De Castelli, one of the most dynamic artisan realities in the Veneto region, on the occasion of the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, creates an extraordinary iron installation; Copycat. Empathy and envy as form-makers, designed by studio Cino Zucchi Architetti, which received a special mention at the Leoni d’Oro 2012 award ceremony.

This is not the first occasion that sees De Castelli as a partner for the realisation of a work at the Venice Biennale. In fact, the company has built up a good reputation over the years made up of punctuality, production potential, craftsmanship, attention to detail, and precision, outlining its own uniqueness and making itself highly visible in the sophisticated dimension of architecture.

De Castelli’s know-how, partly inherited from generations of expert blacksmiths and progressively nurtured and implemented with the best technological innovations, expresses, in addition to a marked organisational aptitude, a high production capacity, a spontaneity in relationships and a great passion for craftsmanship.

Cino Zucchi, an internationally renowned architect, is one of the few Italians invited by director David Chipperfield to interpret the 2012 theme ‘Common Ground’, for which he imagined an irregular space, alluding to a square, paved with small hexagonal rough iron pebbles, around which large metal cabinets are arranged. Each of them displays, on its outer side, a collection of objects or images. The side of each element/cabinet is marked by a ‘motif’ showing a series of variations in the size, proportion and rhythm of the iron construction. The result can be interpreted as a series of models of buildings, to scale, set in a square.

At De Castelli, the organisational work, due to the complexity of its production, began as early as April with the selection of the operational team, specialised in this type of intervention, which undertook the realisation of this work, the salient phases of which were continuously documented through the photographic lens.