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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...

Is Aravena's Venice Biennale merely an expression of PC-culture?

2016-05-31T12:44:00-04:00

Aravena’s main show, though full of timely and meaningful projects, doesn’t succeed terribly well strictly as an exhibition — as a sensory and visual experience on its own terms... In part this weakness may be explained by the quick time frame; it also seems to flow from Aravena’s generous sensibility, his interest in opening his arms wide to the architecture of the moment and featuring a range of voices usually not heard in Venice. In that sense a desire for inclusion is his Achilles’ heel.

"Some architects — some architects left out of the show, that is — complained in Venice that what Aravena has produced is little more than a politically correct biennale [...] Yet the tone is more tolerant and curious than strident or doctrinaire. Ultimately the PC charge is a caricature, a reflection mostly of the anxiety of a Western architectural elite realizing that its influence is waning even in Venice, the place it has long gathered every two years to toast itself."

More dispatches from Reporting from the Front:

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: 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...

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...

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...