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)
August 25, 2010
August 23, 2010
2010 Architecture Biennale Venice. People meet in Architecture.
Kazuyo Sejima, director of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, at the Arsenale
Arsenale (and Palazzo delle Esposizioni)
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.".
August 16, 2010
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.
August 07, 2010
Slide (from 1934).
Slide from the Opelbad in Wiesbaden, Germany, designed by the Austrian architect Franz Schuster in 1934.
August 05, 2010
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
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