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2023 Venice Architecture Biennale to highlight diversity’s role in guiding 'The Laboratory of the Future'

2023-02-22T15:24:00-05:00

The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale officially announced its 89-strong slate of participants for this year’s exhibition titled “The Laboratory of the Future,” curated by the Scottish-Ghanaian architect and academic Lesley Lokko.

Opening May 20th, the Biennale will run through November 26th and feature an even 50-50 gender parity and the representation of more than half of this year’s participating artists identifying with the African diaspora. The diversity highlighted by the selection underscores the broader theme focused on the social effects of climate change and decolonization while attending to Lokko’s curatorial aim to “put forward ambitious and creative ideas that help us imagine a more equitable and optimistic future in common.”

Theaster Gates, Adjaye Associates, Hood Design Studio, atelier masōmī, and Pritzker-winner Francis Kéré were among those selected to participate in the exhibition. The exhibition is divided into six parts and includes participation from notable s...

Canada Council for the Arts releases four team shortlist for 2020 Venice Biennale

2018-12-19T18:12:00-05:00

The Canada Council for the Arts has revealed the four proposals shortlisted for exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion at Venice's 2020 Architecture Biennale. Included are designs from emerging Canadian stars Common Accounts, Ja Architecture Studio, and the duo Thomas Balaban and David Theodore, who have teamed up for the project. Additionally, Carleton University’s Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism—which is led by Professor Jill Stoner—has been tapped as well.

From an exhibition on Canada's waterscapes and inland bodies of water, to one on light wood framing, the shortlisted visions address ideas of identity, history and culture within the context of Canadian architecture. With an open ended prompt, the proposed exhibitions focus on topics ranging from the after life to Canada's role as a filming location and stand in for other places. Below is a snapshot of each team’s vision.

Fluid Boundaries: Ethical Imaginaries of Inland Waters
Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism (...

Curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara discuss the 2018 Venice Biennale's theme, Freespace

2018-06-12T13:23:00-04:00

The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale is well underway, having opened its doors officially to the public on May 26th. Curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects under the title of Freespace, this year's biennale has put a slew of projects on display that are generous and open, asking visitors to enjoy the temporary environments they find themselves in.

In the following video, PLANE—SITE speaks with the Irish architects about the choice for this edition’s theme. The duo has stated their mission is to move beyond architecture as an object, instead imagining Freespace as an invitation to think about architecture as a space of opportunities. Literally and metaphorically, Freespace presents environments of freedom and celebrates the rich civic experience that they create.

Israeli Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale will explore the negotiation of holy spaces

2018-04-25T17:20:00-04:00

The Israeli Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale will explore the established mechanisms by which the country facilitates the co-existence of Holy places. As a location with special sacred status as the cradle of three Abrahamic religions, the region encompasses a variety of holy sites that are both contested and shared. Curated by Ifat Finkelman, Deborah Pinto Fdeda, Oren Sagiv and Tania CoenUzzielli, the exhibition In Statu Quo: Structures of Negotiation will, through the lens of architecture, look at the status quo regulations within these mutually sacred places.

"In the geopolitcal context of the Holy Land, the combination of historical events, myths, and traditions has created a multiplicity of places, sacred to competing groups of religions, communities and affiliations" the curatorial team argue. "These in turn, have led to the formation of an extraordinary concentration of intricate spaces, fragmented and stratified both historically and physically." Through "a ...

"Unbuilding Walls" German Pavilion in Architecture Biennale 2018 addresses division

2018-04-06T19:00:00-04:00

Last April GRAFT was announced as Curators of the German Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2018. The exhibition, "Unbuilding Walls", focuses on the parallel of the Berlin Wall's lifespan and Germany's unity both being 28 years.

The exhibition responds to current debates on nations, protectionism and division. In the German Pavilion, GRAFT and Marianne Birthler will take the parallel as an opportunity to explore the effects of division and the process of healing as a dynamic spatial phenomenon. With reference to “Freespace,” the central theme of the Architecture Biennale proposed by Grafton Architects, special focus will be given to outstanding examples of urban and architectural design that address aspects of division and integration.

Axel-Springer-High-rise. Image: Axel Springer SE.

An example project is the Axel-Springer-Campus. This former death strip between Kreuzburg and Mitte is the site of the new campus building for Axel Springer designed by OMA. The design by Rem Koolha...

Vatican Chapels to be placed in the woods at Venice Biennale 2018

2018-03-23T15:44:00-04:00

After announcing participation in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, the Vatican has recently released more details on their Holy See pavilion. The project is officially titled Vatican Chapels, featuring ten chapels commissioned from architects in ten different countries. Each structure will be realized in a forest on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, located opposite of St. Mark's Square. This wooded location serves as a space for silence and meditation as visitors journey through each structure.

The Vatican stated these ten chapels are meant to reference the ten commandments. Apart from this connection and each structure containing a pulpit and altar, the chapels will be completely unique and up to the participant's interpretation of the project. However, as a guide the Church has encouraged each architect to respond to themes explored in the preliminary Asplund Pavilion.

Asplund Pavilion rendering by MAP Studio. Image: ALPI.

Asplund Pavilion, designed by MAP Studio, wil...

V&A's three-story chunk of demolished housing to be shown at Venice Architecture Biennale

2018-03-07T16:14:00-05:00

The V&A will transport a recently demolished concrete section from Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, east London, to the Venice Architecture Biennale. It will be delivered by barge to the biennale’s Arsenale site, where it will be reassembled on an outdoors scaffold, allowing visitors to stand on an original “street in the sky” – the elevated deck that was optimistically meant to foster healthy interaction between neighbours.

The demolition of east London's Robin Hood Gardens has been ongoing since last year, which is why the V&A moved to acquire a three-story section of the brutalist icon. The museum's section will now be displayed in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale in order to revisit its original vision and what it has to teach us about social housing moving forward.

50 years after its construction, this preserved section will be reassembled on an outdoors scaffold where visitors can experience the intended interaction with the building. Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in Reverse will be exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale from 26 May to 25 November.

The Vatican picks Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Moura + others to present chapels at the 2018 Venice Biennale

2018-01-16T18:59:00-05:00

The Vatican has announced that it will be participating in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. They have previously had a presence at the International Exhibition of Art of the Biennale di Venezia, but it will be the first time ever the city-sized country has had a pavilion at architecture's version of the event

Overseen by the Italian curator and architecture historian Francesco Dal Co, the pavilion will involve 10 chapels, each one designed by an architect from a different country. In the spirit of Catholic generosity, the chapels are also to be relocated to places in need of spaces of worship after the biennale is over.

The ten architects building chapels are as follows:

Smiljan Radic, Chile
Carla Juaçaba, Brazil
Javier Corvalán, Paraguay
Sean Godsell, Australia
Eva Prats & Ricardo Flores, Spain
Eduardo Souto de Moura, Portugal
Francesco Cellini, Italy
Norman Foster, United Kingdom
Andrew Berman, USA
Terunobu Fujimori, Japan

Repair of natural environment: Australia's creative team for 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale announced

2017-08-23T13:19:00-04:00

Australia's creative team for the 16th International Venice Architecture Biennale has been announced at events in Sydney and Melbourne. Baracco+Wright Architects will collaborate with artist Linda Tegg to cultivate and nurture thousands of temperate grassland species within the pavilion alongside large-scale architectural projections. Visitors will enter a physical dialogue between architecture and endangered plant community. Reminding us what is at stake when we occupy land.

Explicitly addressing the theme of Freespace, 'repair' responds by encouraging new ways of thinking and seeing the world, ‘of inventing solutions where architecture provides for the well-being and dignity of each citizen on this fragile planet’. 'Repair' will frame and reveal an architectural culture in Australia that is evolving through processes that integrate built and natural systems to effect repair of the environment, and in so doing, repair of other conditions such as social, economic and cultural ones.

...

The architecture of death: examining the gas chambers of Auschwitz

2016-06-15T13:02:00-04:00

On a recent afternoon, the historian Robert Jan van Pelt was standing in a quiet room at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, explaining the significance of an unassuming steel-mesh column that visitors to this sprawling survey of global design might walk right past. “This is one of the most deadly things so far created,” Mr. van Pelt said. And it was the handiwork, he noted, of an architect.

"The column — painted, like everything else in the room, a pristine white — is a reproduction of one of the eight chutes used to lower Zyklon B poison pellets into gas chambers at Auschwitz."

For more from the 2016 Venice Biennale, check out these links:

Reporting from the Front of 'Reporting from the Front': mulling over Aravena's Biennale, ft. special guest Andrea Dietz on Archinect Sessions #66

2016-06-02T15:49:00-04:00

Andrea Dietz spent four days in Venice reporting on the Biennale's opening for us, and brought back her reflections on the hallowed event—in all its chaotic, problematic, inspiring, messy glory—to discuss with us on the podcast. Amidst the fray, one thing came out clearly: the map is not the territory.

Listen to episode 66 of Archinect Sessions, Reporting from the Front of 'Reporting from the Front':

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Shownotes:

Andrea's missives from Venice:

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Glimmers of hope ‘beyond the banal and self-harming’

2016-06-01T17:14:00-04:00

Reporting from the Front seeks to also explore which forces—political, institutional or other—drive the architecture that goes “beyond the banal and self-harming”. The 2016 Venice Biennale calls for entries that not only exist in and of themselves, but that are a part of a larger social transformation. As Alejandro Aravena suggests, “improving the quality of the built environment is an endeavor that has to tackle many fronts: from guaranteeing very concrete, down-to-earth living standards […] to expanding the frontiers of civilization.” Pavilions that go down this path exhibit very specific examples of how architecture expands its frontiers.

The Ireland Pavilion’s installation, Losing Myself, explores the different layers of a building as experienced by people suffering from dementia. Co-curator Niall McLaughlin contextualizes the experience of this condition: “when you have dementia you lose the capacity to remember, to find yourself… a little bit like what happens in Venice after w...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Brazilian togetherness, Chinese traditions and Australian lidos

2016-06-01T14:58:00-04:00

This year's Biennale has tried to raise fundamental issues around the role of the architect through social and economic issues. Challenges of social inequality, housing, urbanisation, are found across the world but perhaps they are nowhere more apparent than in the cities of Brazil.

The Curator of the Brazilian Pavilion, Washington Fajardo—architect, planner, government and advisor to the Rio de Janeiro Mayor—aimed to "present the stories of people who struggle for and effect change in the face of institutional passivity in the nation's big cities." These are often platitudes but in the Brazilian show there is a depth and reality that may not be at first apparent, it is a serious show dealing with serious issues. Through the title, "Juntos [Together]", the pavilion exhibits a number of projects across Brazil. One example being Programme Vivenda, a government supported program in São Paulo that brought about small changes through a DIY support program for favelas. At the same time, th...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: rewarding obscurity

2016-05-31T17:22:00-04:00

Much will be published over the coming days about the Biennale's national pavilion winners—Spain’s “Unfinished” (with the Golden Lion) and Japan’s “en: Art of Nexus” and Peru’s “Our Amazon Frontline” (with special mentions). It is a phenomenon that conceals the terrain, limiting the perspective of the majority, and inaccurately reduces the dynamism of the lived experience. At the same time, after the fascination with the nominations wears off, it garners those passed over with a certain mystique. In the interest of representation and curiosity, then, it seems fitting to acknowledge a (very) small sampling of the more and wider.

Oh, Canada. This year, per curator Pierre Bélanger, the Canadians overcame “a list of every possible bureaucratic, logistical, and material blockade imaginable multiplied times three” in order to participate in the Biennale. With their permanent pavilion closed for construction and an agitator’s stance, the “Extraction” team’s contribution is all fight. They t...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Mediterranean connections through the crisis

2016-05-31T09:36:00-04:00

Alejandro Aravena’s brief for the Fifteenth International Architecture Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale calls for projects that “are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural disasters, housing shortage, migration, informality, crime, traffic, waste, pollution and the participation of communities.” Some curators have taken a belligerent approach, while others have used it to connect places that are geographically separated by culturally linked.

Darzanà, the Turkey Pavilion on the second floor of the Arsenale Sale d’Armi, displays a single object: a vessel. Its name, Baştarda, references the hybrid ships characteristic of Turkey and Italy from the eleventh to the nineteenth century. They are ships with no clear origin, the illegitimate children of assembled parts of undefined origin. “We want to change the negative connotation of the word,” declares Mehmet Kütükçüoğlu, one o...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: a couple of things that don’t quite fit

2016-05-30T19:04:00-04:00

Decided at Dinner (When Digestion Begins)

The theme of this year’s Nordic Countries’ Pavilion, “In Therapy: Nordic Countries Face to Face,” captures a quality underpinning this year’s Biennale positioning and consistent across its many contributions. Finland, Norway, and Sweden, by pulling back their facades of model nationhood and revealing their inner turmoil in an architectural play on psychoanalysis, have set-up an apt analogy for an impression that builds up throughout the Biennale experience. Their stepped pyramid installation, a metaphor for Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, aligns architectural projects with the hurdles to mental health and well-being – and establishes an association that puts the rest of the Biennale on the couch, as well.

Aravena invited the sharing and the world obliged – with all of its issues, in a prolific expression of words and multi-media translations.

A Little Bit of Context

One of the Biennale’s three Special Projects, “A World of Fragile Parts,” t...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Unfinished processes and unseen industries

2016-05-30T18:20:00-04:00

The lady on the ladder chosen as the image for the 2016 Biennale Architettura sees, amidst “great disappointments[,] creativity and hope,” states Paolo Baratta, president of the Venice Biennale. “[S]he sees them in the here-and-now, not in some uncertain aspirational, ideological future.” Several pavilions choose this approach to portray “trends going […] towards renewal”; encouraging instances of the how profession addresses the challenges outlined by Aravena.

This year’s recipient of the Golden Lion for Best National Participation, Spain’s Unfinished, showcases 55 different projects that have reimagined the “unfinished remains of […] the largest construction enterprise in Spanish history,” as described by co-curator Iñaqui Carnicero. The Pavilion, located at the entrance of the Giardini, feels open and easy to navigate. The language of the unfinished comes out in every detail. Suspended metal stud frames make of the main room a playful sequence to the exhibition. Additional project...

Reviewing from the periphery to the heart of the Venice Biennale; from the Nigerian to the Nordic

2016-05-30T06:41:00-04:00

‘Reporting from the Front’, the theme of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, provokes and stimulates, and with the extensive intensity of the exhibition a useful approach to review and reflect is to move from the periphery, to the heart of the Biennale and back again; in this case stumbling upon Nigeria’s Pavilion on Giudecca island, then to the heart of the Giardini and the Nordic Countries Pavilion.

The Biennale is a phenomenon: it stimulates, it exhausts, and it is addictive. The diversity of architectural production, local and global, expands inside the viewers’ veins and synapses. The backdrop to the Biennale, Venice, is a sublime, architectural drug on its own. Italo Calvino in ‘Invisible Cities’ describes the city beautifully, as multiple cities in one. The Architecture Biennale, is a microcosm of a city within a city, where the new and old connect. In 2014 Koolhaas’s, ‘Fundamentals’, the fourteenth Biennale, was expanded with a longer period and an intensification of the t...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: 'Cool' kids and guerrilla interventions

2016-05-27T18:05:00-04:00

The general atmosphere at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front, is one of excitement, of subversion. The Fifteenth edition of the Biennale explicitly calls for instances where architecture is an “instrument of self-government, of humanist civilization, and a demonstration of the ability of humans to become masters of their own destinies.” In that spirit, the usual suspects of a Biennale move to the sidelines, giving way to those working on the ground to prove that architecture can make a difference.

Cool Capital, the South Africa Pavilion at the Arsenale, brings Pretoria to the limelight by challenging the historical interaction between citizens and public space. “Pretoria has a huge political baggage and negative connotation”, curator Pieter Mathews explains, adding that “guerrilla interventions want to look at the city with new eyes; take whatever is good from the past and use it.” The Pavilion features selected works from the Cool Capital platform—the fi...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Uruguay's underground, Germany's construction site, Britain's housekeeping and more from the national pavilions

2016-05-27T13:40:00-04:00

May 26, 2016

Aravena’s Biennale for architecture to give a damn might imply a specific kind of project, but, after one day on the ground, it is clear that there is no one way for it to respond. For one thing, there is a truly incomprehensible quantity of material to cover. The volume alone speaks to the complex of energy and passion coming worldwide from the discipline. After an incomplete first pass around the Giardini and a tactical visit to the Arsenale, Venice’s two main Biennale sites, I am struck by the inconsistency and individuality across and within these many contributions. Noteworthy trends may, at some point, emerge from the crowd, but, for now, I can list a few, non-representative soundbites only:

The US Pavilion, “The Architectural Imagination,” gives us architecture as we have come to expect it. Through twelve proposals for four Detroit sites, it posits the speculative as the instrument of societal uplift, offering up wild thinking as the means of igniting change. It do...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: a call for architects to give a damn

2016-05-26T19:05:00-04:00

May 25, 2016:

At La Biennale Architettura di Venezia, architecture packages itself for a global forum. It is a distinct occasion through which the world’s constructs and place-makings converge in a single microcosm. Against the backdrop of a sinking city, designers and works tapped to represent national architectural accomplishment invoke a comparative sizing-up. In displays, with ceremony, at a flurry of events and celebrations, architecture gets to sift through its disciplinary priorities. This gathering of architectural seeing and being seen is significant for the scene it projects into the expanded field.

This year, the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, the tone to the official introductory texts suggests a dissatisfaction with past performances. Paolo Barrata, Biennale President, announces the 2016 show with an identification of tendency in those previous years to “deplore the present” as “characterized by increasing disconnection between architecture and civil society....

"The Architectural Imagination" Venice Biennale participants revealed

2016-03-02T15:56:00-05:00

Twelve firms, including Greg Lynn Form, MOS Architects, Preston Scott Cohen Inc., and Zago Architecture have been selected by curators Cynthia Davidson and Mónica Ponce de León to create speculative architectural presentations for the 2016 U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The presentations will be based on four real-world Detroit sites: Dequindre Cut/Eastern Market at 1923 Division Street, Mexicantown at 6370 Vernor Highway, the US Post Office at 1401 West Fort Street, and the Packard Plant at East Grand Boulevard and Concord Avenue.

According to a press release, the idea behind the exhibition is to demonstrate "the creativity and resourcefulness of architecture to address the social and environmental issues of the 21st century" and will have applications beyond the specific sites featured. As previously mentioned at Archinect, at the exhibition twenty photographs of Detroit submitted via a contest designed to tell a larger narrative about the city will be available in postcard ...

Winning "My Detroit" postcard photos for the 2016 U.S. Venice Biennale Pavilion revealed

2016-02-25T21:03:00-05:00

The 2016 U.S. Venice Biennale Pavilion is one step closer to becoming a reality with today's reveal of the 'My Detroit' postcard photo competition winners...[Out of 463 entries, the winning photos] were considered as unique individual depictions of Detroit that could also collectively tell a larger story about the present-day city. The photographs will then be printed as postcards and distributed to visitors when the Biennale opens in May.

See more of the photos over on Bustler.

Venice Biennale director Alejandro Aravena: "Our challenge must be to go beyond architecture."

2015-11-20T12:04:00-05:00

As architects, we are living at a time of shifting paradigms. [...] It’s why I’m so interested in how architects and urban planners engage with other fields – economics, security, the environment and so on. Our challenge must be to go beyond architecture and speak the languages of these other disciplines, before translating our discussions into formal design proposals. [...] Our ultimate focus is still on form, but what informs this has expanded dramatically.

Just a few key takeaways from Alejandro Aravena's piece for The Guardian:

"As curator of Reporting From The Front, I want to reverse the idea that the Biennale only deals with issues that are of interest to other architects. We have begun by identifying problems that every citizen can not only understand but actually has a say in: immigration, water, land capacity, waste and so on."
"Unlike military wars where nobody wins and there is a prevailing sense of defeat, however, on the frontlines of the built environment there is a sense of vitality, because architecture is about looking at reality in a proposal key. We should never forget that design can be a very powerful tool in mobilising people to act."
"There are new actors in this story – not least those property developers who use buildings to chase huge profits. But we are interested in how architecture can introduce a broader notion of gain: design as added value instead of an extra cost; architecture as a shortcut towards equality...

"Reporting from the Front" is the title of the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture

2015-09-02T13:19:00-04:00

The President of la Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, accompanied by the curator of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, Alejandro Aravena, met today at Ca’ Giustinian with the representatives of 48 Countries. The 15th Exhibition will take place from May 28th to November 27th 2016...in the Giardini and the Arsenale and in various other venues in Venice. The title chosen by Alejandro Aravena for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition is: REPORTING FROM THE FRONT

"There are several battles that need to be won and several frontiers that need to be expanded in order to improve the quality of the built environment and consequently people’s quality of life," Alejandro Aravena states in the announcement. "More and more people in the planet are in search for a decent place to live and the conditions to achieve it are becoming tougher and tougher by the hour. Any attempt to go beyond business as usual encounters huge resistance in the inertia of reality and any effort to tackle relevant issues has to overcome the increasing complexity of the world."

Employing a militaristic tone, Aravena is signalling an aggressive positioning for next year's Biennale, as well as a clear political stance. "Unlike military wars where nobody wins and there is a prevailing sense of defeat, on the frontlines of the built environment, there is a sense of vitality because architecture is about looking at reality in a proposal key," he states.

The Chilean architect is know...

U.S. Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, "The Architectural Imagination", now open for submissions

2015-07-17T14:51:00-04:00

Start sharpening those pencils – the US Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale is now open for submissions. The Pavilion's theme of "The Architectural Imagination", curated by Monica Ponce de Leon and Cynthia Davidson, is looking for projects sited particularly in Detroit, while still having global potentials. The curators will commission a total of 12 domestic practices to be exhibited at the Biennale's US pavilion, as well as include them in a special "cataLog" issue of Log journal.

The US Pavilion's website's landing page features a photograph of Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry" fresco (1932-33), referring to the curators' agenda to consider Detroit from its legacy as "a center of American imagination, not only for the products it made but also for its modern architecture and modern lifestyle, which captivated audiences worldwide."

In order to be considered, applicants must either themselves be an architect with US citizenship, or include one on their team, as well as have at least ...