The Arsenale exhibition opens with photographs of Thomas Struth reflecting on his memories and experiences of Germany’s urban landscape. The complete quietness of these pictures contrasts perfectly with the next room… (Photos: Francesco Galli / Biennale di Venezia)
… a black box, where Norman Foster’s Gateway creates a speedy circulating mass of projected text and images. On the floor in black and white, the names of important figures from the history of architecture flicker across visitors’ faces and bodies as they circle the room watching images and listening to the sounds of public spaces from around the world. (Photos: Francesco Galli / Biennale di Venezia, Benedikt Hotze)
Museum of Copying by FAT Architects (with San Rocco and Ines Weizman) has a catchy slogan: “Hail to the Copy!” In front of their cut-up version of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, possibly the most copied building in the world, we met with FAT’s Sam Jacob to let him explain his interest in copying and its relevance in architecture. (Photo: Torsten Seidel)
Because of its controversial contradictions, this was the funniest room: FAT’s Museum of Copying shares a space with Cino Zucchi’s Copycat and Hans Kollhoff’s Tektonik – Morphologie städtischer Fassaden. The cheap copy of the Villa Rotunda connects to Zucchi’s collections of pictures, models, insects, and Indian Chapati rolling pins and to Kollhoff’s collection of facades and models full of historical references – or repetitions? An outraged Peter Cook called Kollhoff’s installation an “affront to all that is liberal, sensitive, humane, progressive, delightful, or responsive.” (Photos: Benedikt Hotze, Florian Heilmeyer, Torsten Seidel)
Is this a highlight? We still aren’t sure. But even if Zaha’s architecture seems to be nothing more than a formal experiment, we must admit that Arum has a certain attractiveness in combination with her own sleek white spaceships floating through the room, the strange metal tower of shimmering silver, and the collection of great construction studies by Heinz Isler, Felix Candela, and Frei Otto. (Photo: Sergio Pirrone)
Photo: Iwan Baan
Our favorite piece (and well-deserved Golden Lion winner) is Urban-Think Tank, Justin McGuirk, and Iwan Baan’s: Torre David/Gran Horizonte. The investigation and documentation of an abandoned high-rise-turned-squat in Caracas is presented as an informal street café Latin American-style, creating a true Common Ground inside the Arsenale with cold beer and a Latin hip-hop soundtrack. Watch our video interview with Urban-Think Tank’s founding directors Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner. (Photo: Iwan Baan)
The hectic pulse of the main exhibition suddenly stops. Enchanted visitors, mostly smiling, wander slowly through Álvaro Siza Vieira’s structure, the folding and unfolding spaces of which integrate beautifully into the little garden at the end of the Arsenale, including the garden’s impressive old trees, providing framed views here and there. Both a tribute to the landscape and to the city, this structure is a magnificent, poetic point of meditation and a celebration of what architecture can do with space. (Photos: Francesco Galli / Biennale di Venezia)
Airports, once touted as “non-places,” figure largely in this installation by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The duo has been documenting these places of transit since the 1980s. Read through small details such as ground vehicle license plates or country/language specific signage, the photos reveal the specificity of these macro spaces through minute details. The photos are projected in a looped sequence, and airline drink trolleys figured in white provide a surreal physical reality. (Photo: Francesco Galli / Biennale di Venezia)
Peter Eisenman Architects with Dogma, Yale University, and Jeffrey Kipnis: Piranesi Variations. Four teams have taken Giovanni Piranesi’s famous and completely fictitious Campo Marzia drawing of ancient Rome as a starting point to develop new visions. Watch our video to hear why Eisenman thinks that dealing with Piranesi’s historical fiction is still relevant.
OMA’s Public Works presents architecture designed by civil servants in five European countries, such as the Greater London City Council, the Wibauthuis in Amsterdam, and the St. Agnes Church in Berlin. During the 1960s and 1970s a number of left-leaning governments established large public works departments to reengineer urban spaces. These public buildings are mostly lesser known, but arguably important for the legacy of architecture. In the age of the starchitect and the disillusionment of ideology, OMA reminds us that we don’t have to travel so far back to see powerful and inspiring architecture that served something as grand an idea as serving the greater good. (Photo: Torsten Seidel)
Crimson Architectural Historians’ The Banality of Good examined New Towns – entire new cities and urban environments built using massive-scale master-planning efforts. Crimson identified continuity in formula. Shifts in ideologies, demographics, and political systems seem to be easily incorporated into the new town model. Triptych collages present the context, ideological imagery, and progenitors for a collection of New Towns from the past six decades. (Photos: Francesco Galli / Biennale di Venezia)
For Swiss office Diener & Diener’s Common Pavilions, photographer Gabriele Basilico and a group of authors have been invited to take a fresh look at the 30 national pavilions in the Giardini. Rarely do visitors focus on the buildings that house the presentations themselves – but as Diener & Diener demonstrate, the pavilions are impressive and historically-important structures in their own right. This contribution will be published as a book later this year. (Photos: Benedikt Hotze)
Elemental: The Magnet and the Bomb. The Chilean office Elemental shows two current projects in a beautiful and carefully-considered projection and installation. We met one of Elemental’s principals, Alejandro Aravena, to let him explain the extreme conditions of these projects: One town hit by a tsunami, the other by what he calls a “social tsunami.” (Photo: Benedikt Hotze)
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