The Italian Consulate General in Jeddah celebrated the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World organising a series of events attended by many of the city’s luxury restaurants, hotels and food megastores, where typical Italian menus were offered, attracting the interest of a large audience. The event was kicked off with a gala dinner at the prestigious Park Hyatt Hotel, preceded by a much-appreciated concert by the Goldberg Quartet by Fondazione la Società dei Concerti di Milano. While the final evening involved more than 600 guests in an event featuring Italian street food, animated by well-known Italian restaurants and pizzerias, hotel groups, and Italian food distributors.
Simultaneously with the events of the Week, the Consulate General – together with the Italian Embassy in Riyadh – organised the Italian Design Day, hosting in Jeddah its own “Ambassador of Design” Alfonso Femia, architect and CEO of Atelier Femia, who has studios in Genoa, Milan and Paris and is the promoter of various important projects such as the Vimar headquarters in Marostica, the Dallara Academy in Parma, the new BNL BNP Paribas headquarters in Rome and the Docks in Marseille.
On this occasion, Femia held a seminar at the University of Business and Technology (UBT) in Jeddah in which he presented the theme of Design Day 2023 (“Quality that lights up: the energy of design for people and the environment”) starting from his idea of “doing architecture”. His speech, entitled “Architecture as an act of dialogue and cultural identity through generosity”, referred several times to the characteristics of Mediterranean architecture, which throughout history has been a unifying key and an element of contamination for a sustainable future.
