BEYOND MEDIA 2009. VISIONS
9. INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR ARCHITECTURE AND MEDIA
Florence, Italy - July 9-17, 2009
Stazione Leopolda, viale Fratelli Rosselli 5

On thursday July 9, 2009 at 3 pm the ninth edition of BEYOND MEDIA, international festival for architecture and media, will open at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence, Italy. It includes a rich program of videos, exhibitions, and a symposium in which the protagonists of the international debate on media in architecture will participate. A plurality of overviews on architecture and its ever more intense relation with diverse media will be debated. The festival is open to the public through July 17.
The theme for the ninth edition of the festival is VISIONS. It is dedicated to the conceptual visions produced by architects, the forms and the limits of various media, and the effectiveness of their expression in interpreting the needs of the architectural project to detach itself from the present and look beyond.

 Opening > July 9, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Squint/Opera will welcome the public at the entrance of the Stazione Leopolda with a VISIONS-themed installation; Antonio Piccirilli, together with NABA, will interpret the festival theme with the magic of a light installation; zpstudio has designed a “Tavolo della condivisione” (an Italian expression which suggests the idea of “sharing our visions around a table”). The table, located at the core of the exhibition area, is a place where the protagonists of the event will gather together with the guests and the public to share food, ideas and visions.

Videos
In the tradition of the festival, a program of 80 architecture videos (selected from over 600 international submissions) will be presented and on public view in order to construct an understanding of the issues that represent the world’s architectural thought and production, that interpret the potential of the audio-visual medium and qualify the architectural discourse.
Special recognition will be given to three noted practitioners of contemporary architecture, “THE VIEW MASTERS”, who in different ways demonstrated peculiar and fertile employment of video: UNStudio, Zaha Hadid Architects, and MVRDV.

Symposium
The symposium, curated by Pietro Valle (Stazione Leopolda, July 9 to 12) will address the conference themes in 6 panels. Twenty-five internationally recognized architects, critics, artists, historians and scholars have been invited to take part in the debate. They include Peter Wilson, Tony Fretton, Derrick De Kerckhove, Beatriz Colomina, Marcos Novak, Ruggero Pierantoni, Paul Polak, John Frazer, Alberto Garutti, and Mario Carpo.

Exhibitions
The exhibitions “URBAN VISIONS”, curated by Michele Bonino, and “SPOT ON SCHOOLS”, curated by Paola Giaconia, will present the results of a selected group of distinguished, international investigations carried out in 10 cities and 19 architecture schools.

Workshops
The “PRIME VISIONS” workshop, especially conceived for children, directed by the Spanish team, Que es arquitectura?, and organized in collaboration with the Istituto degli Innocenti in Florence, will offer to the youngest in the audience the possibility to explore architectural space.

Special events
 In addition, a series of special events that range from the reinterpretation of the famous exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” (MoMA, 1972) to a debate on the remarkable case of the “Koolhaas Houselife” film by Bekafilm.

With VISIONS, the BEYOND MEDIA festival will encourage reflection and comparison, will promote discussion of emerging issues, and will involve young architects and artists who are active in the construction of contemporary architecture. The event has been constructed to promote imagination and collegiality.