The Biennale in Venice - The 12th International Architecture Exhibition.

Cloud, by Matthias Schuler and Tetsuo Kondo

When coming to Venice, the first impression of the 2010 Architecture Biennale is pretty straightforward: “People meet in Architecture” is written above the Ponte degli Scalzi, next to the train station: in the typeface Helvetica. 2008, the Venice Biennale has been a vain and loud spectacle for long-serving architecture’s stars, this year however the exhibition is cautious. Instead of fancy architecture dreams, Kazuyo Sejima - the director of the Biennale - presents architecture’s essence : “The 2010 Architecture Biennale should be a reflection on architecture”, she said.

Work-Place, by Studio Mumbai

The exhibition in the Arsenale and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni is a collection of multiple points of view rather than a single orientation. Each participant shows his/her position towards the interaction of social, natural and human environments. Each installation is a real architectural contribution which people can experience.

Matthias Schuler and Tetsuo Kondo, for example, have proposed a real scale cloud which forces people into a new reading of space simply because its edges are ephemeral. Studio Mumbai, on the contrary, shows a ‘Work-Place’ where ideas are explored through the production of large scale mock-ups, models, material studies and drawings. They present a ‘building-evolution’ through a process of collective dialogues and the sharing of knowledge.

Dutch pavilion , vacant.nl

Even most of the national contributions in the pavilions of the Giardini fit perfectly into Sejima’s leitmotif: Japan gave tribute to the impact of metabolism and showed models and movies about the continuously changing neighborhood and the city.
The Dutch pavilion provokes a reflection upon void real estate in cities and called for the intelligent reuse of temporarily vacant buildings around the world.
Bahrain presented temporary forms of architecture which reclaim the sea as a form of public space: it is an exceptionally humble yet compelling response to ‘People meet in architecture’.

Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects, Chile

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 neither exhibits exclusively speculative design visions nor glossy computer imagery. It is an exhibition detached from the worn out term ‘starchitecture’. It relates more to a humanly concept of architecture: craftsmanship, drawing, poetry, human relations and sometimes just beauty. The best Venice Architecture Biennale I have seen.

Architecture Biennale Venice. Taglines from 1992 - 2010.

Each Venice Architecture Biennale gets a branding slogan, a memorable phrase that sums up the 'Leitmotif' of the exhibition. Is there a common tenor in these phrases? Maybe not - the taglines sound too generic to have an impact. It is usually about 'Future', 'Society" and the architect's search for meaning. Personally, "Less Aesthetics, More Ethics" sounded promising?

1992 Architecture: Modernity and the sacred space (Paolo Portoghesi)
1996 Sensing the Future—The Architect as Seismograph (Hans Hollein)
2000 Less Aesthetics, More Ethics (Massimiliano Fuksas)
2002 Next (Deyan Sudjic)
2004 METAMORPH (Kurt W. Forster)
2006 Cities, architecture and society (Richard Burdett)
2008 Out There: Architecture Beyond Building (Aaron Betsky)
2010 People meet in architecture (Kazuyo Sejima)

2010 Architecture Biennale Venice. People meet in Architecture.

Kazuyo Sejima, director of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, at the Arsenale

Arsenale (and Palazzo delle Esposizion)
Like in 2008, each participant in the central exhibition of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 at the Arsenale gets a personal space to show their understanding of the topic: People meet in Architecture. "It will be a series of spaces rather than a series of objects", explains this years Biennale director Kazuyo Sejima, "which means that the participants will be their own curators.".

The success of the Beinnale's topic, however, depends on Kazuyo Sejima's selection of architects, artists and engineers and their positions. A non-curated show has the risk of breaking apart in unconnected statements, but then again multiple points of view offer more than a single orientation.

Anyway, people meet in architecture - if they like or not. "The idea is to help people relate to architecture, to help architecture relate to people, and to help people relate to themselves.", says Kazuyo Sejima. Let's see what architecture can do.

'People meet in Architecture' - Biennale Venice 2010, image by Christian Kerez

Gardini (National Participations)
The national pavillions at the Gardini are usually loosely relate to the Biennale topic. Some snap-shots:

Austrialia is focusing on Australia’s most interesting urban regions as they are ‘now’, before dramatically representing futuristic urban environments as they may be ‘when’ we reach 2100, Austria's Biennale pavillion will be scaffolded inside and out to suggest work in progress, or 'under construction'. The reference is to Austria's open-mindedness, in that it welcomes foreign architectural invention and simultaneously exports its talents abroad. Denmark's Biennale pavillion shows Copenhagen as a living lab of sustainable urban development with architects, urban planners, investors, politicians, and the general public exploring the city's potential. The French Pavilion, explores the concept of void envisaged as a material for protecting, restructuring and building the metropolis. Germany presents Sehnsucht (yearning)  - and the attempt to convey the unspoken and the unseen of architecture into a public presentation. Israel presents the Kibbutz as an architecture without precedents. The Netherlands shows Vacant NL, where architecture meets ideas is a call for the intelligent reuse of temporarily vacant buildings around the world in promoting creative enterprise.  The US shows Workshopping, An American Model of Architectural Practice - a project that involve the architect as the initiator of a trans-disciplinary cooperative team focused on research, social engagement, and private initiative for public benefit.

OMA/AMO at the Architecture Biennale in Venice

Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Adjacent to Rialto Bridge, Grand Canal, by OMA

Rem Koolhaas has been awarded with the Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement, beside that, OMA's work is overwhelming Venice:

• OMA at the Danish Pavilion, Gardini
• Rethinking Education, Joint event hosted by Strelka and OMA, at Teatro Piccolo, Arsenale
• Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Adjacent to Rialto Bridge, Grand Canal
• Preservation, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (opening 26.08.2010, 10am-7pm)
• Quotidian Architectures exhibition, Arsenale
• West Kowloon, Cultural District, Forum featuring Rem Koolhaas (opening 27.08.2010, 3pm-4.30pm)

Huts - Centre Pompidou.

Kawamata "Huts" at the Pompidou, image by Christoph Wassmann
Tadashi Kawamata constructs architecture and urban spaces with humble, even recycled materials: structural timber, cardboard boxes, old newspaper and used vegetable crates serve as basic modules for the construction of volumes that closely relate to the spaces they occupy.


Kawamata "Huts" at the Pompidou, image by Christoph Wassmann
High up on the external facades of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kawamata has installed huts constructed of structural timber and lined with cardboard. These cabins attached like swallows nests to the building suggest the fragility of our bodily existence our relation to the world and our experience (text from exhibition folder).


Kawamata "Huts" at the Pompidou, image by Christoph Wassmann


Kawamata "Huts" at the Pompidou, image by Christoph Wassmann

Slide (from 1934).

Opelwadn Wiesbaden, photo from the 30s

front elevation
Slide from the Opelbad in Wiesbaden, Germany, designed by the Austrian architect Franz Schuster in 1934.

Arno Brandlhuber. Brutiful Brunnenstrasse.

photo copyright by Ute Bauer
Arno Brandlhuber, a German based architect, bought a 1990-ies investor's ruin and erected on the existing foundation plate an art gallery/studio building. The design is lo-fi: raw concrete walls, plywood, iron pipes, polycarbonate boards, etc.The building follows constrains: The floor slabs inherit the height from the two adjacent buildings, it uses the existing elevator cores and the sloping roof guarantees light incidence at the patio. The building seems perfectly not-designed - and even better - it seems not to be build for eternity: no perfect details and finishing, no ageless materials, flexible falls, flexible facade, etc. SLAB magazine called it: Brutiful Brunnenstrasse.

Some (German) architects, however, felt offended by such simplicity.

What writes the German newspaper TAZ? “Warum müssen schöne Neubauten immer mit Galerien daherkommen? Warum nicht mal mit einer Suppenküche?” (“Why are great new building always art galleries? Couldn’t it be once a soup kitchen?”)



photo copyright by Ute Bauer
photo copyright by Ute Bauer

Distorted Home.

Erwin Wurm - Narrow Mist.

The sculpture exhibition at the UCCA in Beijing by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is featuring the ‘Narrow house’, a piece of art, which might be a reflexion of the artist’s childhood house. A building shrunken only in one axis.

In his work, Wurm continuously digs behind everyday objects: fat cars, fat houses or Wurm’s amazing “one minute sculptures”. Read more about the UCCA exhibition at designboom. For another Wurm house project see "House Attack".

Do it Yourself Facade. Berlin.

Carsten Nicolai, autoR, 2010 Photo: Benjamin Pritzkuleit

autoR (2010) by Carsten Nicolai is the third project realized by the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin on its facade. autoR is conceived as a self-organizing process. Visitors actively contribute to the design of the facade by individually applying stickers designed by the artist.

An artwork in phases: first, zero, a blank facade - a contrast to the numerous advertisement images at the Schloßplatz, second, the collective application of the stickers.

A facade of shared authorship: the artist provides the tools and visitors take over the role of the designer.

Carsten Nicolai, autoR, 2010Photo: René Zieger

Hollein - Tobacconist’s.

Hollein's masterpiece from the '60ies - the Retti shop

Designing and building a tobacco shop is not quite a proper, political correct commission - anyway - Austria's only Pritzker Prize winning architect did it: In 1992, Hans Hollein designed a tobacconist's shop at Stefansplatz, a top location in Vienna. It is not his only shop in the city center. Most prominent Hollein shops are the jeweler's shop Schullin (1972), Christ Metek's boutique, Reti’s candle shop (1965) and of course the Haas House. At least in Vienna, these shops are retail architecture classics of postmodernism.

the original Hollein design (left) - and its destruction (right)

But now, the Austrian Tobacco Industry (now owned by Japan Tobacco, JTI) wants to get rid of the tobacconist's shop. Apparently, the iconic tobacco leaf has not attracted enough smokers. The owner argues, however, that the shop has been used as a trainings-facility for handicapped people and was not practical in the current design.The proposed after-Hollein design scheme shows an doorless facade, welcoming smoking addictive customers. Surely functional but an architectural affront - especially at this address. Couldn't they have just widen the entrance?

the new proposal for the tobacconist's - what an ugliness! 

Surprisingly, after most parts of the facade have been demolished, the shop got an "preservation order" - most part of the lately demolished facade has to be reconstructed. (even politicians are now on the case - [ger] - http://www.schicker.at/?p=2227)

Is building preservation of contemporary architecture the only way to prevent building-owners from their own destructiveness?

The Copying Artists of Dafen.

copyshop in Dafen (image by Geheimagentur)

60 percent of the world’s copied artworks come from Dafen, a village in South China - the village is the leading production center for cheap oil paintings. In 1989 Huang Jiang found the first workshop for copying master craftsman like Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and more. Today, most paintings are the work on the assembly line production where each painter works on different production phases of the painting: plants, reflexion, glossiness, etc. The more faces or hand the pictures includes, however, the higher the price. Approximately five million oil paintings are produced in Dafen every year; between 8,000 and 10,000 painters toil in the workshops (source: spiegel.de). Consumer are mostly department store (like walmart).





As part of the WIENER FESTWOCHEN, the art collective "Geheimagentur" presents a studio for copying paintings and socializing the art market. The group raises the question “Why the art world and the art market are ruled by ‘the original’ and obsessed by the idea of ‘originality’?

On the contrary: Copy art believes that a copy displays aesthetic and artistic decisions just like an original, that a copy is a witness to and the result of an artistic process just like the original, and that a copy develops an aura just like an original – but at a fraction of the cost. (source: themostwantedworksofart, geheimagentur)

painter in Dafen, China (image by Geheimagentur)

From from June 6th to June 13th 2010, artists from Dafen will produce a selection of the most wanted works of art. At the finissage (at the Kunsthalle Karlsplatz, Vienna) the artworks can be purchase by auction - the geheimagentur is redefining the art market.

Urban Interventions.

Another "lazy" posting - however - I like these urban interventions by Harmen de Hoop.

 Replaced Dustin (1996)

 Sandbox (1996)

 [via todayandtomorrow]

Kolelinia - The Skybike.

image by Martin Angelov

Kolelinia is a concept for riding our own bikes on a new type of bicycle-lanes, based on steel wires. Is it possible to achieve a completely new level of transportation with minimum resources?

This idea doesn’t isolate the bike stream from the streets, this only makes the connection for impossible zones between existing bike-lanes. Could be a bridge type, a longer transportation line or a special designed and independent touristic line. Of course it is too early to talk about mass use.

image by Martin Angelov

image by Martin Angelov

[via Swissmiss]

Party for Less.

party for less, by Gabi Trinkaus, 2010

party for less (detail), by Gabi Trinkaus, 2010

Happy Weekend.

Madrix (Cut and Paste Tokyo 2009 Theme:Natural selection) from Bonsajo on Vimeo.

Couch Cushion Architecture.

Image, copyright Jennifer Larson

Image, copyright Jennifer Larson

Exploring the fundamentals of architecture - from "Couch Cushion Architecture a Critical Analysis", by BUILDblog.