On Saturday July 1, 2017, the Mayor of Palermo Leoluca Orlando, Director of Manifesta Hedwig Fijen and Manifesta 12 creative mediator OMA, led by architect and partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, presented the architecture firm’s urban study of Palermo for Manifesta 12.
The 12th edition of Manifesta takes place in Palermo, Sicily. As a first stage, OMA conducted an urban study of the city. OMA’s Palermo Atlas, is meant to serve both as a creative mediation model for the biennial and a blueprint for the city’s development. Engaging with the architectural, urban, economic, social and cultural structures of Palermo, Manifesta 12 considers the city as a complex political body and an incubator of different global conditions.

For the 2018 Biennale a new curatorial model is being used, with four interdisciplinary creative mediators; Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli; Dutch filmmaker, Bregtje van der Haak; Spanish architect and scholar, Andrés Jaque; and Swiss contemporary art curator, Mirjam Varadinis. By fusing different disciplines and rooting itself in a holistic urban research, Manifesta hopes to extend its impact beyond just engaging audiences with contemporary art, but towards providing Palermo citizens with tools to imagine the future of their city.

Titled Palermo Atlas, the urban study is the foundational step of Manifesta 12, serving both as a blueprint for Palermo to plan its future and as a research framework to ensure that Manifesta 12 achieves a long-term impact for the city and its citizens. Palermo Atlas represents a novel creative mediation model proposed by Manifesta that focuses on transforming a nomadic art biennial into a sustainable platform for social change, rooted in holistic urban analysis and determined to leave a tangible legacy for every host city. It is the first time that Manifesta has invited an architecture firm as the creative mediator, with the goal to provide outside expertise and a new perspective to the host city and find new ways to unlock its potential in collaboration with citizens and local grassroots organizations.
 

Description of project by OMA - Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli

Palermo Atlas Introduction

There is no fixed way to approach Palermo.

The city cannot be reduced to a single statement or to a precise definition. It is rather a complex mosaic of fragments and identities emerging out of centuries of encounters and exchanges between civilizations. Palermo is historically cosmopolitan. Its material archeology, cultural legacy, somatic traits and ecosystems are the tangible evidences of a long lasting syncretism.

Today, Palermo can be considered an archipelago of the global: not a globalized city per se, but rather an incubator of different global conditions, that here reveals unique problematics, characters and potentials, making the city an ideal blueprint for the Mediterranean and the EU as a whole.

At the same time Palermo is probably no longer a city as we know it; it acts as a node for an extended geography of networks and systems that reach far beyond the EU-Mediterranean Area – from Sub-Saharan Africa to Scandinavia, from South East Asia to Gibraltar – rapidly reshaping its identity and role within the geopolitical scenario.

The local realities in the city are an expression of new globalized conditions. At the same time, they bring evident traces of a highly specific autochthone culture and of the city’s controversial modern history. It is in this tension between a fluid global identity and an irreducible milieu where Palermo finds its complex and specific character in the age of post globalization.

The work that follows represents an attempt to investigate both aspects: on the one hand it uses the city to script the story of a whole region; on the other it is a reflection on characters that are specific to Palermo. It is based on an omnivorous collection of stories and testimonies gathered on the ground and supported by data. Overall, it aims to offer a critical point of view on the city, through a selection of snap-shots representative of its present status.

Based on the format of a magazine – a special issue on Palermo - the document is structured into three main sections, each one developed around a number of new maps:

Journey: is a narration on Palermo through the lens of its historical role as barycenter of the Mediterranean. Extending the notion of “journey” and “traveler”, it spans from the historical dimension of the first Arab scholars travelling to Sicily since the IX Century, to the most recent impact on the city of migration (of men and other species), tourism, and climate change.

XX City: explores the physical, political and emotional bond between the city and its controversial post-war history, through media, architectural testimonies and private memoires.

Acupuncture: is a detailed report on our field explorations. It identifies those sites and stories that are representative both of the physical archeology of the city and its current conditions, and illustrates a potential selection of places, projects and parcours for the Biennial. An urban acupuncture stands as a strategy. Manifesta will question the dominant identity of a visual arts biennial by unleashing a number of different interventions spread across the city, based on local partnerships and long term impact.


The information collected here is the result of a series of formal and informal encounters and conversations with over 100 selected citizens in the course of a three months’ study project. Our most sincere gratitude goes to them and their invaluable contributions.

 
As articulated in the foreword to the Palermo Atlas by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, the work takes its starting point from the awareness that there is no fixed way to approach or define Palermo.
 
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli: “The city cannot be reduced to a single statement or to a precise definition. It is rather a complex mosaic of fragments and identities emerging out of centuries of encounters and exchanges between civilizations. Its material archeology, cultural legacy, somatic traits and ecosystems are the tangible evidences of a long lasting syncretism. Today, the city can be considered an archipelago of the global: not a globalized city per se, but rather an incubator of different global conditions. It acts as a node for an extended geography of networks and systems that reach far beyond the EU-Mediterranean Area – from Sub-Saharan Africa to Scandinavia, from South East Asia to Gibraltar and America.”

Using OMA’s unique methodology, Palermo Atlas attempts to investigate this complex, evolving character of the city from an interdisciplinary lens - covering architecture, archeology, anthropology, archival research, personal histories and media.
 
Leoluca Orlando, the Mayor of Palermo: “Offering the city of Palermo a reflection of great value, Palermo Atlas shows the story of the city’s past and recent history through the perspective of the future. Palermo Atlas captures the complexity of Palermo and its inhabitants, as well as historical and current connections between the city, the Mediterranean and Europe. The study shows the joint commitment of the City Hall and Manifesta to develop a biennial that is truly engaged with Palermo’s cultural richness, its history, hospitality, spirit of peaceful co-existence and the city’s vision for the future.”
 
Hedwig Fijen, Director of Manifesta: “Manifesta 12’s Palermo Atlas will function as a sustainable instrument, further developing a long-lasting legacy of the Manifesta 12 nomadic biennial over the next two years.”
 
The Palermo Atlas was presented in the newly re-opened Teatro Garibaldi in Palermo, assigned by the City of Palermo to Manifesta. Prior to the biennial, Teatro Garibaldi will be used as a temporary Manifesta 12 office and cultural hub for Palermitani including an exhibition to discover the history of Manifesta, a pop-up café, an art library, film screenings, educational tours and workshops, and more. It will also be one of the key venues of the Manifesta 12 biennial in 2018.
 
The European Nomadic Biennial will open in the Sicilian capital on June 15, 2018.

More information

Label
Manifesta Director
Text
Hedwig Fijen
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Partner
Text
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Team
Text
Giacomo Ardesio, Giulio Margheri, Marcello Carpino, Martina Motta, Paul Cournet
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Contributors
Text
Andrea Masu, Davide Rapp, Pietro Airoldi, CAVE studio, Delfino Sisto Legnani, Francesco Bellina, Minimum
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Manifesta
Text
Maria Elena Ciullo, Carlo Coppola, Esther Regueira, Francesca Verga, Yana Klichuk, Katheryna Rojas, Maria Romana Tetamo, Tatiana Tarragó, Roberto Albergoni
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Read more
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli joined OMA in 2007 and is based in Rotterdam. A partner since 2014, Ippolito’s work at OMA/AMO has a focus on preservation, scenography, and curation. Currently Ippolito is leading the transformation design of the 16th century Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin and the design of Repossi’s flagship store on Place Vendôme in Paris. Recent work includes Monditalia, a multi-disciplinary exhibition focused on Italy, at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; scenography for the Greek theater of Syracuse in Sicily (2012); and the co-curation of Cronocaos, OMA’s exhibition on preservation at the 2010 Venice Architectural Biennale. Through collaborations with different brands including Repossi, Galleries Lafayette, Knoll, and Prada his activity extends to research, product design, temporary installations, and publications. Since 2010, Ippolito is responsible for a range of AMO projects with Prada, including the stage design for the brand’s fashion shows and special events, and the art direction of videos. He contributes to exhibition design for Fondazione Prada, with projects such as When Attitudes Become Form: 1969/2013 and Serial Classics (2015). Ippolito holds a Master of Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano.

 
Read more
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...