As part of the presentations in the initiative titled Ca’ Giustinian 2010, the Venice Biennale makes available GUIDED VISITS to the exhibition, upon reservation. Next dates: April 8th, 15th and 22nd / May 6th, 13th and 20th / June 10th and 17th. For further information and reservations: Tel. +39 041 5218 828 - Fax +39 041 5218 732 - email promozione@labiennale.org

Thirty years after it was built, a re-examination of the famous design by Aldo Rossi for the Teatro del Mondo, a floating building anchored at the Punta della Dogana, and realised in 1979 for the Theatre Sector (then directed by Maurizio Scaparro) and Architecture Sector (directed by Paolo Portoghesi) for the Venezia e lo spazio scenico exhibition. Used in 1980 by the Theatre Sector for the first edition of the Venice Carnival, the Teatro del Mondo was transported by sea in the summer of 1980 to the Dubrovnik Theatre Festival.

 

“The project for the Teatro del Mondo”, explained Aldo Rossi, “is marked by three aspects: having a precise usable if not defined space, its positioning as a volume in accordance with Venetian movement, being on the water. Clearly, being on the water is its main characteristic; it is a raft, a boat: the limit or border of construction in Venice”.

 

As part of the Permanent Activities of the Visual Arts/Architecture, Theatre and ASAC (Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee - Historic Archive for the Contemporary Arts) activities, the exhibition enables the use and enjoyment of ASAC materials by the general public, in like fashion to the Visionary machines. Futurists at the Biennale exhibition held in the same spaces in 2009. This is the third event to be held in the Portego di Ca’ Giustinian (the second was connected to the online competitions for the 53rd International Art Exhibition), with which the Biennale di Venezia opened the doors of its historic site in the centre of Venice for the first time, and it presents itself to the city and lovers of culture with a series of meetings that will describe the history, life and initiatives of the Fondazione.

 

The exhibition includes material and copies of documents from the ASAC, the MAXXI_Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo and the Fondazione Aldo Rossi, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the Museo Correr, and the RAI archives. In particular:

 

·         a model of the Teatro del Mondo

·         the original metal sphere that crowned the roof

·         a structure reproducing an antique “new world”, with historic images

·         prints, posters, drawings, photographs and videos (RAI excerpts)

·         correspondence and press releases of the time

·         extracts from a documentary entitled Venezia e lo spazio scenico (la Biennale di Venezia)

·         a documentary entitled Aldo Rossi. Il Teatro del Mondo edited by Francesco Saverio Fera, directed by Dario Zanasi.

 

In 1981, Aldo Rossi explained, “I would like to point out that the Teatro del Mondo struck me for its life; in other words, for its formation and its being in the city and with regard to the performances. While I was listening to some music by Benedetto Marcello during the inaugural evening of the Teatro in front of the Salute and looking at the people on the stairs and balconies looking on, I perceived an effect that I had only generically foreseen. Since the Teatro was on the water, one could look out of the windows, and outside see the passing of the vaporetti and ships as though one were aboard another vessel, and these other ships entered into the image of the theatre, constituting its true fixed and mobile stage”.

 

“Cities used to give water different tasks, and not only in Venice”, went on Aldo Rossi. “The barges moving down the Ticino in the Lombard fog were transformed into carnival boats, and buildings over water are the mark of the Gothic cities of the north. And it is the image of Venice, a synthesis of Gothic, foggy landscapes and of Oriental inserts or transpositions, that makes this, the capital of the city on the water. And hence of the possible landscapes – not merely physical or topographical - between the two worlds. Even the RIalto bridge is a passage, a market, a theatre.

These analogies of the place in designing a building have a decisive importance in my mind; if read correctly, they are the project itself. Even if this be a building of a predictably brief existence, it is only a Venetian capriccio”.

 

“I don’t know if and how this theatre or little Venetian theatre will be built”, noted the architect about the project, “but it will grow in my and other drawings because it has something necessary about it: its limited capacity enables the possibility of direct, varied shows and, above all, in a central location in the city.

Its structure could only be of wood, not just because of the period it will last, for wood is a solid material and strong through time.. But because it is linked to the architecture of this theatre not in a functionalistic sense but because it expresses this architecture: wooden boats, the black wood of the gondolas, the maritime constructions.

And finally, the permanent or temporary theatre was a major carpentry project barely masked by gilt and stucco. These are the few notes of a project of mine, independently of the possibility of constructing or using it. But certainly not independent of a Venetian construction, of a way of designing that seeks fantasy only in reality”.

The Teatro del Mondo
INTRODUCTION:
Foreword by the President Paolo Baratta
Foreword by the exhibition curator Maurizio Scaparro
Writings by Aldo Rossi