170.000 visitors, +31% over the 2008 edition

The 12th International Architecture Exhibition People meet in architecture directed by Kazuyo Sejima and organized by the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, will close on Sunday November 21st.

Considering the number of visitors to date, we are confident to reach the number of 170.000 visitors.

Two days ahead of the closing date, the Exhibition has been attended by 161.493 visitors with an increase of 31% (in 2008 the total number of visitors was 129.323). Over its 12 weeks, the 12th International Architecture Exhibition has ranked among the top most highly visited exhibitions in Italy, with a daily average of 2.000 visitors and record numbers over the last weekends (13rd and 14th November) totalling 9.800 people. The number of students that have visited the Exhibition in groups is the 23% of the total number of visitors. Youngest and students is the 49% of the total number of visitors.

«We wanted the Exhibition to come back to talk about architecture as indispensable art for planning the civic public life  - says Paolo Baratta- and for growing a civilization that addresses people towards their relations with the others. Sejima has offered us an exhibition that enriches our sensibility for the space in which we live, of us as architects but especially as private and public commitments, that have the role to give shape to more qualified questions and ambitions. An exhibition addressed to thinkers and students, but also to the big public as ever that came to visit it»

«The exhibition has done for me what I hope it would do for other people, open architecture to new points of ways of connecting people –Kazuyo Sejima affirms-  The process of the Biennale has also been an exercise in people meeting in architecture».

The 2010 Architecture Biennale included the participation of 53 Countries and 20 Collateral Events sponsored by international institutions and organizations and located in various venues in Venice and outside.

The Italian Pavilion, organized by the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities with the PaBAAC – General Direction for the Landscape, Fine Arts, Architecture and Contemporary Arts, curated by Luca Molinari, was a particular success. The Venice Pavilion at the Giardini, sponsored by the Regione del Veneto and Committee for the Toni Benetton Centenary Celebrations, this year featured a double tribute to a sculptor, Toni Benetton, and an architect, Toni Follina, in an exhibition curated by Carlo Sala and Nico Stringa.

Concurrently with the opening of the 12th Exhibition, and after a major restoration and renovation project, la Biennale inaugurated the newly restored Sala delle Colonne in the main headquarters at

Cà Giustinian and the completed Biennale Library in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini.