How do we experience liberated time today? What role can architecture still play in shaping the desire for vacation? The festival Abitare la Vacanza. Architectures for Liberated Time, scheduled for July 1-5 in Varazze (Savona) and July 8-13 in Ospedaletti (Imperia), addresses these questions through an investigation of the built landscape of the Ligurian Sea coast, looking back to the post-World War II and economic boom years, when mass tourism and leisure transformed vacation resorts in depth. Curated by Gloria Bovio, Andrea Canziani and Emanuele Piccardo, the festival takes the form of a diffuse and free palimpsest that connects architecture, photography, anthropological research and civic participation.
A proposal that consists of exhibitions, public meetings, guided tours, children’s workshops, film screenings and special openings, with the aim of building a collective reflection on the tourist landscape and its evolution, between memory and transformation. Produced by the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Imperia and Savona (SABAP IM-SV) together with the Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (DRAC PACA), theplug_in association and the cultural enterprise Dialogues d’Art, the project has the collaboration of the municipalities of Varazze and Ospedaletti, the Association of PPC Architects of Savona, and IN/Arch Liguria.
Architecture and urban planning become tools for interpreting changes in social behavior and landscape. Among the historical references from which the project moves are La lunga strada di sabbia, a 1959 reportage by Pier Paolo Pasolini with photographs by Paolo Di Paolo, and issues 283 and 284 of Casabella magazine dedicated to Italian coasts. Not to mention the 13th Milan Triennale of 1964, which focused precisely on the theme of leisure. The festival takes up that investigation more than sixty years later to reflect on the way vacation has been transformed as a cultural and social experience. Two case studies will serve as the backdrop for the entire event. In Sanremo and Ospedaletti, the Capo Pino and Capo Nero residential complexes, built between 1952 and 1972 by Luigi Carlo Daneri, mark the transition from the single-family house to the collective vacation model. In Varazze, on the other hand, the urban plan for Piani di Invrea, drawn up between 1958 and 1963 by Ignazio Gardella and Marco Zanuso, proposed a vision of the vacation extended to the entire year, anticipating the logic of flexible and seasonal living.
During the festival, these two settlements will be exceptionally open to the public thanks to guided tours organized by IN/Arch Liguria, which will illustrate their architectural peculiarities and the cultural context in which they were born. Starting with these emblematic architectures, the program aims to stimulate new readings on the value of the built landscape, proposing a balance between protection and sustainable transformation. The photographic exhibition MiraMare, curated by Gaia Cambiaggi, Marco Introini and Emanuele Piccardo, will accompany the public throughout the exhibition. Their shots, taken between Varazze and Ospedaletti, return an authorial and critical look at buildings, infrastructure and views of the Ligurian coast. The format of the exhibition refers to a travel notebook, evoking the personal diary as a tool of memory and observation.
Alongside the exhibitions, the festival includes a busy schedule of public talks that will address the themes of landscape, photography, architecture and social transformation. Architects, scholars, photographers and representatives of institutions will discuss how to reread today the 20th-century tourism heritage, between conservation needs and urgencies of regeneration. Added to this dimension is the participatory project Diario Vacanza, an open space where citizens, tourists and visitors can contribute stories, postcards, photographs and personal memories of the 1960s and 1970s. The goal is to collect useful materials to compose a collective narrative of the way leisure time was experienced, and inhabited, along the Italian coasts. Also active for the duration of the event will be theFestival Newsstand, a traveling location with deck chairs and umbrellas, designed as an informal place to stop and read. Here it will be possible to consult volumes, informational materials, choose author postcards and leaf through the MiraMare exhibition book, designed as an extension of the visual and narrative experience.
The festival caters to a wide and diverse audience, from families to tourists, from professionals to students, with a focus on even the youngest children. With the “School of Architecture for Children,” aimed at children aged 6 to 11, games and educational activities will be offered to learn to recognize the elements of built space that characterize everyday life. Finally, among the scheduled events is the film festival Des rêves de vacance en béton, featuring documentary films by director Reinhold Jaretzky, dedicated to the relationship between architecture, landscape and society in the context of tourism. The festival will also continue in 2025 and 2026 on French territory, thanks to the collaboration between the Ministries of Culture of Italy and France, as part of the month of architecture promoted by DRAC PACA. Future initiatives will take place between the Côte d’Azur and the Var department, in collaboration with the Maison de l’architecture et de la ville Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. An international exhibition and conference are planned in Menton and Hyères, which will broaden the cross-border discussion on the legacy of post-World War II tourism architecture.
The full program is available online at www.abitarelavacanza.it.
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| Vacation architectures: a festival to reread the Ligurian coastal landscape |
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