Upon arriv­ing in Venice for this year’s 11th Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, the Dys​turb.Net team was so sick that we didn’t know what to do. But when we began to see this year’s freebie-hip­ster-cotton-bags that have become a stan­dard give-​away from the pavil­ions, we started to feel better. These bags are the absolute best way to self-​promote the indi­vid­ual pavil­ions, other than offer­ing free drinks, which we also sup­port. On top of this, they can be beau­ti­ful, and a great reminder from year-to-year of the best pavil­ions and their graphic design cam­paigns. So we said to our­selves, let’s col­lect them and vote for the best bags…. what a great way to go “beyond build­ing“! To all you future cura­tors of your country’s pavil­ions, take note = give away some wickedly designed hip­ster bags and every­one will come!

Click on the photos for a com­plete high-​res shot!

Please com­ment on which bag you think is the best, and if you have more to submit we would be happy to post them.

The offi­cial cat­a­logue came at a price though, 50 Euros for press, 70 for vis­i­tors. We hope some­one builds a Pavil­ion out of these plas­tic shells hold­ing the books together.

This neon-orange-glow bag was handed out at the open­ing cer­e­mony – we missed to get this one while sick at home. We pho­tographed this dude on the 2G Vaporetto Party – he’s lucky we didn’t jump him for it!

This is only the Aus­tralian back-​up bag, the larger one was already out of stock. The nice book­let with an overview of all the exhib­ited models was a sep­a­rate purchase.

The cliché stays true, black is the most common color.

The Danish bag was one of the most spot­ted ones – due to its size, and the nice handle.

We received this bag of the easy-to-miss Por­tugese Pavil­lion, which is worth a visit due to Souto de Moura’s mirror instal­la­tion. The bag came with a really nice book on the piece.

Spin the bag fast enough and you get the Swiss flag.