The BEYOND MEDIA festival is one of the main events worldwide dedicated to the most current visions on contemporary architecture and on the outcomes of the intense relations which exist between architecture and the media.
The ninth edition of the Florence festival is titled “VISIONS”. and will take place at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence, Italy, July 9-17, 2009.
It seems as if contemporary architecture lost, in the last years, its ability to pursue broad visions, to collect with a wide outlook the complex transformations of the built environment, to lead its thoughts and consciousness beyond that which is usual, empirical, and visible. The massive production and consumption of architectural images resulted in a greater vicinity, on the part of the general public, to design issues. But, at the same time, they produced an alteration in the way people conceive architecture, and affected the ability and the opportunity to generate visions, and hence theories, which are deeply rooted in our times but, at the same time, are receptive towards new possible scenarios.
The festival takes place in Florence since 1997. It is curated by Marco Brizzi, is produced by Image www.image-web.org, is promoted by PARC – General Directorate for Landscape quality and protection, Contemporary Architecture and Art of the Italian Ministry of Culture, by the Councillorship for Urban Planning of the Municipality of Florence, and by the University of Florence.
Architecture is ever more present in the public realm, it is the protagonist of the construction of cultural systems, of new economic scenarios, of innovation processes. The media tend to develop a series of fields of intervention, of skills, of research ambits around architecture. BEYOND MEDIA has been supporting for 11 years a reflection upon these dynamics by offering the occasion for meeting and discussing these topics: it has brought together architects, video authors, artists, scholars, professors, critics who meet in Florence in order to observe and discuss the most significant paths through which contemporary architecture stands out today.