"Aldo Rossi designed the ‘Teatro del Mondo’ orginally for the Venice Biennale in 1979. The idea was to recall the floating theatres which were so characteristic of Venice and its carnivals in the 18th century.
Its ephemeral apparition, and its very transience has become its ‘raison d’etre’.
Constructed in the fushina shipyards, it was towed by sea (by a tugboat) to the Punta della dogana where it remained through the biennale.
Aldo Rossi reiterated throughout his career that architecture provides a stage for life, with public spaces acting as backdrops for life’s experiences, the theater acts a metaphor for his beliefs.
Aldo Rossi described this project as ‘a place where architecture ended and the world of the imagination began’ and ‘the theater, in which the architecture serves as a possible background, a setting, a building that can be calculated and transformed into the measurements and concrete materials of an often elusive feeling, has been one of my passions’."