The Space – SIMPOSIO

The Colony

The colony’s indoor spaces will host the workshops, the symposia and some performances and installations.

The cottages

Each one of the 270 cottages was designed to house a family, and their several different configurations were going to allow a comfortable stay to families made up of different numbers of members. Gellner not only worked out the typological and structural solutions of the houses, but also examined in depth the planning of the interiors, of the movable and unmovable furniture: pieces made serially, sturdy and easy to maintain.

The Camping

Inside the Camping, about 50thousand square meters at an altitude of 1250 meters, guests will sleep and have meals and some performances and installations will be exhibited.

The Church

The Church of Nostra Signora del Cadore (Eng.: Our Lady of the Cadore) displays all of its verticality through the equilateral triangular shape and a bell tower that, with its high steel steeple, gives lightness and equilibrium to the entire composition, becoming a clear impression on the landscape. For this project, Gellner requested, in September 1956, architect Carlo Scarpa’s collaboration. The Venetian master cooperated on the artistic side, merging with Gellner’s planning: the result was going to be an absolute architectural production which involves architecture, landscape and décor.

Villaggio Eni

This year Simposio will take place among the mountains, at the Eni Village in Borca di Cadore (BL); it is a post-war utopian project in the heart of the Dolomites. In the village’s premises the Progetto Borca has been implemented for a few years; this project aims at fueling the cultural valorization to kick off a series of functional practices to permanently using the venue, such as educational activities and artistic residencies.

Simposio will be planning three days of shared activities within the village spaces, thus repopulating the wooden huts of the camping, reactivating the canteen service and using the wonderful spaces in the colony. Three days during which a community of willing people will face the mountain environment, the artistic practice, the practical analysis, the utopia. Three days in which artists and intellectuals will share ideas and thoughts and will deal with the need to shape a common model, starting from the village.

Within the Village we will try to define new rules for the society through self-managed workshops; everyone will be free to propose contents and activities. Every workshop will be documented to write testimony documents and a manifesto for future activities. Undoubtedly, Simposio is a non-profits project, which existence depends on active participation.

The Utopian Village

The Eni Village in Borca di Cadore (BL) was established between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, thanks to Enrico Mattei’s political and entrepreneurial ability, ambition and enthusiasm. The basic idea that underpins this visionary, ground-breaking project-in-progress was a sort of social city planning idea; Mattei’s expansive mind conceived this idea, which was later implemented firstly by Edoardo Gellner and secondly by Carlo Scarpa, who collaborated for some parts. Both interventions showed high architectural quality.

The social-organic criterion that Mattei adopted was perfectly understood, processed and transferred to the reality by Gellner, who re-interpreted it in an overarching way, from the city-planning, to architecture, to the tiniest interior design elements.

The venue main structures include the great Colony (30.000 square meters), Our Lady of Cadore Church, the hotel, the permanent camping, which can host up to 200 people, the detached houses and the residence.

It is an exceptional, unique place in Italy, where the relation between landscape strong elements and natural environment exceptionally melt with organic architecture, literally devoured by the woods.

Since 2000, the Village belongs to the Minoter company, which Dolomiti Contemporanee began to collaborate with, within a project of cultural and functional valorization of the settlement: in June 2014, the Borca project kicked off.