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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. — NYT
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... View full entry
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. — The Telegraph
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. View full entry
Today in Venice, the President of La Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, and curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara announced the theme of the 2018 Architecture Biennale. Entitled “Freespace”, next year’s exhibition will present “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the... View full entry
Standing at the foot of the Rialto Bridge in Venice since 1228, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi has had many lives: a trading post for German merchants, a customs house in the Napoleonic era, a post office during Mussolini’s regime. It survived two fires and extensive architectural interventions... View full entry
The criticisms generated by productions as significant as the Venice Biennale reveal just as much—if not more—about the central ecology of the event as its official material. Evidenced by the gradient of oppositions representing the national pavilions (and even a handful of Aravena’s... View full entry
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... View full entry
This biennale was not perfect. None are. And frankly I wonder whether Venice can ever be a fit venue for a serious interrogation of issues more profound than the Campari or Aperol conundrum. The vernissage is, at heart, a schmoozey, boozey networking knees-up in which the architectural great and good cheek-kiss their way down Via Garibaldi occasionally glancing in a pavilion. Arevena knew this all too well when he set out to give the festival some bite. — Architecture Foundation
Architecture Foundation Deputy Director/Turncoats founder Phineas Harper gives his two cents on critics' self-righteous reactions to the Venice Biennale.Find more Archinect coverage on the 2016 Venice Biennale in News and Features. View full entry
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... View full entry
The opulence of Venice's 16th-century Palazzo Franchetti is as memorable as the designs of a particular Zaha Hadid. A can't-be-missed retrospective honoring the late architect's four-decade career opened to the public today, just in time for the hoards of visitors venturing out to the nearby... View full entry
Without a doubt, there will be plenty to see in and around the Venice Biennale. Planning on attending and not so sure where to start? For the next few months, Bustler will share our recommendations of national exhibition pavilions and related events that you shouldn't miss. Have a look at our first list that you can use as a starting point for your visit(s). Happy Biennale-ing! — Bustler
Don't miss out on an exhibition featuring Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, a nearby Zaha Hadid retrospective, and the national pavilions from Great Britain, the Republic of Korea, The Philippines, and more.You can also keep track of Archinect's ongoing Venice Biennale coverage... View full entry
May 26, 2016Aravena’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... View full entry
The Venice Lagoon is the most endangered heritage site in Europe, declared the pan-European heritage organisation Europa Nostra at an event today [...].
Rising sea levels, swelling number of tourists, large cruise ships in the lagoon, the erosion of the sea bed, dredging deeper channels and the lack of an agreed management plan for Venice has created a perfect storm of threats to the city’s preservation.
— theartnewspaper.com
Previously in the Archinect news: Unesco threatens to put Venice on its Heritage at Risk listLeading museum directors, artists and architects call on Italian government to ban giant ships from VeniceHow We Picture a City: Venice and Google Maps View full entry
A court in Venice has refused to fast-track a legal claim filed by the Icelandic Art Center (IAC) seeking the reopening of artist Christoph Büchel’s mosque, which launched earlier this year in a disused church in Venice as part of the Biennale.
The IAC is the commissioner of the controversial project, which was housed in the former Catholic church [...]. The mosque closed at the end of May after only two weeks when city officials claimed that it breached health and safety regulations.
— theartnewspaper.com
Previously in the Archinect News: Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale View full entry
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... View full entry
OMA returns to Venice once again in the debut of the Chinese Pavilion they designed for the 2015 International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, "All the World's Futures", which opened to the public on May 9. Commissioned by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, the multimedia exhibition... View full entry
