Excite­ment for the idea – Poten­tial of the idea

What hap­pened to the bien­nale was the main ques­tion run­ning through my head the whole time inside the main pavil­ions this year. The theme, Out There: Archi­tec­ture Beyond Build­ing, is loaded with intel­lec­tual poten­tial and open­ness of inter­pre­ta­tion, and yet did not seem to unite the chosen con­tent exhib­ited. It is pos­si­ble that the theme devel­oped by Aaron Betsky was too broad and not accu­rately defined, or that it was too ambi­tious with­out the right resources.

While the bien­nale is some­what desyn­chro­nised every year –due to the indi­vid­ual coun­try pavil­ions run­ning with their own themes- this only empha­sizes the need for strong cura­tion of the main exhi­bi­tion pavil­ions. The Arse­nale Pavil­ion over­all read more as a who’s-who list of archi­tects than an inten­tional pre­sen­ta­tion of rel­e­vant work. Add to this the fact that many pieces of the exhi­bi­tion where older, well-​known works, they were unable to inspire surprise.

Dys​turb.Link: For a full set of pho­tographs from the Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale 2008, visit our Dys​turb.Net FlickR Set

While the Arse­nale had a number of well-​executed pieces, the over­all sequence of the exhi­bi­tion seemed broken and detached. Within the Arse­nale was a sub-​exhibit enti­tled Roma Inter­rotta / Rome Inter­rupted, a fan­tas­tic set of orig­i­nal urban plan draw­ings orig­i­nally pro­duced in 1978 for one of the “International Art Meetings” con­ceived by the archi­tect Piero Sar­togo. The beauty of the plans are not over­shad­owed by any hype, and the spa­tial expe­ri­ence is com­pletely dis­con­tin­u­ous to the next room, Uneter­nal City. The expe­ri­en­tial con­trast of the two rooms, even though the theme is con­tin­u­ous, asks the simple ques­tion “Is the Uneter­nal City more hype than content?” There is a small project by BIG Archi­tects in Uneter­nal City that pro­poses a “Pizza Plan” for Rome. While it is funny, it is only that, it doesn’t go further.

The Padiglione Italia within the Gia­r­dini felt more suc­cess­ful. The pavil­ion was tightly orga­nized and the over­all sequence was more fluid and con­tin­u­ous. There was more play within the source of con­tent and the type of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Photo-​collages, instal­la­tions, sculp­tures, videos, models and draw­ings are all put at the ser­vice of what each architect/office has been inves­ti­gat­ing. There is less burden of trying to “go beyond” while still play­ing with the theme itself.

The theme in its context

When the theme was orig­i­nally announced, I ques­tioned the theme in a pre­vi­ous post. The uncanny sim­i­lar­ity to themes already inves­ti­gated by Volume mag­a­zine are in the least humourous, but also ques­tion the orig­i­nal­ity of the curat­ing. To quote Betsky’s text from the exhi­bi­tion catalogue:

Out There: Archi­tec­ture Beyond Build­ing
The 11th Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, enti­tlted Out There: Archi­tec­ture Beyond Build­ing, points the way to a beau­ti­ful and crit­i­cal archi­tec­ture aris­ing out of the tomb of build­ing. It starts out by point­ing out what should be an obvi­ous fact: archi­tec­ture is not build­ing. Build­ings are objects and the act of con­struc­tion leads to such objects, but archi­tec­ture is how we think and talk about build­ings., how we rep­re­sent them, and how we build them. More gen­er­ally, archi­tec­ture is a way of rep­re­sent­ing, shap­ing and offer­ing crit­i­cal alter­na­tives to the built envi­ron­ment. In a tan­gi­ble sense, archi­tec­ture is that which allows us to be at home in the world. In our soci­ety, build­ings are too often the residue of the desire to make another world -a better world, open to pos­si­bil­i­ties beyond the everyday.

This year’s theme seems uncan­nily sim­i­lar to the man­i­festo of Volume mag­a­zine, pub­lished by Archis:

About Volume
Volume is an inde­pen­dent quar­terly mag­a­zine that sets the agenda for design. With going beyond architecture’s def­i­n­i­tion of ‘making build­ings’ it reaches out for global views on design­ing envi­ron­ments, advo­cates broader atti­tudes to social struc­tures, and reclaims the cul­tural and polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of archi­tec­ture. Cre­ated as a global idea plat­form to voice archi­tec­ture any way, any­where, any­time, it rep­re­sents the expan­sion of archi­tec­tural ter­ri­to­ries and the new man­date for design.

We are archi­tects = Are we architects?

I applaud this theme absolutely, and hope that the idea res­onates for a long period within the dis­ci­pline, and within the public. It is obvi­ously a theme that is widely felt within the Nether­lands, espe­cially because of the work of offices such as AMO. Their work lit­er­ally goes beyond the archi­tec­ture of build­ings, but it is impor­tant to remem­ber that AMO is often filled with people that have mixed expe­ri­ences, with back­grounds often more broad than architecture.

Nonethe­less, the larger debate about how archi­tects and archi­tec­ture can go “beyond architecture” is not so widely estab­lished within the dis­ci­pline, and such an exhi­bi­tion could do well to help estab­lish a strong the­o­ret­i­cal and strate­gic under­stand­ing of just what an archi­tect can do in soci­ety if it is not build­ing. For this reason, Volume mag­a­zine is an enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion to archi­tects open­ing our vision towards a broader impli­ca­tion in the world.

One danger to taking archi­tects out of our domain is that our talent seems to be neu­tral­ized and even made some­what banal. There are pieces in the exhibit that seem to only repro­duce ideas already explored in other fields. One such exam­ple is MVRDV’s Skycar City that appears to be a ter­ri­ble remake (not remix) of what Sci­ence Fic­tion artists have been imag­in­ing for over 100 years.

Our Favourite Pavilions!

Poland Pavil­ion
One of the best projects from the bien­nale is in fact a series of photo-​collages pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion by two pho­tog­ra­phers (not archi­tects), Nico­las Grospierre and Kobas Laksa for the Poland Pavil­ion (no link). The work takes exist­ing photos from well-​known build­ings in Poland and reimag­ines the same project in 50 years. The images por­tray both utopia and dystopia for future urban sce­nar­ios. The pro­jec­tion of utopia and dystopia per­me­ates the bien­nale overall.

Swiss Pavil­ion
Some of the most “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” work (if such a thing exists today) was shown in the Swiss Pavil­ion. The research at the ETH Zurich in the DFAB unit in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gra­mazio & Kohler Archi­tects proves a totally rein­ven­tion of how to build archi­tec­ture by employ­ing indus­trial robots. If some­thing isn’t more rev­o­lu­tion­ary in terms of build­ing con­struc­tion meth­ods, eco­nom­ics and social norms, I don’t know what is. The swiss have also com­piled the work, Design Explo­rations, into a very beau­ti­ful book and useful website.

Japan Pavil­ion
The Japan­ese pavil­ion exhibits the very subtle and sen­si­tive work of Junya Ishigami. He has been rec­og­nized for his inven­tive recent project, the Kait Work­shop on the campus of the Kana­gawa Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy in Japan. For the exhi­bi­tion, 20 stu­dents metic­u­lously hand-​drew plans and land­scapes onto the gallery walls in pencil. The work is quite mag­nif­i­cent, and a small instal­la­tion behind the pavil­ion resem­bles the Kait Workshop.

Danish Pavil­ion
Curated by the Danish Archi­tec­ture Centre, the Danish Pavil­ion has cre­ated Eco­to­pe­dia, a broad ini­tia­tive to edu­cate people about envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives. While I’m sure that many people are either over­whelmed or under­whelmed by the con­stant debate on envi­ron­men­tal­ism and sus­tain­abil­ity, the Danish pavil­ion is very ambi­tious and they deserve credit for taking the pavil­ion exhibit to another level. While the exhibit is full of data and inter­ac­tive pro­grams, almost no one has the time and energy to spend read­ing and absorb­ing the con­tent. On the other hand, the con­tent is online and pre­served for future ref­er­ence. In the 2006 bien­nale, Den­mark also cre­ated a fan­tas­tic exhibit, show­ing the ambi­tion of the coun­try in design. How about a trip to Copenhagen?

Dys​turb.Link: For a full set of pho­tographs from the Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale 2008, visit our Dys​turb.Net FlickR Set