After many years, the Olympic appointment returns to Europe, to our continent and to our community, giving us the opportunity to question the relationships that constitute us and that also contribute to the definition of our national identity, and of our closest brothers and sisters.
On the occasion of the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games, CONI has chosen the location of the Pré Catelan, a Napoleon III-style pavilion nestled in the city's largest park, the Bois de Boulogne, in a place of meaning, with rooms flooded with light, thanks to the many windows and the garden that surrounds it.
But this location has above all a symbolic value for sports: in these rooms, in 1894, Pierre de Coubertin announced that the next day he would start the Modern Olympic Games.
And it is precisely from the founder of the Olympics and from France that we started to design the project that we will bring to Casa Italia Paris 2024, investigating the value of friendship and brotherhood of those who walk with us into the future. This proximity is an opportunity to question the relationships that constitute us and that contribute to the definition of our national identity; the French have been our closest brothers since the earliest times.
France, the host country of the games, offers an opportunity to talk about brotherhood as one of the cardinal principles that Pierre de Coubertin established in 1894:
Sports can help men overcome their limitations, but also bring them closer and understand each other better, regardless of differences.
That is why he defended the humanistic values that have become inseparable from Olympism: respect for the opponent and friendship among peoples.
Brotherhood is one of the three pillars of France's most important legacy to the modern age, the French Revolution. Of the three terms Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood the last one is the most neglected but also the one that leaves the most room for imagination. Friendship is the true homeland, wrote Joseph Roth, activating this concept we might imagine that brotherhood could bind peoples as friendship binds individuals. Being able to recognize in the other our brother, regardless of the differences that our uniqueness entails, is one of the great lessons we experience thanks to the Olympic movement and the Games.
The Casa Italia Paris 2024 project will be called Ensemble, and it declines at various levels the concept of ensemble as a necessary condition for generating collaboration, community, and thought.
Ensemble, however, is not only a condition of proximity and encounter, but a term that carries with it a thirdness that is the fruit of being together. The pursuit of agreement, of harmony for the achievement of a common purpose.
This is why Ensemble is the Sport protagonist of the Olympics, Ensemble is the community of sportsmen and peoples who participate, Ensemble is building the common good, Ensemble is sharing, finally in presence but also through all the means we have available today to do so, Ensemble is social and environmental sustainability since these are issues that only by addressing them collectively can we achieve results, Ensemble is working to build peace, Ensemble finally is the Olympics, the noblest example of being brothers.
Casa Italia will bring the value of Ensemble through art, architecture, design, hospitality and celebrate its athletes in a context where each element will be able to tell how the utopia of brotherhood becomes a tangible reality precisely thanks to the Olympics.
For this reason, the layout we will create will have as a unifying element the interweaving, expressed through the presence of fabrics and textures that will put the existing architecture in dialogue with the elegance of Italian design. Expressed through the presence of fabrics and textures that, by their very nature-of being generated by knotted lines-concretely express the value of building by “putting together.” In continuity with these principles, a sequence of spaces conceived as “a room within a room” is planned within the pavilion, in which, in the interweaving of threads, the new dialogues with the existing according to a principle of mutual exaltation and respect.
Design, one of the most celebrated elements of Italy in the world, a symbol of craftsmanship and attention to detail, will be functional in welcoming guests to the spaces of the House and will contribute to the domestic experience that Italy always wants to convey.
Through the many works of contemporary Italian artists, present in all the rooms of the House, the concept of Ensemble will be made visible and memorable. Already shown in the presentation video are works by Riccardo Previdi, Julie Polidoro, Fabio Viale, and Marinella Senatore, to be joined by many others.
Ensemble is also a sustainable project. As it is well known that temporary setups often develop a great waste of energy and materials, Casa Italia, which had already begun to pose the problem of sustainability during the setup of Tokyo 2020, today will already be designed with the expectation that all the materials that compose it are included within a process of recovery and recycling.
Casa Italia, for a long time exclusively a hospitality venue, from 2016, becomes a flywheel for the promotion of the country system Italy, on a stage of unparalleled media impact like that of the Olympic Games.
Our history-from the Villanovan to the Etruscans, from the Renaissance to the multi-ethnic society; our geography and landscapes; unique and inimitable places; art; literature; music; architecture; our villages; mountains; the sea; animal and plant biodiversity; and science-are the elements behind the wonder of Casa Italia. A place where all these excellences will find space and narrative to visually illustrate the uniqueness of Italy's human, cultural and geophysical dimensions, without ever forgetting the true heart of the mission: the athletes of the Italia Team, who live the most exciting sporting experience of their lives and who are celebrated at Casa Italia. A prelude to the celebration of the next Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina 2026.