VIULIFE - Mapping Contemporary Venice

Spring 2010 Semester Creative Project

Mapping contemporary Venice: from today’s city to Venice of the future
 

Mapping contemporary Venice is a process, launched by VIU and Moleskine, involving intellectuals, local and national institutions and creative artists to give birth to a new visual collective imaginary of the contemporary Venice. A project which will manifest itself both offline and online and which will be presented at an exhibition during the Architecture Biennale vernissage (August 25) at VIU on the island of San Servolo.

The objective is to find, interpret and portray the signals of contemporary world which are present on the territory, or to imagine new ones to overlap to what we see everyday. Vega Science Park, the new Calatrava bridge, San Servolo and Certosa islands, the Arsenale complex, Palazzo Grassi and the recently restored Punta della Dogana art center, the Vedova Foundation designed by architect Renzo Piano, the glass factories located between Murano island and the mainland, the shoe district along the Brenta river, the creative and technological incubator H-farm and Fabrica in Treviso are just some of the elements of a metropolitan Venice which need to be visualized and narrated in a totally new way.

Mapping Contemporary Venice involves two parallel projects:

• Detour, featuring well known creative professionals and intellectuals (architects, urban planners, designers, visual artists, writers, sociologists, economists and environmental scientists)
• myDetour, involving Italian and international students from VIU, IUAV, Ca' Foscari universities, Accademia di Belle Arti and other institutions.

The projects will also be documented and shared on social networks and online communities through a web platform.