The Academic education is undoubtedly one of the most critical, nodal and complex instruments in the totality of the person’s education, if one thinks about all the responsibilities that the latter takes charge of.

An instrument that must know how to place itself as a true intermediary and moderator between different worlds, managing to connect, relate and joint them in an increasingly solid and lasting way through the integration of disciplines, knowledge and targeted practices, in addition to the development of ideas and ideals. In the same way, it must be able to create and strengthen links between the identities that compose it, offering, integrating, welcoming, listening and responding.

Metaphorically, it is almost spontaneous to think about the academic education as a sort of articulate and complex interweaving of ideas, knowledge, skills and relationships. A dense weave capable of giving life to a rich embroidery, in which it is possible to read and measure in a different and unique way the soul of every single university, its offer and its real potential.

For this to be possible, however, it is essential that this very structure be made visible, clear, understandable and accessible, while showing its generative attitude: just as in a loom for weaving, the plot always follows a precise and solid warp; through several passages, intertwining with it, it finally reveals fabrics with incredible designs and colors.

Interlace Pavilion, a project for the Open Day IUAV 2018 pavilion, focuses on the educational offer of the IUAV University of Venice. Collecting all these fundamental concepts and using them as a generator filter, it wants to answer to the request for a unique element able to expose an institution that, with a key event like the Open Day, seeks to know and make itself known.

First of all presenting itself as a dynamic and flexible device, able to synthesize in itself the soul of the institution, both in symbolic-metaphorical terms, as well real and tangible ones.

The pavilion is designed as a real «performative» tool. Its receptive character turns into an exhibition based one and, again, into communicative, through a spatial and aesthetic representation that’s simple and immediate, but at the same time extremely articulate and rich.

In its design is enclosed the educational structure of the university, which through a symbolic generator element becomes true volume characterized by the various disciplines that structure the IUAV itself, turning the pavilion into an extremely Open Source project that lives on its strengths of reversibility, adaptability and flexibility.

The five different study paths, the three main levels of education and other four important collateral tools, mark the space and structure of the pavilion while a web of transparencies is interwoven in it, projecting synergistic games of shadow and light, representing the collaboration between different knowledge, ideas and practices.

Generating space through its meaning

The space of the pavilion, its shape, form and structure are directly generated by its intrinsic meaning and its primary purpose: to exhibit the university to the public and its future students. It is therefore the university’s lending elements, the basis of its educational offer, that gives life to the pavilion, which can thus be «measured» through them: 5 addresses, 4 nodal tools and 3 levels of education generate a simple, clear space, capable of being receptive to changes. The pavilion represents the very structure of the university.

Exhibiting the University interlacing knowledge, ideas and practices

The generating elements of the basic structure are intertwined with each other, generating an articulated volumetric symbol of cooperation between the knowledge, ideas and practices of the various disciplines, articulating the three levels of education, supported by four powerful collateral tools that distinguish the university offer, enriching it. A performative pavilion, a fluid, flexible and re-adjustable space that is an auditorium and a dynamic exhibition device at the same time. The university is a tool, a medium, able to generate.

A collaborative open source project

The intertwining cooperation is not just symbolic. This is in fact embodied in the very soul of the action plan for this pavilion: once the basic design is provided, representing in itself the discipline of Architecture, it is hoped that this last will be filtered through more and more reworkings by the other disciplines that structure the university, eventually generating the final project for the Open Day. Here the students of Fashion will be able to take care of the used textile materials, Visual Arts of the communicative aspect, and so on. In this way the university will really exhibit itself.