The raw material used by the Japanese architect Kei Kaihoh in the pavilion dedicated to climate change comes from Falzarego
CORTINA. From Col Gallina to the Venice Biennale: this is the journey that snow has made. In recent days, the workers of Ista (the company that manages the ski area of Col Gallina, Socrepes and Pomedes) have collected the abundant snow on the Falzarego pass in white bags. The bags were then loaded onto the trucks and subsequently, once they arrived in Venice, onto the boats bound for the Biennale for the installation of the installation by the Japanese architect Kei Kaihoh Architecst, located inside the pavilion dedicated to climate change entitled “designing for climate change “.
The installation created in collaboration with the architect Giulia Chiatante and Kentaro Hayashi is called “melting landscape”. It is a modern version of Yukimuro: a traditional method used to preserve food in the cold mountains of Japan. With the aim of activating indoor glaciological research and with the aim of modeling the melting of snow and describing the fate of the structure, glaciologists, climatologists and environmental scientists from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policies of the University of Milan have set up a real scientific laboratory: the work can be visited from 22 May and will be until its complete merger. Kei Kaihoh’s installation represents research into new ways of using snow and new technologies to apply to it. It is part, in fact, of “designing for climate change” a room of the Biennale in which architects face this challenge by creating spaces that protect the natural environment and imagining alternative climatic characteristics. It is a study that wants to lay the foundations for the design of the future of these ephemeral landscapes: from valleys in small villages to empty plots and gardens in dense cities, the use of storage methods can generate clean energy and bring the focus on this endangered resource; a new type of architecture can also derive from this process, which works together with natural phenomena. The snow of Cortina, at the Biennale, will become water and will be monitored by researchers from the University of Milan; collected by Japanese architects, it will finally be released in the Venice lagoon.