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.
— Christopher Hawthorne | Los Angeles Times
"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:
3 Comments
I liked Hawthorne's categorization that this Biennale is about demand, not supply.
I appreciate the focus on often overlooked aspects, factors and participants in Architecture culture. At the same time, I'm thinking about the use of political/thematic contrast in the way that this biennale has been curated and positioned against mainstream Architecture. Does this kind of high contrast pivot from starchitects to rammed earth buildings bring us close to understanding where we are at in 2016, or are we just swapping Koolhaas's socioeconomic blinders out for Aravena's?
Not PC (the issues addressed are valid) but instead "Social-Washing" -- a fad where a social good narratives are used to avoid talking about boring and difficult craft that might actually improve lives (see NYTimes arch critic for one not unique example). Like the Chi-Bi, doesn't require being seen in person, as long as you get "the message."
Ironic that these social (concept art) architecture shows require substantial architecture--Venice, Chicago--As a backdrop. I'd like to see Arevana's biennale in Chile, on the site of his housing projects. Maybe people would ask why they got half finished houses.
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