Palladio Through Chinese Eyes: A Dialogue Across Five Centuries

Can a Renaissance architect still speak to the world today? That is the question at the heart of Chinese Voices on Palladio, an exhibition that brings the ideas of Andrea Palladio, the great Italian architect of the sixteenth century, into conversation with some of the leading voices in contemporary Chinese architecture and Italian contemporary art. Curated by the Department of Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Torino and organized in collaboration with the Tsinghua University Art Museum and the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, with the support of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia Treccani, the exhibition is the outcome of a joint research project between Italy and China. The exhibition unfolds in three sections. The first brings together fourteen leading Chinese architects who, through site-specific installations, architectural models, drawings, and original video interviews, reflect on the relevance of Palladio's ideas today - from the relationship between architecture and landscape to the balance between tradition and innovation, as well as proportion and the human experience of space. A second section features a newly commissioned photographic series by Lois Conner, juxtaposing Palladian landscapes in Italy's Veneto region with contemporary Chinese landscapes. The exhibition concludes with Palladio: Echoes in Contemporary Italian Art, presenting works by five Italian artists that offer contemporary interpretations of Palladio's cultural and architectural legacy.