An “Archimbuto” for the Italian Pavilion

Designed by Cino Zucchi and built by the De Castelli company from Treviso, it’s the portal for the Italian Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice

Designed by Milanese architect Cino Zucchi and built and sponsored by De Castelli, directly from the province of Treviso comes the most powerful outdoor element in the highly anticipated Italian Pavilion at the soon-to-open 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.

Cino Zucchi – curator of the Pavilion on commission from MIBACT – has designed a large portal made of délabré Cor-ten steel. The portal, affectionately nicknamed “Archimbuto”, the ‘Archi-funnel’, because of its shape which harmonizes with the existing space and welcomes the visitors to the exhibition, enhances the expressive potential of the metal, thanks to the development of a special finish that highlights the typical colour range of steel – from gray to brown to blue.
The project marks yet another step forward in the excellent understanding between the architect from Milan and the company founded in the Veneto region, which began two years ago with the installation ‘Copycat. Empathy and Envy as form-makers’ created for the 13th Architecture Biennale, the only Italian project that won an Honourable Mention from the international jury of the Exhibition.
This year, the portal designed by Zucchi offered De Castelli not only an exceptional exhibition venue, behind Sansovino’s seventeenth-century Gaggiandre in the Arsenale and not far from the extraordinary nineteenth-century metal hydraulic crane that was recently restored by MIBACT, but also a further stimulus to pursue its experimentations into the wide range of expressive possibilities offered by metal, innovating the hand-made production processes that have always been the distinguishing characteristic of the company founded in Cornuda by Albino Celato.

This company, which has cultivated a family tradition that can boast three generations of metalworkers, has chosen to depart from the current models of metalworking to develop an absolutely contemporary perception, which at the scale of architecture and design refines both the most advanced industrial frontiers in this field and the crafting skills typical of the Venetian piedmont area, developing innovative finishes and production processes to serve their collaboration with famous Italian and international designers.
The large curved portal of the Italian Pavilion will act as a ‘visual amplifier’ to funnel the visitors into the exhibition curated by Zucchi, which under the title ‘Innesti_Grafting’ will explore the repercussions of modernity in Italy, the theme suggested to the National Pavilions by the director of the 2014 Biennale Rem Koolhaas.

Anchored to a cement platform, consisting in 163 panels for a total height of 10 meters and weighing 6 tons, the portal thus is also an explicit materialization of the title of the exhibition: ‘grafting’ contemporary creativity onto the ancient and beautiful spaces of the Arsenale, it is also a ‘link’ between inside and outside, the public dimension of the visitor itineraries and the more sheltered and reflexive enjoyment of the exhibition.

The sculpture bench
Sponsored by the Main Sponsor Lavazza, a second contemporary ‘graft’ will close the exhibition Innesti_Grafting curated by Cino Zucchi for the Italian Pavilion of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.
Further proof of the fertile collaboration between Cino Zucchi, the architect who designed it, and the De Castelli company from the Veneto region, who built the amazingly long acid-finish cor-ten steel sculpture-bench – with its sinuous forms and fluctuating heights – which unfurls like a metal snake in the sunny green Giardino delle Vergini.

Conceived to offer visitors a friendly pause to relax, after visiting the Pavilion, in the landscaped spaces of the garden, the bench appears an the ideal complement to the ArchiFunnel portal, which completes the coherent sequence of spaces that, in Zucchi’s project, broadens to encompass the prestigious and differentiated indoor and outdoor spaces of the Arsenale.

The bench in figures
The sculpture-bench is made out of Dèlabré cor-ten steel, distinguished by its acid finish and unfurling over a length of 120 metres. It is divided into modules of approximately 3 metres – assembled by hidden mechanical joints – made out of two coupled 5-mm sheets of metal. Supported by 220 pipes with different thicknesses, the bench ranges in height between 15 and 370 cm.

Architecture: Cino Zucchi