Venice, Italy – January 15, 2023 is the deadline to participate in the first edition of DoorScape, the international competition that stimulates the thinking about the entrance space, conceived by Oikos Venezia and the Querini Stampalia Foundation based in Venice. The jury president Michele De Lucchi, together with his firm AMDL Circle, will also be curator of the exhibition set up in the area created by Carlo Scarpa at the Querini Stampalia Foundation, for the duration of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2023 and which will display the projects of the winner and finalists.
DoorScape, the brainchild of Oikos Venezia, a leading designer and manufacturer of high-end entry doors together with the Querini Stampalia Foundation, also sees the involvement of Adler, Iseo and Laminam as partner companies. The competition was created to value the entrance space in its many meanings, functions and connections.
“We are at the door, at the place that filters the encounter between the inside and the outside. It is a boundary, a passage through two areas that right there combine and wrap around each other. The theme brings together a psychoanalytic and architectural concept at the same time,” says architect Michele De Lucchi. “Traditionally, the boundary in architecture is a sharp line you bump into, where something else begins. Instead, if it were an area in which things coming from one side and the other somewhat overlapped, it would give rise to a shared territory that belongs neither to one nor to the other side, and that is precisely why it could become the place of encounter, where the limits of individual freedoms open welcomingly. Intense, compelling spaces of intersecting individuality.”
This theme, which has not been dealt with before, has been strengthened by the selection of a jury of specialists in the field, consisting of chairman Michele De Lucchi - AMDL Circle, together with Donatella Calabi and Alessandra Chemollo, Emanuele Coccia, Luciano Giubbilei, and Eugenia Morpurgo.
Therefore, DoorScape is not only aimed at architects and engineers, it also welcomes proposals from designers, creatives, and architecture students, who are asked to reflect on the entrance space as a place for dialogue between the access function and its various cultural, functional, formal, and possibly symbolic, translations. The winner will receive € 10,000 in prize money and its project will be exhibited, along with those of the other finalists, at an exhibition held in the area set up by Mr. Carlo Scarpa at the Querini Stampalia Foundation for the whole duration of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia 2023.
This multidisciplinarity within the jury is a choice that has already produced several expressions of interest from Italian architectural firms, as well as international architects and designers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, England, Morocco and Mexico, besides having aroused the curiosity of some Italian student groups and a London group.
The projects will be evaluated not only based on the technical skills, but also because of the cultural implication of the proposed projects. The jury will be chaired by Michele De Lucchi – AMDL Circle, one of the most renowned architects and designers in Italy, who founded an architectural firm – the AMDL Circle –which is known for its humanistic approach to design. According to AMDL Circle principles, who designed iconic architectural works, such as the Unicredit Pavilion in Milan and the Bridge of Peace in Tbilisi (Georgia), the tenet of design is a continuous search for an improved quality of life, both physical and intellectual. The Circle, the symbol chosen in 2019 for the firm identity, embodies this philosophy: while encompassing the historic design heritage, it also opens up to interactions of ideas, people, and disciplines with an ideal door.
Donatella Calabi, a former professor of Urban and Territorial History and Deputy Rector of the IUAV University in Venice. She was also Directeur d’études invité at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Visiting Professor at the British Academy in London, Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester and taught courses at Harvard and MIT (USA), in Paris, in Madrid, in Sâo Paulo (Brazil), and in Tokyo. Ms. Calabi is a researcher with a holistic approach to architecture as an element that blends landscapes and interventions.
Alessandra Chemollo, a photographer, graduated from the IUAV University in Venice with a dissertation on the relationship between architecture and photography. In her work, the reflection on the representation of architectural works, as developed both in her professional activity and in individual projects, comes to the fore. In her professional experience, spanning thirty years, she has ranged from historical to contemporary architecture, developing research areas with educational and curatorial purposes.
Emanuele Coccia, a philosopher and professor of philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and previously at the University of Fribourg, has focused his studies on analyzing images in relation to ontology, consumer society, fashion, and the language of advertising. Among its fundamentals there is the idea that only by revolutionizing the experience of the world we will be able to make it again a space of common and shared happiness.
Luciano Giubbilei, a landscape and garden designer, since the beginning of his career, has focused on a constant dialogue with artists, architects, gardeners and craftsmen: this attention for cross-fertilization is the key through which he explores the personal creative process, with a view to expanding it through different, less conventional languages, thus moving it away from more conventional practices.
Eugenia Morpurgo is a researcher and a designer, who studies, in practice, the environmental, social and cultural impacts that manufacturing processes have on society, by prototyping alternative scenarios and products. Her works have been exhibited, among others, at MAXXI in Rome, at the Triennale in Milan, at the Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, at the Textile Arts Center in New York City, at Z33 House for Contemporary Art and Design in Hasselt, Belgium.
For more information on how to participate, on the jury and on the partner companies, please visit www.doorscape.eu.
