OPTA IN BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA VENEZIA

"Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go" Truman Capote

Our office has been invited to participate in the exhibition "Time Space Existence" at Palazzo Bembe during the Venice Architecture Biennale. The event takes place from June to November 2014 and shows projects and works of architecture practices from different parts of the world.

Following the main theme of the Biennale 2014: Fundamentals, and in accordance to the exhibition concept, OPTA shows a presentation, threetimesthree, that deals with certain concepts that may be valid anytime, anywhere and by any architect. Three railway stations in three different circumstances, three climates, three scales, three requitements, but the same mission, to become the means by which the travel activity develops, embracing exchange, mobility, progress and communication in one single place.

Time – Loja High Speed ​​Railway Station - Granada Spain - 

The Meadow 

In the last 200 years, we have invented the modern world, from the steam engine to the magnetic bullet train. During this period we have massively concentrated crucial discoveries and the society has experienced a huge and global change, unknown in the history of mankind. Everything goes fast in the current conception of society. Immediacy is considered quality of life, the personalization of media and the development of technologies, define a new way of conceiving time. This fast-paced experience gives us the certainty that there are no limits to future knowledge.

Space – Riyadh Railway Station Renovation & Upgrading - Saudi Arabia - 

The Desert

Native architectures have always been developed locally, according to their own needs and technology. This spirit is still valid nowadays, but enriched with new materials and systems that can provide the features that we need for a particular place. The train transportation, back in 1830, took the first step towards globalization. Perhaps railways architecture was the first transnational typology, with stations implanted wherever the train arrived. Nowadays, that steel architecture, symbol of modernity, has been transformed into a large service container, a public hub, in which the journey itself is only part of the multiple activities that take place there. Large international stations are no longer single buildings but large complex that spread their activity towards the city, offering additional services related to leisure, shopping, work and multimodal transportation. The limits of the stations become blurry, bringing built area and urban space together. 

Existence – Iquitos Amazon Railway Station – Peru -

The Rainforest

The gradual worldwide consciousness regarding the limited natural resources of our planet is the framework that currently defines any approach to human development. We seem too many for such limited means. We need to advance in the rationalization of resources, to get better results without over-exploiting or harming the environment. Sustainable growth today is the starting point of any action. Building systems and processes have to go in the same direction, low energy / water consumption and materials recycling. Nature participates in human progress. The consequences of the changes that are being detected in climate, increasingly affect our everyday life, especially in urban settlements, with disordered and violent changes of atmospheric phenomena. These facts lead us to rethink the artificial world that we have created and the changes that need to be introduced in it to redirect our modern existence towards life.