Novel approaches for Post-disaster Infrastructure at Biennale of Venice

Dr Ornella Iuorio’s work on future scenarios for post-disaster infrastructure has been showcased at the Biennale of Venice 2021, the world’s pre-eminent architecture exhibition.

Dr Ornella Iuorio’s work on future scenarios for post-disaster infrastructure has been showcased at the Biennale of Venice 2021, the world’s pre-eminent architecture exhibition.

The chair of the 2021 Biennale, Hashim Sarkis, Professor and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set the overarching theme: “How will we live together?”.

Each country around the world, within their national ‘Pavilion’ at the exhibition, worked to showcase the best of architecture within the context of the overarching theme.

Choosing “Resilient Communities” as its topic, the exhibition’s Italian Pavilion, led by Professor Alessandro Melis, was dedicated to placing the issue of climate change at the centre of the debate, highlighting the significant challenges that architecture is called on to face.

Resilient Communities is based on the firm belief that architecture must contribute significantly to improving the quality of life we lead, providing adequate responses to the environmental and social changes of our time.

As an advisory board member of the Italian Pavilion, Dr Iuorio brought the resilience of communities after disaster to the centre of the international discourse. Dr Iuorio organised the “Novel Approach for Post-disaster infrastructure” symposium in August 2021, a hybrid event attended by hundreds of participants, which focussed on the resilient design of housing and neighbourhoods post disaster, including earthquakes and flooding, and highlighted the key role that knowledge of materials and technologies, vernacular architecture and co-production have as an instrument for sustainable and seismic resistant architecture.

The dialogue will be continued at the next International Conference on Structures and Architecture, ICSA2022, in Aalborg in summer 2022.