Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Designed by Carlo Ratti, Italo Rota, and Matteo Gatto and their design teams at CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, Italo Rota Building Office, and Matteo Gatto have opened the new Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020 with the theme: “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.”
The Italian Pavilion covers an area of over 3500 square meters and has been defined by its designers as “Moving architecture,” a project that presents itself to the public as an experiment into reconfigurable architecture and circularity.
Innovation and experimentation animate the whole structure.
At the technological level, an advanced nebulizer-based climate mitigation system has been used, which offers a sustainable alternative to air conditioning.
External escalator leads visitors to the beginning of the exhibition path, located inside the pavilion and standing 11 meters above the ground.
From this panoramic point, visitors are able to directly observe everything below and walk along a walkway suspended over the exhibition spaces and the installations.
The structure’s roof three hulls of life-size boats, measuring from 40 to 50 meters in length and painted in the colors of the Italian flag (green, white and red), the largest “tricolor” in the country’s history as it extends over 2,100 square meters.
The three hulls –perfectly capable of setting sail after the event – are supported by more than 150 slender steel pillars, each standing 27 meters high. The pillars also support a wave-shaped roof membrane responsible for modulating the intensity of natural light that penetrates the pavilion.
The multimedia curtain façade, made of nautical ropes produced with recycled plastic, equivalent to about 2 million plastic bottles. LEDs that illuminate and give dynamism and a multimedia aspect to the façade have been incorporated into the ropes.
Inusual and original construction materials have been used throughout the project, the result of a great deal of research: from algae to coffee grounds, from orange peels to sand.
Inside the pavilion, some of the main spaces to highlight include: the Belvedere, a round structure topped by a dome and covered in wild plants typical of the Mediterranean scrub, which pays homage to classic Italian Renaissance gardens; the Innovation Space dedicated to technological innovation; the “Second Sun” and “Second Moon” digital installations, designed to transform visitors’ emotions into light effects in real-time; as well as the “Theatre of Memory”, where a 3D-printed copy of Michelangelo’s David is exhibited, created by the Galleria dell’Accademia of Florence and the Ministry of Culture in partnership with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Florence.
The itinerary concludes on the ground floor with the “Solar Coffee Garden”, a café designed by the CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota studios for Lavazza.
Project: Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020
Architects: CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati
Design Team: Carlo Ratti, Francesco Strocchio, Monika Löve, Luca Bussolino, Mario Daudo, Serena Giardina, Ina Sefgjini, Nicola Scaramuzza, and Giovanni Trog
Architects: Italo Rota Building Office
Design Team: Italo Rota, Francesca Grassi, Francesco Lato, Omid Mohammad, Gilberto Piano, and Sammy ZarkaArchitects: Matteo Gatto
Design Team: Matteo Gatto, Stefano Monaco, Barbara Corli, Valentina Rizzo, Paolo del Toro, and Edoardo Perani
Landscape Consultants: CNR (Silvia Fineschi, Roberto Reali, Francesco Carimi), GMP Studio (Flavio Pollano, Rachele Griffa)
Engineers: F&M Ingegneria
Client: Italian Commissioner’s Office for Expo 2020 Dubai
Photographers: Michele Nastasi
