The 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale is on at the moment with architects, designers and enthusiasts flocking to Venice from all over corners of the globe to participate and experience one of the most prestigious and important cultural institutions.
This is the 12th biannual exhibition, held at venues such as the Giardini and at the Arsenale as well as other venues around Venice, and is running until 21 November 2010. This year sees the event directed by Kazuyo Sejima. Sejima has a long history with the Venice exhibition as she, paired with Ryue Nishizawa, organized the Japanese Pavilion, City of Girls, for the 7th International Architecture Exhibition in 2000 and won the Golden Lion in 2004 for the most significant work of the 9th International Architecture Exhibition. Now, she will be the first woman to direct the Architecture Sector of the Biennale. “The twenty-first century has just started. Many radical changes are taking place. In such a rapid-changing context, can architecture clarify new values and a new lifestyle for the present? Hopefully, this show will be a chance to experience the manifold possibilities of architecture, as well as to account for its plurality of approaches, each one of them being a different way of living,” explained Sejima.
Entitled ‘People meet in Architecture’, the participating 48 international firms, architects, engineers and artists will illustrate their positions regarding the interaction of new social and natural environments. ”This way the atmosphere of the exhibition itself will be achieved through multiple points of view rather than a single orientation,” added Sejima.
Sejima’s intention is to explore the relationship between architecture and new lifestyles and values in society. “The idea is to help people relate to architecture, to help architecture relate to people, and to help people relate to themselves… In the end, we would be happy if, thanks to this exhibition, we could feel where our society might be going, what dreams the future might hold for us” said Sejima.
A key component of the Biennale are the exhibitions held by each participating country, this year there are 53 including first-time national participations include Albania, Kingdom of Bahrain, Iran, Malaysia, Morocco, Republic of Rwanda.
Woodhead architects have recently returned from the opening of the Biennale, and the following are the pavilions that they found most exciting.
Australia
The ‘NOW and WHEN Australian Urbanism’ exhibition, curated by John Gollings and Ivan Rijavec highlights three of Australia’s most interesting urban regions as they are ‘now’, before dramatically representing futuristic urban environments as they may be ‘when’ we reach 2100.
The exhibition, located in the Australian Pavillion designed by Phillip Cox, features a range of dazzlingly visceral digital stereoscopic images*. On the pavilion’s upper level, NOW features current urban environments in Sydney, Melbourne and Surfers Paradise. Stereoscopic visuals will show contrasting views of these cities from macro-scapes at 20,000 feet to ‘helicoptering’ views of urban and architectural icons at close range. All three cities have been filmed at dusk, when the ‘Australian urban spectacle becomes luminous and articulate in conveying the way our cities work’.
On the pavilion’s lower level, WHEN will dare to imagine Australian urban spaces in 91 years time, with the intent of ‘catapulting urban debate into eye-popping visceral entertainment set in a soundscape’. Australian architects were asked to submit 3D entries for inclusion by entering an ‘Ideas for Australian Cities 2100’ national competition. A range of entries were then chosen focusing on the creative potential of architecture.
Two stereo screens have been mounted back to back at the rear of the upper and lower exhibition spaces will be the focus of the installation. An urban themed black and white geometric matrix has been projected on the walls, floors and ceilings of both levels leading to two stereo screens, which feature the urban environments in continuous three minute loop cycles.
Greece
“The Ark: Old Seeds for New Cultures” has been curated by Phoebe Giannisi, Zissis Kotionis. The concept introduces an Ark representative of a mobile ‘bank’ of plant material. This ‘bank’ distributes the tools and knowledge for regenerating cities and their outskirts. The Ark is also capable of archiving past information, while concurrently generating new.
The Ark, inside the Greek Pavillion, is a wooden construction 12 meters in length, 1.70 m. at its maximum width and 3.30m in height, which can accommodate visitors and can be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere. It is made out of planks, beams, and flat pieces of plywood. In the Ark’s interior, the seed and plant bank is complemented by the installation of a small kitchen area. The production of food from the Ark’s store/archive, allows for the exhibition space to be occupied by humans in a lively and interactive manner.
In the interior of the Ark is hosted the archive of biogenetic plant material (seeds, fruit, plants) in special cases (glass jars, buckets, plates et al.) The collection will be placed in the Ark according to thematic units such as the following Nutritional (grains, peas and beans etc), Therapeutic, Decorative, Aphrodisiac, Euphoric & Deadly/Poisonous.
The exhibition references the economic crisis under way in Greece and reinforces that the responsibility of architecture goes beyond the bounds of the constructed edifice. It is being redefined as a set of practices for the planning and management of land spaces. The crisis in agriculture affects the availability and quality of nutrition. At the same time, the harsh conditions of the economic crisis in the cities turn all heads to the countryside and to the land available, which thus assumes the value of vital resource with the potential of providing employment, quality of living, alternative structuring of production and of motivating networking, the forming of communities and the development of communal living practices. Land is tantamount to cultivation: cultivation of seeds and plants but also of civilisation, interconnections, communication and exchange. The architecture of cultivations, landscaping, the determination of performativity within given spatial fields, all these derive from the software programs which we designate as seeds and, generally, as biogenetic plant material
Romania
The Romanian Pavillion is particularly impressive when you consider it’s curators are all under the age of thirty. The team (comprising Romina Grillo, Ciprian Rasoiu, Liviu Vasiu, Matei Vlasceanu & Tudor Vlasceanu) have enclosed a space of 94sqm in a stark white shell within the Romanian pavillion, which can only be entered by one person at a time. This is to represent the literal space per person in Bucharest, and the contrast between public exterior and private spaces.
The architecture is the physical presence of the enclosed exhibited space and by a seemingly violent process it defines two spaces, two worlds: one that is planed and another that is accidental and a consequence of the first. The exterior of the architectural object, a collective space, presents an enigma. Moving around it prepares the visitors and reveals fragments in three very precise moments thru small round openings in the walls. The interior of the architectural object, an individual space, has the desired 94 m2 surface. The space receives daylight through a circular opening in the ceiling which together with the three perforations acts as a system of reference for the person inside and defines the inner space with the minimum geometric means necessary.
The rotated geometry de-materializes the architectural object, creating a relationship between an individual, interior, sacred, private, abstract space and a collective, exterior, profane, public, real space. The tension between these spaces keeps them united; one cannot exist without the other and both cannot exist without architecture.
Hungary
The Hungarian pavilion explores the simplest and most fundamental act of the architect: drawing. ‘Borderline‘ defines the line as the origin of the architectural idea as opposed to the house or space. Using the almost exclusively two-dimensional element as a focal point, the project utilizes nearly one hundred kilometres of thread to physically illustrate how lines are translated into architecture.
Curated by two young Hungarian architects, Andor Wesselényi-Garay and Marcel Ferencz, ‘Borderline’ uses thin taut ropes as an analogy for the line, by arranging them in groups and clusters, they become visual references to columns, creating not a definite space but more a spatial diagram of the process whereby the first gestures committed to paper evolve into a building. The installation is an interactive element, being continuously shaped and moved by the people walking in and through it. Projected through the installation medium and on to the walls are ‘drawing interviews’ that the team conducted with 40 foreign and Hungarian architects. Not only do the videos verify the basic proposition of the exhibition (that architects still draw), they offer a voyeuristic look into the very personal and idiosyncratic act of sketching an idea.
To go with this year’s biennale theme, ‘people meet in architecture’, the pavilion aimed to encompass a wide community in its making: thirty thousand pencils were collected from schools all over the country and hung on the ends of the ropes to serve as mementos of individuals, gestures and drawings. both Hungarian and foreign architects were involved with the video project, building on the notion that the act of drawing is the common denominator of the work of all architects.
Bahrain
The Kingdom of Bahrain, the first gulf state to participate in the Biennale, was awarded the Golden Lion for the best national participation at the Biennale.
‘Reclaim’, is an investigation into the decline of sea culture in the island. The pavilion, located at a central point within the Arsenale, was commissioned by Her Excellency Sheikha Mai Bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, Minister Of Culture Of The Kingdom Of Bahrain. Curators for the national participation of the kingdom
of bahrAin were Noura Al-Sayeh and Dr. Fuad Al-Ansari, architects engaged in both teaching and practice in Bahrain.
Three fishermen’s huts that have been transposed from their original sites in Bahrain form the focal point of the exhibition. The awkwardness of their situation, disconnected from their coastal scenery, speaks of the discomfort of the
current relationship with the sea. In line with the theme of this year’s biennale, it offers the visitors the chance to experience rather than observe architecture and through a series of interviews allows them to meet with the many anonymous architects as they speak about their relation to the sea.
The sea interviews, directed by the Bahraini movie producer and director, Mohammed Rashid Bu Ali, are the result of a series of interviews conducted by the Bahrain urban research team along the coastal areas of the island during the months of April and May 2010. The interviews dwell on the relation Bahrainis entertain with the sea, their personal account of the changes that have altered their access to it and their thoughts and aspirations as to how matters could be improved.
The curators of the Bahraini pavilion stated ‘it was our ambition to create a pleasant and intriguing place where people would naturally want to hang out and rest and where they eventually would effortless get informed about a fundamental topic of Bahrain’s culture and heritage, the crucial but vulnerable relationship with the sea. In that sense the space in the Arsenale is used as a natural backdrop for the human artifacts, the sea shacks which allow their owners to contemplate an immediate relationship with the sea. Having been dismantled in Bahrain and resurrected at the Arsenale in the exact same way, the shacks talk of another interesting topic, architecture without architects. We hoped that with this concept we could engage with the maybe vague but taken seriously highly ambitious theme of this year’s biennale, ‘people meet in architecture’.
