Recognizing the Scenic Value of the City: Ephemeral Architecture as a Medium to Regenerate Urban Memories

Abstract

Today, we discuss “urban regeneration” often as the only way to revitalize those urban slices in the cities which has been forgotten or, somewhat, trivialized by consumer culture and tourism, which assault cities and tend to make them like an open-air playground. We should convey a process of “regeneration of collective memory” of the city through public exhibitions, as they were meant by the Venice Biennale or other cultural foundations rooted in cities during the ‘70s and ‘80s.

How can ephemeral architecture in the form of public exhibition help in this attempt?

Public exhibitions in the late ‘70s paved the way to a transparent methodology aimed at unifying both the Venetian and the international vocation of the Venice Biennale, against the prevalent tendency towards standardization of exhibitions.

This aspect, which is today absent, is one of the reasons why Venice is perceived as an open-air museum, rather than an active theatre for the collective memory.

The recovery, the study, and re-drawing this geography of non-existing places may offer a scenario of what it may be recovered in the future, as a methodology for future exhibitions, in order to cope with the danger of Venezia becoming a passive museum.