History has taught us that, in its rigid, unilateral sectorization and categorization, it has often distorted representations, spreading homogeneous, misleading interpretations, marginalizing diversity, and stigmatizing a plurality of voices that would provide a more comprehensive vision. An evolution, mostly promoted by intellectuals and visionary artists, recognizing these limitations and the legitimate urge to reevaluate all cultural expressions, has advocated a change of perspective, stimulating more openness and flexible interaction. Societies need to become more inclusive: many institutions are revisiting and revising their own past, and exhibitions offer the possibility to present in a contemporary reading key, interwoven with the complex, multi-layered history, webs of echoes and references to new ways of non-traditional storytelling. The ephemeral character of the architecture of exhibitions reserves the privileged potential to experiment and set dynamic, engaging spatial stages. Architects, overcoming the rigorous canonic institutional orthodoxy and rethinking conventional language, have gradually re-contextualized and re-vitalized the exposition space from a simple depository of content to a relational space, through sensorial and intellectual stimulations. The exhibition ‘device’, analyzed in all its poly-semantic nature, finds new allies, new contaminations animated by a different expressiveness that, broadening communication through multidisciplinary insights, allow to craft immersive journeys. New multi-sensorial environments, adopting diversified tools and an effective, accessible vocabulary, more suited to present day, arouse curiosity and affinities, actively connecting and establishing fruitful synergistic processes. The powerful convergence of different modalities, at the intersection of architecture, arts, science and technology, embracing cultural, political, ideological, social and economic issues, above aesthetics, brings with consistency visual clarity, reaching a diverse and global audience, triggering encounter and participation, and contributing to a dialectic exchange. The exhibition as a heterogeneous manifestation of an ideological and aesthetic concept, reformulated according to an ethos of horizontal transversality, acquires new vitality through authentic cooperation and integration, transforming itself into a workshop, a laboratory, a public space, where the spectator becomes a participant. As an example of this paradigm shift, the 17th and 18th editions of the Venice Architecture Biennale have been privileged for motivating and promoting, with continuity of intents, a widely hybrid contaminated experiential architecture.

Architecture of Exhibitions: An Immersive Experience

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发表日期：

2025年

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Virginia Cucchi

摘要

History has taught us that, in its rigid, unilateral sectorization and categorization, it has often distorted representations, spreading homogeneous, misleading interpretations, marginalizing diversity, and stigmatizing a plurality of voices that would provide a more comprehensive vision. An evolution, mostly promoted by intellectuals and visionary artists, recognizing these limitations and the legitimate urge to reevaluate all cultural expressions, has advocated a change of perspective, stimulating more openness and flexible interaction. Societies need to become more inclusive: many institutions are revisiting and revising their own past, and exhibitions offer the possibility to present in a contemporary reading key, interwoven with the complex, multi-layered history, webs of echoes and references to new ways of non-traditional storytelling. The ephemeral character of the architecture of exhibitions reserves the privileged potential to experiment and set dynamic, engaging spatial stages. Architects, overcoming the rigorous canonic institutional orthodoxy and rethinking conventional language, have gradually re-contextualized and re-vitalized the exposition space from a simple depository of content to a relational space, through sensorial and intellectual stimulations. The exhibition ‘device’, analyzed in all its poly-semantic nature, finds new allies, new contaminations animated by a different expressiveness that, broadening communication through multidisciplinary insights, allow to craft immersive journeys. New multi-sensorial environments, adopting diversified tools and an effective, accessible vocabulary, more suited to present day, arouse curiosity and affinities, actively connecting and establishing fruitful synergistic processes. The powerful convergence of different modalities, at the intersection of architecture, arts, science and technology, embracing cultural, political, ideological, social and economic issues, above aesthetics, brings with consistency visual clarity, reaching a diverse and global audience, triggering encounter and participation, and contributing to a dialectic exchange. The exhibition as a heterogeneous manifestation of an ideological and aesthetic concept, reformulated according to an ethos of horizontal transversality, acquires new vitality through authentic cooperation and integration, transforming itself into a workshop, a laboratory, a public space, where the spectator becomes a participant. As an example of this paradigm shift, the 17th and 18th editions of the Venice Architecture Biennale have been privileged for motivating and promoting, with continuity of intents, a widely hybrid contaminated experiential architecture.