Festarch 2011

The best of contemporary architecture is about to land on Assisi and Perugia: the two umbrian cities will be organized to host the third edition of Festarch, an exibition created by Stefano Boeri, held from the 2nd to the 5th of June every 2 years. Squares, streets, historic buildings, theatres and museums of the older nieghbourhoods are the ideal space to host shows, pavillions, meetings and events. Assisi and Perugia, two cities which emerge in the green core of Italy, were therefore chosen as the most suitable locations for an international architecture festival which has insight for environmental respect and green landscape design. The future of our urban centers, the structural profile of the new cities, their functional schemes and relation with the landscape and the natural environment are the key nodes which will be discussed by designers, artists and philosophers. And every author, architect,  reviewer is invited to expose some of his ideas on one specific area of the planet. The two cities of central Italy will become a center of geographical spacing and discussion: from Tokyo to Medellin, from Beijing to Ottawa, from New York to Mumbari. the title of the festival is in fact “Anticittà – Fare città nell’epoca della dissipazione urbana: Anticity-to build a city in the era of urban dissipation”. The main topic of the festival will be the research of a new way to recreate quality spaces for groups of people and the proposal of ideas for a permeating social structure. The debate proposed by Festarch will see the intervention of many international architects: Kazuyo Sejiima, Tom Mayne, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Peter Cook, Yona Friedman, Bjarke Ingels, Diller & Scofidio, Giancarlo Mazzanti, Benedetta Tagliabue, Michael Maltzan, Francois Roche, Bernard Khoury will discuss the key role of architecture in the construction and transformation of urban centers in different areas of the world. Moreover a theoretical and critic contribution to the debate will be given by distinguished writers like Mohsen Mostafavi, Ole Bauman, Joesph Grima e Geoff Manaugh. But Festarch is not just architecture and discussion on the future of our cities, it also aims to redesign a real global situation in which the architectural and urban context bonds with components of deisgn and contemporary art.