May 9, 2021 - The project Togetherness / Togetherless by Croatian architect Idis Turato will be representing Croatia at the 17th Venice Biennale, an international exhibition of architecture that is taking place from 22 May to 21 November after it was canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Croatian Pavilion has been set up in the Arsenale and will be formally opened on 21 May, the Ministry of Culture announced at a press conference earlier this week.

The project answers this year's theme of the exhibition, "How Will We Live Together?", conceived by Lebanese architect Hashim Sarkis, the Biennale and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The exhibition will focus on space in the context of growing political divisions and economic inequalities. The Croatian team offers a concrete architectural answer with simple architectural elements serving to create an instantaneous community, the press conference was told.

Turato said: "This year is possibly the best year to participate in the Biennale because no one knows how we will live together."

He said that the Togetherness / Togetherless project has evolved from several projects conceived for the Rijeka 2020 - European Capital of Culture program. It addresses challenges of togetherness, the position of an individual in society, the crisis in cities resulting from the development of new technologies, digitalization, changes to working and housing conditions, and the often unclear understanding of the role, use, planning, and development of public space.

The Pavilion is designed as a spatial composition, an assemblage of actors suggesting that everyday basic elements can create a specific ambiance, the space of an instantaneous community, which at the same time signifies the need for closeness and living together of individuals and the inability to achieve togetherness fully. Space is defined by three universal elements of architecture - a floor, a pillar, and a roof, which are materialized as an assemblage of ready-made elements using mass production resources from Rijeka's industrial heritage.