces where this process happens is of critical importance for the definition of a democratic and inclusive public realm. With its long-standing tradition of exhibitions based on an architectural brief the Venice Biennale and the typology of the pavilion provide an ideal testing ground for a new kind of European public building. The variety of approaches and responses provided by the participants – who grew up both within and on the borders of a Union under construction – reveals the extent to which architecture constitutes fertile, albeit little used, ground on which to develop the debate on European integration as a cultural project. The EUPavilion project aims to raise awareness of the public on these issues, by means of design.
EUPavilion has been presented through an online exhibition, a publication and a VR Intallation.
After being presented in Milan and at the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo, we see the LINA Architecture Programme as the perfect stage for the further dissemination of this research project.