Venezia, la Superfortezza impermeabile. Una mostra al Forte di Sant’Andrea sull’architettura delle infrastrutture di difesa dalle acque, dal Rinascimento al Mose e oltre Venice, the Waterproof Superfortress = An exhibition at the Sant’Andrea Fortress on the architecture of the infrastructures of defence against water, from the Renaissance to the Mose and beyond.

Venice – currently facing a permanent hydraulic emergency – provides an opportunity to reassess the role of the Mose project, a new superfortress on a geographical scale. Reflecting through an exhibition on the ways in which to harmoniously regulate the relationship between the city, water and landscape, comparing history and the present, does not mean, however, turning nostalgically to the past, nor does it mean naively relying on the future, made unstable and nebulous by salvific technological promises. Rather, it means postulating that the world of historical architectural forms in relation to water is the bearer of settlement principles that can be reworked in the new forms of submerged infrastructures, of which Mose represents the prototype. The workshop focuses on the design of an exhibition to ideally place the historical superfortresses in dialogue with the Mose superfortress and its possible application in 52 other lagoons around the world. The exhibition, represented by models built to scales 1:50 and 1:20, finds an ideal setting in the 16th-century Forte Sant’Andrea, which stands in front of the sea horizon like a symbolic and theatrical gesture. The aim of the architecture of the superfortress exhibition is to merge design and history into one another: the forms of modernity – from the Renaissance to our present and beyond – will be realigned according to a different conception of temporality which, no longer considered a chronological fact, will express its plastic force in continuous, metamorphic and infinite becoming, restoring order, clarity and openness to the possibilities of our present.