Archinect - News

Carlo Ratti will curate the 2025 Venice Biennale Architecture exhibition

2023-12-21T13:16:00-05:00

Carlo Ratti has been named as Director of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2025 La Biennale di Venezia by the fair’s Board of Directors and at the recommendation of current and future Presidents Roberto Cicutto and Pietrangelo Buttafuoco.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and director of Carlo Ratti Associati follows Lesley Lokko’s turn as the 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture curator.

Ratti will lean on past curatorial experiences with the Future Food District pavilion at Expo 2015 Milan; the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow; and the second Porto Design Biennale in 2021 to inform his creative direction for the exhibition. A focus on the growing influence of technology on design and urban planning will most likely follow, culminating in an impressive intellectual output that has seen him write or co-author more than 750 different research publications.

Previewing his direction, Ratti said: “We architects like to ...

UNESCO adds 42 new sites to World Heritage list

2023-09-22T13:06:00-04:00

The outcome of the 45th session of the committee has also been notable, however, for the places not approved for protection. On Friday, members voted against the notion that Venice be added to the heritage list. This was despite the recommendation of the World Heritage Centre (WHC), the convention’s permanent secretariat, which argued the city was at risk due to factors including mass tourism and climate change.

A total of 42 new sites were added at the ongoing special session held in Riyadh this month. Three Ukrainian sites, including the 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, were also added last week at the start of the 15-day meeting.

The body’s recommendations to add Venice to the list of World Heritage in Danger sites was also denied at the outset, keeping it away from the dubious position despite criticism that city officials — who’ve just adopted a nominal daily entry fee trial — aren’t doing enough to resolve “long-standing but urgent issues” stemming from tourists’ overcrowding and climate change.

Venice to begin seeking €5 daily admission fees from tourists

2023-09-07T12:02:00-04:00

The ability for Venice to charge a nominal €5 ($5.35 USD) daily entrance fee to tourists has been granted to the city, giving officials the final go-ahead for a response they say is ultimately necessary to preserve its architectural heritage from the threats of climate change and overcrowding.

The city council’s decision comes after a protracted debate over its implementation since the idea was first introduced in 2019. CNN has reported the experiment will start first with a 30-day trial period before being formally adopted early next year, limited to only the “peak days” of the busy tourist season. The likely result is for the quality of life of residents to be improved, proponents say while encouraging other popular international destinations to potentially follow suit.

“The message we want to put across is that Venice is open, but visitors must understand that we need proper planning to manage the balance between residence and tourism,” Councilor Michele Zuin said in a statement....

UNESCO experts recommend adding Venice to heritage danger list

2023-08-01T11:15:00-04:00

[Update, September 14th, 2023: Despite this recommendation, UNESCO ultimately voted not to place Venice on its World Heritage in Danger list]

Experts from UNESCO, the cultural agency of the United Nations, have recommended adding Venice to its World Heritage in Danger list. As reported by Reuters, officials from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre made the recommendation with a view that Italy was not doing enough to protect the city from the impacts of climate change and mass tourism.

Both the city and its lagoon would be added to the list under the recommendation. Other sites recommended for the list are the historic centers of Kyiv, Lviv, and Odesa in Ukraine, the town of Timbuktu in Mali, and several sites across Syria, Iraq, and Libya. The final decision will be made at a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Riyadh in September.

"Resolution of long-standing but urgent issues is hindered by a lack of overall joint strategic vision for the long-term preservation of the prop...

NEOM goes to Venice to promote its 'zero gravity urbanism' concept

2023-05-17T12:11:00-04:00

A new exhibition titled Zero Gravity Urbanism—Principles for a New Livability will explore the conceptual underpinnings behind Saudi Arabia’s contentious NEOM megadevelopment parallel with the start of the 2023 Venice Biennale on May 20th.

Featuring contributions from Morphosis, Peter Cook, UNStudio, Studio Fuksas, Oyler Wu, and Adjaye Associates, the exhibition presents what organizers say are the $500 billion endeavor’s "seven key principles [...] defined and brought to life through the proposals of architects and urban thinkers, who are envisioning the foundations of a new livability in NEOM."

Other than the plan’s 110-mile main THE LINE segment, details on NEOM’s Oxagon, Trojena, and Sindalah regional developments will also be presented.

Previously on Archinect: OMA, Peter Cook, Morphosis, Adjaye Associates among firms showcasing design proposals in NEOM's recent The Line Experience exhibition

A series of lectures and public presentations will supplement the exhibition. Peter Coo...

The 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale reveals its International Jury selection

2023-05-09T15:28:00-04:00

The international jury for this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale has been announced by the fair’s Board of Directors in advance of its May 20th opening.

The 18th International Architecture Exhibition will be judged by the Italian architect and curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (who will serve as President of the jury); Palestinian architect and curator Nora Akawi; &South-African Cityscapes co-founder, curator, and editor Tau Tavengwa; Spain- and London-based Polish academic Izabela Wieczorek; and Studio Museum in Harlem Director Thelma Golden.

They were each recommended by the Exhibition’s curator, the African Futures Institute founder Lesley Lokko, and will be tasked with judging the Golden Lion for best National Participation; the Golden Lion for best participant in the International Exhibition; and the Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the International Exhibition, in addition to a potential special mention to National Participations and up to two for partic...

A Japanese teahouse prototype made from food waste debuts at this year’s Venice Biennale

2023-05-08T13:18:00-04:00

Japanese architecture and engineering firm Mitsubishi Jisho Design has unveiled details of a sustainable teahouse project at the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale, which takes place from May 20th to November 26th in what is now its 18th edition.

The Veneti-An Tea House prototype is included in the European Cultural Center’s Time Space Existence exhibition, which runs parallel to the fair in the city's Giardini Marinaressa Gardens. According to its designers, the scheme is meant as a place of “renewed connection.” Its structure is composed of food waste products, adding to the intended exploration of themes of environmental protection and sustainable design.

Image courtesy Mitsubishi Jisho Design

The components are culled from local coffee grounds and pasta (common waste products in Italy, according to the designers) made using Fabula Food Concrete, a University of Tokyo-born Japanese product that entered the market only recently and offers architects the chance to build using a m...

France debuts 'Ball Theater' pavilion installation ahead of the 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-04-27T13:09:00-04:00

France’s pavilion to the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale will feature an immersive interchange of identity and emotion inspired by ballroom dances and human rituals of experience-based social cohesion.

French studio Muoto partnered with scenographers Georgi Stanishev and Clémence La Sagna for the design of Ball Theater, which they say ties into curator Lesley Lokko’s thematic look to the future where “architecture is no longer to represent or to be represented as an image.”

Image courtesy of Muoto, Georgi Stanishev and Clémence La Sagna

Their project for the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs takes the form of a semi-spherical intervention that’s configurable for different immersive experiences all based around Ball Theater’s usage as a forum for artistic performances and civic inquiry.

Image courtesy of Muoto, Georgi Stanishev and Clémence La Sagna

Special events will be held in its hollowed chamber space, taking...

Curators and designers of the U.S. Pavilion will call attention to worldwide plastic dependency at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2023-02-16T19:00:00-05:00

The U.S. Pavilion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens in May, will feature an examination of worldwide plastic dependency through the work of five artists and designers who will deliver site-specific commissions as part of the overall exhibition curated by Lesley Lokko, founder and director of the African Futures Institute.

SPACES' Executive Director Tizziana Baldenebro and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland curator Lauren Leving were selected to co-organize Everlasting Plastics, which will be on display as part of the Pavilion from May 20 – November 26, 2023.

Baldenebro explained, "Inherent to art and architecture is the aesthetic and materiality of form. Everlasting Plastics bridges this divide by drawing on the power of looking to serve as an entry point for reconsidering our relationships to material worlds."

"As the climate crisis becomes a tangible reality, our da...

Venice installs temporary glass barriers at St Mark’s Basilica to prevent flooding

2022-12-05T11:22:00-05:00

New glass barriers have successfully prevented a high tide from flooding St Mark’s Basilica in Venice for the first time [...] The wall is intended as a temporary solution until work will be carried out to raise the pavement level of St Mark’s Square. Writing on Twitter, tourism councillor Simone Venturini praised the structure and added, 'Now it’s time to accelerate the completion of the MOSE works for definite safety of the square.'

The barriers were enacted after emergency planning officials decided on not to raise the city’s brightly colored MOSE system for aqua alta events under 120cm, leaving the square and Basilica, technically the lowest point in Venice, out to dry at just 64cm (24 inches) above sea level. Mario Piana, the Proto for St. Mark's, is credited with the design of the barriers.

Near-record flooding last month provided an early successful test for both systems, preventing a repeat of the November 2019 near-catastrophe that aged parts of the building “20 years in a day” according to Carlo Alberto Tesserin, the official in charge of historic preservation for the Basilica’s Procuratoria governing body.

RIOS has been selected for a $1 billion redesign of The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas

2022-11-10T17:32:00-05:00

"We are looking to elevate our experiences resort wide [...] Arrival experiences will be different. For both The Venetian and The Palazzo, we plan to renovate, remodel, and redesign all of our suites. We will be offering a number of new [food-and-beverage] concepts, we are taking a deep look at entertainment, nightlife, and bar offerings, and the casino floor will feel significantly different as well.”

In an Instagram post, RIOS said the redesign will “retain the resort's Italian roots reimagined in a refined and evolutionary way.⁠” The hotel and casino was first designed by KlingStubbins on the site of the former Sands property for developer Sheldon Adelson in the late 1990s. The landmark Venetian replicas within the resort will likely be kept intact, though a spokesperson for the company that manages the property said the $1 billion-plus project will refresh its overall design along more contemporary lines.

"We are a themed hotel and we will always be a themed hotel," Venetian CEO Patrik Nichols told T+L. "That sets us apart, but the Italy of the '90s that The Venetian was modeled after has evolved. If we are able to lean into that through the spirit of Italy and discovery, we are not going to look like just another hotel that has refreshed their rooms."

Housing activist group to represent Canada at 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2022-04-28T10:46:00-04:00

The housing reform collective Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) will represent Canada at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Having been selected by the Canada Council for the Arts, AAHA will use the event to launch an architectural activity campaign for safe, healthy, affordable housing, titled “Not for Sale!”

The newly-formed collective was created specifically for the purposes of the Biennale bid, composed of architects, designers, educators, and historians, with support from collaborators and contributors with backgrounds in affordable housing, indigenous communities, education, and design. The aim of the group is to “instigate an architectural movement and create socially, ecologically, and creatively empowering housing for all.”

Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), Headquarters (rendering by William Hansen), 2022.

To further this goal, the group will use the 2023 Biennale to transform the Canada Pavilion into a campaign headquarters for equitably housi...

Edoardo Tresoldi's installation 'Monumento' opens the Chipperfield-restored Procuratie Vecchie with a timely message on fragility

2022-04-14T12:30:00-04:00

To coincide with the long-awaited public opening of Venice’s iconic Procuratie Vecchie, Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi has produced an installation that helps highlight the mission and function of its newly reclaimed space.

Titled ‘Monumento’ and taking as its backdrop the 16th-century monumental staircase restored by David Chipperfield Architects as part of its five-year renovation project, the installation presents a subversion of the traditional thinking and rhetoric that surrounds monuments worldwide.

Image © Roberto Conte

Using his standby wire mesh material, Tresoldi was able to replicate past installations in New York and Abu Dhabi using the column itself as a kind of 50-foot-high metaphorical guidepost standing between societal values and contemporary life. Developed in collaboration with architect Carlotta Franco and with support from GICO Studio, the wrapped column is also meant to be as much in dialog with the space around it as it is expressive of a...

Lesley Lokko chosen as curator for 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition

2021-12-14T13:55:00-05:00

Today the Board of La Biennale di Venezia announced the appointment of Lesley Lokko as its curator for the 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition.

Lokko is an esteemed architectural leader, best-selling novelist, and academic advocate whose work within and outside architecture circles has proven her a formidable force for change. Upon her appointment, Lokko shared with La Biennale di Venezia, "A new world order is emerging, with new centers of knowledge production and control. New audiences are also emerging, hungry for different narratives, different tools, and different languages of space, form, and place."

Image from African Futures Institute website. Image courtesy of AfricanFuturesInstitute.com

This past year, Lokko's work and efforts within architectural academia have made headlines. While her resignation as Dean of CCNY's Spitzer School of Architecture in October 2020 shook the architecture community, that did not stop Lokko's unshakeable efforts and dedication to her ...

Anish Kapoor is remodeling a grand Venetian palace to be the new home of his foundation

2021-08-03T19:04:00-04:00

An 18th-century palazzo fronting Venice’s Cannaregio Canal is getting a bespoke makeover thanks to funds of a blue-chip British artist.

The Art Newspaper is reporting that the Palazzo Manfrin will be the new home of the Amish Kapoor Foundation following a renovation that will add a studio space, gallery, and art depository to a former school with help from UNA studio and local firm FWR Associati.

The original Palazzo was kept as the seat of the Priuli family until the 19th century when it formed an early version of the Galléria dell’Accademia before eventually falling into disrepair like many of the city’s other grand palaces in the shadow of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection nearby.

Per UNA studio: “The Palazzo Priuli Manfrin presents an architecture virtually unique in Venice. Its double-height hall is of typical Palladian design and its facade, without ornament, make this building the prototype of the Neoclassical style that is rarely found elsewhere in Venice.”

Related on Archi...

Saint Laurent taps Doug Aitken to help present its SS22 line in Venice

2021-07-19T14:43:00-04:00

A temporary installation by Doug Aitken is gracing the runway in Venice thanks to a new commission from fashion giant Saint Laurent.

The artist’s latest work titled Green Lens is a glowing, 10-pronged kaleidoscopic pavilion made from mirrored aluminum panels that sits on a defunct 54-acre military installation hosted on an island called La Certosa.

Image courtesy Saint Laurent.

Aitken uses an admixture of locally-sourced plants, artificially-generated mist, and colorful lighting to create an immersive activated sculpture he says is inspired by the set designs from his favorite Andrei Tarkovsky films. The installation’s focus on ecology and litoral setting elevates a long-held sense of the natural world that the 53-year-old artist has made a focus of throughout his three-decade career.

Image courtesy Saint Laurent.

“It’s something that the viewer can be a part of, the landscape around it can be part of,” Aitken told ARTnews.

Seasonal presentations in the industry had been upended in ...

UNESCO rulings loom for Liverpool, Venice and 250 other sites in the midst of preservation battles

2021-07-16T17:08:00-04:00

The world heritage committee of the UN’s cultural agency Unesco on Friday began debating its list of World Heritage Sites, with Australia and Britain furious over looming changes to the status of the Great Barrier Reef and the historic docks in the city of Liverpool.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee has a very full plate owing to the cancellation of last year's meeting over fears of the spreading coronavirus. Applications of sites like the famed porticoes of Bologna are also up for review.

The historic Liverpool docks played an outsized role in the transatlantic slave triangle and are in desperate need of preservation as construction encroaches.

Venice is also on the verge of losing its status as a World Heritage Site in a move that could devastate preservation efforts in the coastal Italian city.

France 24 has more on the Friday meeting here.

Venice is experiencing severe flooding

2019-11-14T17:00:00-05:00

Venice was reeling after experiencing its highest level of floodwater since 1966. High tides from the lagoon reached more than 6 feet higher than their usual level—the second-highest ever seen since records began in 1923. Two people were reported dead. Waters entered the nave of St. Mark’s Basilica and parts of the La Fenice opera house, left boats deposited on the canalside paving stones and in the middle of city streets, and surged across more than 80 percent of the city’s surface.

Feargus O'Sullivan, writing in CityLab, reports on the devastating flooding that has impacted Venice, Italy, where five of the 20 worst floods in the city's history have occurred over the last ten years.

Aside from being located on a spit of land in the northern Adriatic sea, Venice has subsided over 8 inches in the last century. The city is currently in the midst of constructing a large-scale $6.5 billion flood control system that is nearly complete. It is expected that the so-called MOSE flood barrier will be completed by 2021.

Santiago Calatrava fined $86,000 over slippery "lobster" bridge in Venice

2019-08-15T13:00:00-04:00

The sweeping structure, which spans the Grand Canal and was the first new bridge to be built in the floating city for 70 years, was designed by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. But it has been dogged by controversy ever since it was unveiled in 2008.

According to The Telegraph, Santiago Calatrava has been fined €78,000, or roughly $86,000, by the city of Venice due to "negligence" involved in the design of the troubled 300-foot-long Ponte della Constituzione bridge in the city.

According to the report, an Italian judge has ruled that the bridge's structural steel tubes are undersized relative to what is required to span the Grand Canal. Also, the structure's glass steps, supposedly designed to last 20 years, have had a much shorter lifespan, and have required replacement in the decade that has elapsed since the bridge first opened.

View of the underside of Calatrava's "lobster" bridge. Image courtesy of Flickr use C-Monster.

The bridge has been derided by locals, who have likened the crossing's appearance to that of "a lobster," according to The Telegraph. That's not all, however. Initially faulted for the failing to provide accessible means for crossing the stepped bridge by people with disabilities, the design was amended to...

New report urges Venice to get its climate change act together

2019-07-17T07:00:00-04:00

Venice is full of water, Venice floods, the climate is visibly changing, and sea levels are rising, so you would expect Venice, of all places, to have an official strategy for what to do about it—but you would be wrong. The management plans produced by the City of Venice for Unesco in 2013 and 2018 barely mention the subject and twice, in 2016 and 2019, Unesco’s World Heritage Committee has failed to call them out on this astonishing failing.

"We are used to thinking that, given enough will and money, there is a solution to everything, but this report says that we must get used to the idea that in many cases there will be no solution," writes a frustrated Anna Somers Cocks for The Art Newspaper and explains how a new report by the International Council on Museums and Sites (Icomos) could lay out an urgently needed roadmap for climate change action for cultural heritage sites. "It emphasises again and again: collaborate, share knowledge and remedies, educate, and—above all—plan ahead. Then only may we be able to mitigate the approaching catastrophe."

In other recent Venice-related news: the 17th International Architecture Exhibition just announced a guiding vision for the 2020 Venice Biennale.

2020 Venice Biennale asks: "How will we live together?"

2019-07-16T13:12:00-04:00

How will we live together? That’s the question on the minds of Paolo Baratta, president of La Biennale di Venezia, and Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, as they unveil a guiding vision for the 2020 Venice Biennale.

Baratta and Sarkis announced the theme in Venice this morning, issuing an appeal for a “new spatial contract” guided by architects that can “imagine spaces in which we can generously live together.” According to the pair, architects can and should be responsible for articulating bold new visions for the changing state of human occupation of the world that draw together different professions and groups of people toward diverse and just ends.

Architects should bring people “together as human beings who, despite our increasing individuality, yearn to connect with one another and with other species across digital and real space; together as new households looking for more diverse and dignified spaces for inhabitation; together as emer...

There's something Dysfunctional at the Venice Biennale

2019-04-16T18:19:00-04:00

The Venice Art Biennale is regarded as the most significant art exhibitions in the world. With artists and designers from across the globe showcasing their work, co-founders of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery were moved to wonder "What defines an artwork?" "Why can artworks not be functional?" and "When does design become art?" For Julien Lombrail and Loic Le Gaillard these questions led them to stage their immersive exhibition called DYSFUNCTIONAL. The collaborative exhibition will feature 17 artists from their gallery roster to participate in a collaborative dialogue between the artists' works and the mesmerizing architecture of Ca'd'Oro. Also known as the Palazzo Santa Sofia, this 589-year old palace sits along the Grand Canal in Venice. Using the palace as a counterpart to the featured works, the exhibition allows for rising and established artists to intersect the boundaries of art, architecture and design.

Ca’ d’Oro. Image Courtesy of Ministero dei beni e delle attività cultur...

Hashim Sarkis to curate 2020 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition

2018-12-19T13:19:00-05:00

Architect and educator Hashim Sarkis has been appointed as Director of La Biennale di Venezia's Architecture Sector, tasking him to curate the 7th International Architecture Exhibition in 2020.

Sarkis started his firm Hashim Sarkis Studios, with offices in Cambridge and Beirut, in 1998 and has served as Dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning since January 2015. He was a member of the international jury of the Biennale Architettura 2016.

"The world is putting new challenges in front of architecture," said Sarkis, who has an expertise in design in the Middle East and Muslim societies. "I look forward to working with participating architects from around the world to imagine together how we are going to rise to these challenges."

Listen to our 2015 podcast interview with Hashim Sarkis, almost one year into his Deanship at MIT.

The list of recent Venice Biennale Architecture Directors includes Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects (2018),...

Rowan Moore on Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara's Venice Biennale curatorship

2018-05-01T14:57:00-04:00

Farrell and McNamara’s theme is “Freespace”, which they say describes “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda”. It can also mean the “free and additional spatial gifts” that architecture can offer and “its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers”. They have invited a selection of like-minded architects to demonstrate these qualities with three-dimensional installations of “scale and quality”.

Rowan Moore, architecture critic of the Observer, finds admiring words in his Guardian piece for Grafton Architects principals Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, who are wearing the curator hats this year at architecture's biggest biennial spectacle: "McNamara and Farrell are neither celebrities nor notable theorists. They are well-respected architects who, determinedly, consistently and over a long period of time, do their stuff. [...] But what stuff."

Salvatore Settis on the "the commercial rape of Venice"

2018-03-29T14:15:00-04:00

Venice is doomed, says, Salvatore Settis, unless there is a moral revival in Italy. He is a professor of archaeology who has been an advisor on cultural matters to the Italian government and was head of the Getty Center for the Arts and the Humanities in the 1990s. Italians know him from his eloquent denunciations in the press, which say that everything that has made La Bella Italia so beautiful is going to hell in a handcart.

The Art Newspaper reviews If Venice dies, the new book by former Getty Center for the Arts and the Humanities director, Salvatore Settis, and elaborates on his warning calls of La Serenissima's impending doom: "Venice, he emphasises repeatedly, is a paradigm for other cities around the world in the tensions between its historic nature and modern needs, in the delicate relationship between the built city and the environment and in the rush to exploit it for short-term gain."

First glimpse: The seven “Dimensions of Citizenship” installations of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale

2018-03-13T19:09:00-04:00

Tackling the ever-complex question of what it means to be a citizen, the U.S. Pavilion exhibition “Dimensions of Citizenship” for the 2018 Venice Biennale will comprise of seven architectural installations that explore this loaded topic at seven different spatial scales. Today, the U.S. Pavilion team announced more details about the projects.

Last August, U.S. Pavilion curators Niall Atkinson, Ann Lui, and Mimi Zeiger commissioned the seven architecture practices, including Studio Gang, SCAPE, Keller Easterling, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Ranging from the citizen to the cosmos, each installation explores how citizenship “may be defined, constructed, enacted, contested, or expressed in the built environment” at these different scales, and poses questions about issues related to belonging, sovereignty, and ecology.

Here's a preview of each installation:

Scale: Citizen / Amanda Williams + Andres L. Hernandez, in collaboration with Shani Crowe

“Braid study” (2017), Shani Crowe. From...

More Venice Biennale 2018 “Freespace” exhibition details are revealed

2018-03-02T15:11:00-05:00

With the 2018 Venice Biennale only two months away, curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara and Biennale president Paolo Baratta revealed the latest details about the exhibition during a press conference today. The 2018 theme “Freespace” presents “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture's agenda, focusing on the quality of space itself.”

“We see architecture as the translation of need in its widest sense into meaningful space. In the effort to translate Freespace into the many wonderful languages of the world, we hope that it prises open the ‘gift’ which architectural invention has the potential to contribute with each project,” Farrell and McNamara said. “Translation allows us all to map and rename intellectual as well as actual territory. It is our hope that the word Freespace allows us to burrow into the aspirations, ambitions and generosity of architecture.”

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. Photo: Grafton Architects, courtesy Alice Cla...

Architects want to bring back Venice's eclectic architectural character

2017-12-26T13:00:00-05:00

To many longtime residents, the cookie-cutter constructions stripped Venice of its distinctive architectural character, turning parts of the neighborhood into uniform eyesores. “Over the last year or two specifically, we’re seeing more chances being taken and more unique developments going up,” Lackey said. “This wave of architecture is great for Venice, which has always been a hub of individuality.”

Boring boxy developments have taken over Venice, California in the last 15 years, but in this LA Times piece, some architects think it's time for the coastal town to return to its eclectic architectural roots...currently in the form of multimillion-dollar luxury homes.

The Riviera Set, The Unfinished Palazzo and The Last Castle

2017-11-30T13:06:00-05:00

The gleaming low white villa was set into the rocks behind it, as though it belonged there, and guests who glanced out of the windows or stepped onto the private balcony of their bedroom would get the impression that it was almost hanging over the blue sea. The swimming pool, considered the best on the Riviera, was housed in a basin blasted out of the rocks and featured a water-chute so that bathers could slide down into the sea below and swim to a raft tethered just offshore.

Back in October, the Book Review published a trio of reviews, for three newly published house histories. The three homes, well known at least in their time, all belonged to the famous, wealthy or both.

First, Sadie Stein reviews Mary S. Lovell's, ritzy Riviera history of the Château de l’Horizon. Next, Judith Martin looks at the history of Ca’ Nonfinito, an 18th-century Venetian building, which Judith Mackrellexplores through the lives of three "notoriously eccentric women" (Marchesa Luisa Casati, Lady Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim) who lived in it.

Finally, Vicky Ward argues that Denise Kiernan's "wider lens on the Gilded Age" results in fuller understanding of the story behind "America’s Original McMansion".

David Chipperfield to restore Venice's Procuratie Vecchie that's been closed for centuries

2017-10-05T13:58:00-04:00

Once the renovation is complete, the four-storey building will be used as a venue for art exhibitions, installations and seminars that will be open to the public, as well as a philanthropic institution to help vulnerable people including refugees...any old material removed from the building will have to be taken away in barges along Venice’s canals, while new material will have to be brought in the same way.

David Chipperfield will lead the painstaking renovation of the monumental Procuratie Vecchie in Venice's St. Mark's Square. When the project is complete in 2020, the building will be accessible to the public for the first time in some 500 years.