THE EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO ANOTHER DATE
The Italian Cultural Institute, in collaboration with ESAR – École Supérieure d’ARchitecture of Saint Joseph University of Beirut, is organizing a screening of the film “The Pavilion of Possibilities” by Chiara Andich, in the framework of the lecture given by Architect Alessandro Melis entitled “Out of Time – Systemic Urban Regeneration, Community Resilience and AI-Driven Architecture in an Era of Global Crises.”
THE PAVILION OF POSSIBILITIES [IL PADIGLIONE DELLE POSSIBILITÀ]
The film by Chiara Andrich, The Pavilion of Possibilities [Il Padiglione delle possibilità], is part of the project Perspectives on Resilient Architecture, conceived by Angelo Gioè and curated by Santina di Salvo, a cycle of six films devoted to exploring the theme of resilience as applied to contemporary Italian architecture. The film is presented in its world premiere in Beirut, within an urban context that in recent years has undergone profound transformations and critical challenges, urgently raising questions of reconstruction, sustainability, and the responsible management of the built heritage.
The narrative is carried by the voice of Alessandro Melis, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. The film proposes a critical traversal of the Italian Pavilion, calling into question the aesthetic and cultural paradigms of contemporary exhibition architecture, beginning with a critique of the conventional white box model and the supposed neutrality of exhibition space.
The Pavilion space is conceived as a stratified historical city, composed of alleys, disorder, opening squares, and converging figures, in opposition to an idea of rigid and homogenising order. In this perspective, the city is no longer understood as a stable scenario, but rather as a process of continuous adaptation to conditions of permanent instability, consistent with the systemic nature of contemporary environmental challenges.
The film addresses the theme of resilience through references to evolutionary biology, natural selection, variability, diversity, and redundancy as fundamental conditions of survival and of the capacity to respond to complex problems. The environmental crisis is not approached as a phenomenon that can be tackled in a sectorial manner, but rather as one that demands a profound cultural shift and a rethinking of the paradigms through which we interpret the relationship between cities, nature, and technology.
Within this framework, architecture is understood as an expanded field, capable of going beyond the construction of buildings to include devices, ecological infrastructures, materials, and systems able to produce tangible effects on air quality, soils, and urban ecosystems. The projects presented in the film — including Mutual Aid, Genoma, Spandrel, Plastisys, Jerico, and the Cyberwall — demonstrate how passive strategies, technological innovation, and natural processes may be integrated in order to respond to contemporary environmental challenges.
The choice of a visual and communicative language inspired by cyberpunk culture, Japanese anime, and gaming languages becomes a means of dismantling obsolete mental maps and of engaging with a different generation, questioning the traditional opposition between utopia and dystopia. The film thus articulates a vision of architecture as a critical, creative, and political practice, capable of interrogating the present and opening new horizons for the future of cities.
Presented in Beirut, the film acquires a particular significance as a space for reflection and dialogue among universities, architects, professionals, and stakeholders, offering concrete examples of the Italian approach to resilient architecture within a context that today calls for new strategies of adaptation, transformation, and conscious design.