The Istituto Italiano di Cultura is pleased to present Public Ambitions, curated by Daniels Faculty post-doc fellow Roberto Damiani, the second installment in the exhibition and lecture series Italy under Construction.

Public Ambitions opens on Wednesday, April 6th and will run until May 6, 2016. The opening reception will be at 6.30 pm, at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 496 Huron Street.

On Thursday, April 7, at 6:00 PM there will be a panel discussion in Room 103, 230 College Street, with:

• Paola Viganò (Studio Viganò, Milan)
• Francesco Garofalo (Garofalo Miura, Rome)
• Dean Richard Sommer, Daniels Faculty
• George Baird, Professor Emeritus and former dean of the Daniels Faculty
• Hans Ibelings, architectural historian and critic and Daniels Faculty lecturer

Across national and political boundaries, the definition and architectural expression of what is public is undergoing a profound transformation. On the one hand, as governments decrease their investments in the architecture of public spaces, social experience is demoted to the form and character of privatized environments such as shopping malls. On the other hand, the popularity of virtual platforms are extending the conventional limits of the public sphere and redefining architecture as both an inhabitable site and a fluid image.

To negotiate these conditions architects must articulate strategies to reinterpret historically prominent public forms while pursuing new territories to engage and represent common space. Architects have responded to shifts in public interest by exploring new dimensions of transit and energy infrastructure while extending the traditional repertoire of public forms such as streets, squares, plazas, institutional, and sacred buildings. In order to support and legitimize public architecture as an essential aspect of everyday life, Italy and much of Europe have also pursued design quality through a mandate of design competitions.

Public Ambitions exhibits ten works recently built in Italy that sensitively address the contemporary challenges of building public architecture from the three perspectives of architectural form, urban presence, and use as captured through mass media images.

The invited architects are: ABDR (Rome); Baukuh (Milan); CeZ (Bolzano); Emanuele Fidone (Siracusa); Garofalo Miura (Rome); ifdesign (Milan); mdu architetti (Prato); MoDus architects (Bressanone); Scandurra Studio Architettura (Milan); Studio Paola Viganò (Milan).

Director: Alessandro Ruggera
Curator: Roberto Damiani
Exhibition Design: Nuria Montblanch, Roberto Damiani
Atlas: Meaghan S. Burke
Models: Alistair Grierson
Drawings: Neal Baj, Scott Carncross, Sally Kassar, Sungjin Lee, Liheng Li, John Natanek, Ashkan Nazemi, Cristopher Tron, Nadja Uzelac, Evan Wakelin
Graphics + Web: ZEEMA
Editor: Kevin Murray
Media partner: Azure Magazine