Local Architects – Competitions

First prize
Results of the design competition of the Egyptian pavilion in Venice
ROBA BICCHIA
FREE SPACE
Cities were founded because societies are better than the individuals that make them. A
society needs places to operate, manifest, recognize, and reproduce. The city is the
place of society, opportunity, exchange and, therefore, of knowledge. In these few
lines, one could explain the reasons of the secular phenomenon of the massive
urbanization that seems to have no limits or exhausts its scope. Through its expansion,
over time, the city from limited conurbation has become a region, then a whole history
Since long time, the historical clear separation between Urbs and Orbs, between the
city and “the everything else’; has been outmoded.
Nowadays, through the globalization and the cancellation of physical distances due to
the digitization of the world, the city begins to become “urban-world”
This accumulation process of volumes, functions, and lives has never been completely
issueless; undeniably, it has been very unfair and painful. Since the age of
industrialization in the XIX century and consequent rapid urbanization, great, visions,
planning strategies and strict-zoninq have slowly but inexorably demonstrated their
implementation limits. In the post-modern era, the city seems to be more and more a
metabolic organism.