Public Ambitions

The Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto presented Public Ambitions, the second installment in the exhibition series Italy Under Construction: Buildings, Landscapes, Positions in Contemporary Architecture, at Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa. Across national and political boundaries, the definition and architectural expression of what is public is undergoing a profound transformation. On the one hand, as governments decrease their investments in the architecture of public spaces, social experience is demoted to the form and character of privatized environments such as shopping malls. On the other hand, the popularity of virtual platforms is extending the conventional limits of the public sphere and redefining architecture as both an inhabitable site and a fluid image. 
 
To negotiate these conditions, architects must articulate strategies to reinterpret historically prominent public forms while pursuing new territories to engage and represent common space. Architects have responded to shifts in public interest by exploring new dimensions of transit and energy infrastructure while extending the traditional repertoire of public forms such as streets, squares, plazas and institutional and sacred buildings.  
 
In order to support and legitimize public architecture as an essential aspect of everyday life, Italy and much of Europe have also pursued design quality through a mandate of design competitions. Public Ambitions exhibited ten works recently built in Italy that sensitively address the contemporary challenges of building public architecture from the three perspectives of architectural form, urban presence and use as captured through mass media images. 

Presented by the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto and the Embassy of Italy in Ottawa, in partnership with John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto and Galerie SAW Gallery