A garden celebrating the meeting of two cultures: elements from the Italian gardening tradition are transplanted in Tianjin - a city in northern coastal China, near Beijing – and adapted to its urban context and its climate. All the characteristic features – the belvedere, the architecture, the topiaries, the scenic paths, the fountains, the artwork – are reinvented in a contemporary language, creating innovative shapes. As a supreme achievement of the project, the silhouette of Botticelli’s Venus overlaps the drawing of the garden; her lines create a trait d’union with the landscape areas.

Specifically created for the 11th Biennale of Architecture and set in a beautiful pavillion in the Venetian Arsenal, this installation reinterprets the Tianjin Garden project with water and images as its key features. Led through a bamboo maze overlooked by towering statues, visitors will find themselves in a vast space, with the images projected on the blind arches in the walls as the only source of light. The images reflected in the water add to the depth of the immense basin, where floating and lulled by melodies, lie Mimmo Paladino’s Sleepers.