Reggio Calabria – On the occasion of the 3rd edition of the Biennale dello Stretto inaugurated on September 18, 2026, a section specially dedicated to China presents a generation of architects working on the regeneration of rural landscapes.
From September 18 to December 13, 2026, the third edition of the Biennale dello Stretto will take place across Campo Calabro, Reggio Calabria, and Messina; an international cultural program of exhibitions and conferences focused on themes of architecture, art, photography, anthropology, and the environment.
Palatina Curatorial Section: “Mutations: Landscapes in Transition”
Following the great success of the section dedicated to Chinese architecture at the previous biennale, Palatina Cultural Group has once again curated a section dedicated to China with the theme “Mutations: Landscapes in Transition”. The curator and architect Gaetano Di Gesu views the Chinese experience as an advanced experimental field for landscape mutations, using it to examine the current state of accelerated urban, regional, and social changes.
The rapid urbanization in China between 1978 and 2020, and the subsequent wave of “return to the countryside”, created an unprecedented temporal compression. In this context, time is not a neutral framework, but an active design medium. In Chinese rural areas hollowed out by industrialization, architecture no longer intervenes as a completed, definitive gesture, but as an open process, welcoming slow transitions, new housing models, and completely new forms of collective life: new functions such as libraries, theatres, and artist residencies are embedded into the agricultural landscape, becoming devices for social mutation that generate alternatives to the urban-industrial model. In these landscapes in transition, mutation is not a loss, but an emergence of possibilities; it is a critical rewriting of the territory, a continuous transformation, and a framework for multiple futures.
A Dialogue Across the Mediterranean
The Chinese section enriches the Biennale dello Stretto with an extra-Mediterranean perspective that brings into dialogue, through the common theme of water and time as design agents, the transforming landscapes of the Mediterranean with those of contemporary China, offering an original contribution to the global debate on architecture, rurality, and climate change.
Several prominent architects and studios who are key figures in the transformation of contemporary Chinese architectural landscape are participating in the exhibition: Liu Jiakun, Liu Kecheng, Yung Ho Chang (Atelier FCJZ), Zhu Pei, Xu Tiantian (DnA_Design and Architecture), Zhang Ming (Original Design Studio), Zhang Ke (ZAO/Zhang Ke Architecture Office), and IILab.
Conference Preview
At the invitation of Palatina Cultural Group, architect Zhang Ke, founder of the studio ZAO/Zhang Ke Architecture Office, will present a retrospective of his work in a lecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Reggio Calabria on November 19.
About the Biennale dello Stretto
The Biennale will be held from September 18 to December 13, 2026; the main exhibition venue is located at Forte Batteria Siacci in Calabria, with satellite exhibition venues in Reggio Calabria and Messina.
The Biennale dello Stretto is a cultural project promoted by Fondazione Le Città del Futuro and 500×100, under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture. The main institutional partners are the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria, ANCE Reggio Calabria, the Association of Architects of Messina, the City of Campo Calabro, Forte Batteria Siacci, and the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria.
