Dodi Moss/Edoardo Tresoldi's design for the Italian Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai evokes classical architecture in wire mesh

"An architectural body, shifting from the given lot, is composed of two complementary identities: a transparent volume, a pure structural element, in which references to architectural archetypes stratify impalpably, and a solid, material pedestal, in which all the functions of the pavilion, which constitutes its opaque imprint, are accommodated.

"The team of designers [...] proposed a large volume from which different environments that stylistically evoke the palaces and courtyards of Italian architecture are subtracted in negative."

"The intersections and subtractions with the “parallelepiped container" create repeated cuts and volumetric decompositions and accompany visitors on an emotional, tactile and visual journey.

"The stratification between transparent and material elements and vegetation -the designers write- codifies some sort of ruin of memory that refers to the continuous synthesis of the past as the deep root of our work today. In this sense, the Pavilion proposes not only the Italian point of view, but the awareness of the Italian identity as a stratified entity that has its roots in a millenary cultural history."

"The pedestal gradually rises to a height, shaping a material shell that jealously guards the garden, making it visible only in part from the outside, and placing itself beneath the majestic transparent metal mesh structures that evoke the environments and vaults of Italian courtyards and palaces. The fusion between the materic and ethereal elements gives life to the large central spaces -the Prologue and the Square- which, pervaded by water and the garden, key elements of the great tradition of the Italian Gardens, constitute the evocative and functional fulcrum of the project."

"If on the outside the volume shaped by man is clearly visible, on the inside the architectural lines disappear completely to be covered by vegetation, water, metal mesh and glass, which form an enveloping and suspended environment. Transparent architecture is pure structural substance, expressed through the lightness of the material and the use of Italian architectural archetypes, the pedestal is its opaque imprint. The two elements are complementary and present each other as negative. The stratification between transparent and material elements and vegetation codifies a sort of ruin of memory that refers to the continuous synthesis of the past as the deep root of our work today.

"The Pavilion is a symphonic place where nature and architecture converse - following the original definition of garden- composing a formal and geometric space: it is on transparent architecture that vegetation develops and takes shape. The wire mesh structure determines the reading of the space within a unitary tale in which the two worlds elegantly blend."

Check out also the drawings and diagrams in the image gallery below.