Rachele De Stefano is the Head of Architecture at ECC Italy.  Venetian by birth, a degree in Economics and Management of Arts and Cultural Activities from Ca' Foscari and a Master in Cultral economics and entrepreneurship from the Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam, she is also directly involved in "Time, Space, Existence" as a member of the curatorial team.
We asked her a few questions to investigate the nature of the project.

First of all, which is the relationship between “Time Space Existence” and the Venice Biennale?
The exhibition was originally conceived as a side event of the Venetian kermesse, while today it is a parallel but completely independent exhibition. The fruitful collaboration, though, continues: for one, we seek to give a voice to those countries that, despite being part of the official exhibition programme, do not have a space within the traditional venues of the Biennial. This is the case with the National Pavilion of Pakistan, which we will be hosting with the exhibition “Mapping Festivities”. Furthermore, as part of our long-standing collaboration with the Mies Van der Rohe Foundation, the ECC is a partner of the Young Talent Architecture Award programme, the YTAA, (a side event to the Biennale) hosting the exhibition of the same name and the award ceremony (September 28, at Palazzo Michiel).

In "Time Space Existence" there are architects, engineers and visionary artists. What is the reason for this blending?
We feel it is important to examine architecture through a wider lens, including the viewpoint of art, in a productive exchange between the two dimensions aimed at lending additional perspective through reciprocal ideas and forms of contamination that find a common language and common ground in the search for shared solutions. The diversity that characterises the proposals helps to horizons: while the architect identifies solutions on how to rethink the new world, the artist offers ideas that are at times poetical, at times utopian, and at times even ironic or provocative.

So what is this new world that is surfacing from the review?
No ready-made recipe is coming out of the exhibition. Rich with a diverse range of voices and stories from every corner of the globe, “Time Space Existence” is an opportunity to reflect on existence, redefined by a contemporary perception of time and interaction in both physical and virtual space, a workshop of ideas and a source of inspiration for change. More specifically, there are various projects that seek to resolve the challenges presented by climate change, promoting the idea of Green Cities, with a focus on sustainability; Blue Cities, which exploit water resources; and Resilient Cities, which highlight the capacity for social cohesion and inclusion.

Which role does architecture have in this disruption?
The invitation is for architecture to reconsider the idea of permanence, shifting the focus from the resilience of the city to the resilience of its citizens. Collaborative, shared and participatory strategies need to be adopted in order to generate urban sites that are capable of responding to social, territorial and climatic conditions as dynamic as those we are currently facing, in situations where widespread resilience may be the result of the process rather than the final result. In other words, we are all climate refugees: citizen-making moves in tandem with place-making via the collaborative creation of knowledge.

Opening image: Watershed Urbanism, the project curated by Adrian Parr that presents pioneering projects for environments that can expand, organically integrating their waterways. On display at Palazzo Bembo