Abitare Instant English 2014 N.07

Transcript

01 # July 2014 14th Architecture Biennale Themed itineraries through the pavilions Art and exhibitions in the city Books not to be missed Abitare is back. And one step at a time it is revealing its multimedia system. After Abitare Instant, devoted to the Biennale, to download and keep, more new features are on their way. Register at www.abitare.it to receive a preview of the new magazine, which has been completely revamped and redesigned. The print edition will be on newsstands on 19 September. In the meantime follow us on Facebook and Twitter, we will keep you up to date. ABITARE.IT | FACEBOOK.COM/ABITAREWEB | TWITTER.COM/ABITARE 01 # July 2014 Editorial di Silvia Botti Instant is part of the editorial system of Reportage In the Labyrinth 5 of Modernity 6 text by Luca Molinari photo by Filippo Romano Editor in chief Silvia Botti Map The Biennale and Venezia 32 curated by Roberto Ricci Scientific Editor Luca Molinari Elements Primary characters 36 Art director curated by Chiara Maranzana Eugenio Schinelli Design Fabio Grazioli Central office Chiara Maranzana Managing editor Absorbing Modernity / 1 In Search of a Continuity 60 text by Alessandro Benetti / 2 Concentrated Modernity 70 text by Simona Galateo / 3 After Colonialism 78 / 4 The Future Has Begun 86 Monica Guala text by Simona Galateo Editorial secretary Correspondents text by Alessandro Benetti Sara Banti Alessandro Benetti Italian Pavilion Continual Metamorphoses Rossella Ferorelli text by Luca Molinari Simona Galateo Luca Galofaro Emilia Giorgi Monditalia / 1 Research on the Frontier Roberto Ricci text by Rossella Ferorelli Filippo Romano / 2 Photographic Investigations Translations text by Emilia Giorgi Shanti Evans David Lowry / 3 The Many Paths of the Sacred 96 110 116 122 text by Emilia Giorgi Advertising manager Andrea Schiavon / 4 The Remains of the Boom 130 text by Rossella Ferorelli Cover: / 5 The Tradition of the Avant-garde 138 Belgian Pavilion photo Filippo Romano text by Rossella Ferorelli Press Review curated by Chiara Maranzana Booklist text by Luca Galofaro Awards The Lions of Architecture SpA RCS MediaGroup Proprietario ed editore Sede sociale: via Angelo Rizzoli 8 20132 Milano Fuori Biennale Between Art and Architecture text by Sara Banti 148 152 158 162 Ed i t o r i a l What you are browsing through is the first free digital edition of Abitare. It is not the digital version of the magazine. Rather it is a service that the technology allows us to offer you. We have called it Instant, as it lets us do what our nature as a monthly publication prevents us from doing: participating in events while they are still underway. And in fact the first issue is devoted to the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture, that will remain open until 23 November. We reported to you on the Biennale live on the web and through the social networks in the days of its opening at the beginning of June. Now we are offering you some reflections and some itineraries that, we hope, will help you choose what to visit, enrich your understanding and deepen your judgement. Abitare Instant Biennale is supported by a microsite devoted entirely to the exhibition in Venice (biennale.abitare.it), which will give all the basic information. It is an account of what is going on at the Arsenale, in the Giardini and in the city. It is a concentration of the most interesting productions, lines of research and reactions to a complex event that places Italy at the heart of the international scene and continues to stir debate. Silvia Botti 4|5 Reportage In the Labyrinth of Modernity The 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture is an account of a world undergoing profound metamorphosis, a workshop to be explored without necessarily finding answers #01 6|7 TExt by Luca Molinari photo by filippo romano Every two years the Venice Biennale of Architecture issues a challenge to the critics, the culture of the discipline and a public arriving from all over the world by bringing architecture to the centre of attention for a few months and proposing a possible key to understanding it and looking to its future. This year the gauntlet thrown down by the custodians of the Golden Lion has been an ambitious and risky one: entrusting the direction of the exhibition to Rem Koolhaas, the man who many consider the most influential architect and intellectual of the last part of the 20th century, and betting on a different formula from that of previous years. The choice made by the Dutch architect has been radical: not to focus on architects but on architecture and its meaning, imposing three very binding thematic and conceptual frameworks on the two large central pavilions, usually curated by the director, and on the many national pavilions that have always constituted the other fundamental part of the exhibition. After many years of exhibitions in which architecture appeared to be an emanation of the person who had conceived it, affirming the centrality of a star system in #01 which Koolhaas himself played a leading role, an attempt has been made to change tack, focusing attention on the primary characteristics of a world undergoing profound metamorphosis and shifting the emphasis from the exhibition as a picture of the “state of the art” to the event as an unsettled workshop in which to wander without necessarily finding responses. Fundamentals is the central theme, and springs from the need to go back to the basics of architecture, to its primary and symbolic elements in order to look at what this universal discipline, sapped by years of crisis in its structure and its meaning, actually is and what it could become. And starting from this central hub, Koolhaas has structured three, large thematic containers: Elements of Architecture at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, Monditalia in the Corderie of the Arsenale and Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 as a guideline for the national pavilions. Elements of Architecture is an exhibition crammed with often absorbing ideas capable of stimulating visitors’ curiosity and prompting the questions needed to look at the 14 primary elements of architecture identified by Koolhaas. The exhibition that, room after room, R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y interweaves stories of windows and balconies, walls, façades, floors, ceilings, sanitary fixtures, doors, stairs, ramps and escalators, corridors, lifts and roofs speaks to us of the complexity of every element, of the obsessions that have often left their mark on the works of many great architects and of the endless artisan and industrial experiments that have driven the evolution of each of these materials in human history. Monditalia is instead a highly experimental attempt to bring together all the arts with which the Biennale is concerned (except art itself). This is the first time that the artistic director of the Architecture Biennale has dedicated the whole of one of the most representative places in the exhibition to the host country, regarded as a unique and paradoxical laboratory of the contemporary condition. At the entrance visitors are greeted simultaneously by the illuminations of Santa Rosalia and some details of Lorenzetti’s frescoes of Good Government. Then a strictly cadenced sequence of 41 micro-installations entrusted to young researchers alternates with the images of 82 films devoted to Italy, dance sessions and, above all, schizophrenic slivers of a country unable to find an acceptable normality between ancient and modern ruins, psychedelic fragments, memories of the Radicals, sighs of a faded economic boom, traditional and novel spaces of religiosity, Alpine sublime and contemporary ephemera. Absorbing Modernity is undoubtedly the most successful part of Fundamentals because the decision to ask countries to reflect on the difficult relationship between modernity and context throughout the last century has resulted in the construction of a grand history in fragments of our recent architecture, bringing to light stories never told before and interesting authors in stimulating presentations that allow us all to make a unique journey through the history of the architecture of the long 20th century. The last century is not brought to a definitive close with this important section of the exhibition, as its curator may have hoped, but we are certainly offered an involuntary, extremely powerful image of what we are and of the many contradictions in which we are immersed, as we wait to find the invisible thread that will at last lead us out of the labyrinth of modernity. 8|9 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 10 | 11 #01 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y 12 | 13 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 14 | 15 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 16 | 17 #01 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y 18 | 19 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 20 | 21 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 22 | 23 #01 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y 24 | 25 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 26 | 27 R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y #01 28 | 29 The Biennale and Venice curated by Roberto Ricci Ferrovia Piazzale Roma Rialto Ca’ Giustinian Accademia Zattere Isola di S. Giorgio Isola della Giudecca Isola di S. Servolo PARTECIPATING COUNTRIES • Armenia ca’ Zenobio, Collegio Armeno Moorat Raphael Dorsoduro 2596 [4] • Cipro palazzo Malipiero S. Marco 3198 [6] • Costa d’Avorio chiesa S. Francesco della Vigna Castello 2786 [3] #01 • Kenya isola di S. Servolo [9] • Lussemburgo ca’ del Duca, S. Marco 3052 [7] • Montenegro palazzo Malipiero S. Marco 3079 [6] • Nuova Zelanda palazzo Pisani, Cannaregio 6104 (calle delle Erbe, S. Marina) [2] • Paraguay liceo artistico statale M. Guggenheim Dorsoduro 2613 [5] • Romania palazzo Correr, Cannaregio 2214 (Campo S. Fosca) [1] • Ucraina riva dei Sette Martiri Castello [8] EVENTS/EXHIBITIONS Arsenale Giardini • Arsenale, Castello 2126/a (campo della Tana): Happiness forecourt = Largo da felicidade; Fundamentally Hong Kong? Delta Four 1984–2044 [18] • Arsenale Nord, spazio Thetis: Air fundamental: collision between inflatable and architecture [12] • Arsenale Nord, Tesa 100: Across Chinese Cities – Beijing [11] • Ca’asi, palazzo S. Maria Nova Cannaregio 6024 (campiello S. Maria Nova): Young Architects in Africa [5] • Ca’ Foscari esposizioni Dorsoduro 3246: Mikhail Roginsky beyond the red door [7] • Cantieri navali, Castello 40 (fondamenta Quintavalle): Grafting architecture. Catalonia at Venice [20] • Conservatorio B. Marcello S. Marco 2810 (Campo S. Stefano): Planta [15] • Ex chiesa di S. Lorenzo Castello 5069 (campo S. Lorenzo): Masegni [10] • Fondazione Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore [26]: Glass Tea House Mondrian • Fondazione di Venezia, Dorsoduro 3488/u (Rio Novo): M9 / Transforming the city [6] • Fondazione Guggenheim Dorsoduro, 701-704 [22]: Solo per i tuoi occhi (fino al 31 agosto); Azimut/h (dal 20 settembre) • Fondazione Prada, Calle Corner 2215, 30135 [3]: Art or Sound • Istituto S. Maria della Pietà Castello 3701: The space that remains: Yao Jui-Chung’s ruins series; Moskva: urban space [17] • Officina delle Zattere, Dorsoduro 919 (fondamenta delle Zattere): Lifting the curtain [21] • Palazzetto Tito, Dorsoduro 2826 [23]: Modern Times • Palazzo Bembo, S. Marco 4793 (riva del Carbon): Time Space Existence [9] • Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209 (S. Marco): Township of domestic parts: made in Taiwan [16] • Palazzo Fortuny San Marco, 3780 [8] • Palazzo Franchetti S. Marco, 2847 [14]: Genius Loci – Spirit of Place • Palazzo Grassi, Campo San Samuele, 3231 [13]: Resonance; L’illusione della luce • Palazzo Michiel dal Brusà Cannaregio 4391/a (Strada Nova): Made in Europe [4] • Palazzo Mora, Cannaregio 3659 (Strada Nova): Time Space Existence [1] • Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi Dorsoduro 810 (campo S. Agnese ): Gotthard landscape – the unexpected view; Once upon a time in Liechtenstein; Salon Suisse: the next 100 years – scenarios for an alpine city state; Z club. on money, space, postindustrialization, and… [25] • Palazzo Zen, Cannaregio 4924 (Gesuiti): Adaptation [2] • Punta della Dogana, Dorsoduro [24]: Prima Materia • Zuecca project space complesso delle Zitelle Giudecca 32 (fondamenta delle Zitelle): The Yenikapi project [27] 32 | 33 Giardini The Biennale and Venice a Isola di S. Servolo ARSENALE Fundamentals Elements of Architecture Central Pavilion [16] Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014 Monditalia Corderie [15] Arsenale Albania [10] Argentina [11] Bahrain [12] Cile [12] Cina [14] Costa Rica [10] Croazia [12] Emirati Arabi Uniti [11] Estonia [12] Indonesia [12] Iran [10] Irlanda [12] Italia [13] #01 Kosovo [12] Kuwait [12] Lettonia [12] Macedonia [10] Malesia [12] Marocco [12] Messico [11] Mozambico [12] Perù [10] Portogallo [12] Repubblica Dominicana [12] Slovenia [12] Sudafrica [10] Thailandia [12] Turchia [10] GIARDINI Giardini Australia [22] Austria [17] Belgio [30] Brasile [20] Canada [44] Corea [42] Danimarca [34] Egitto [19] Finlandia [27] Francia [37] Germania [43] Giappone [40] Gran Bretagna [41] Grecia [25] Israele [29] Olanda [26] Padiglione Venezia [21] Paesi Nordici [35] Polonia [23] Rep. Ceca e Slovacchia [36] Romania [24] Russia [39] Serbia [18] Spagna [33] Stati Uniti d’America [31] Svizzera [38] Ungheria [28] Uruguay [32] 34 | 35 #01 [16] Elements of architecture Primary characters The exhibition curated by Rem Koolhaas is a sinuous route through the most basic entities of architecture, the fundamentals of construction. It tells stories of windows, balconies, walls, floors, doors, stairs and corridors. It reveals their complexity, the experiments to which they have been subjected over the course of human history and even the obsessions they have generated in many architects © Rem Koolhaas. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia curated by Chiara Maranzana 36 | 37 #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elem ents o f architec tu r e | P r i mary char ac ters 38 | 39 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters #01 40 | 41 #01 Photo by photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elem ents o f architec tu r e | P r i mary char ac ters 42 | 43 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters #01 44 | 45 #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elem ents o f architec tu r e | P r i mary char ac ters 46 | 47 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters #01 48 | 49 #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elem ents o f architec tu r e | P r i mary char ac ters 50 | 51 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters #01 52 | 53 #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elem ents o f architec tu r e | P r i mary char ac ters 54 | 55 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters #01 56 | 57 Bahrain [12] #01 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Absorbing Modernity/1 In Search of a Continuity A look at the last 100 years of history going beyond differences of time and politics: an approach that characterizes the research of countries which differ greatly from one another, from Croatia to Paraguay, from Bahrain to Brazil, from Austria to the United States 60 | 61 A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 1 . I n S e a r c h o f a C o n t i n u i t y TExT BY Alessandro Benetti The arbitrary limits of Koolhaas’s century frame a hundred years of turbulent history, marked by upheavals so frequent and contradictory as to bring into question the existence of any form of continuity within the period. And yet it is precisely the aspiration to trace “continuous” dynamics in the process of reconciliation between modernity and the local identity that the reflections of many of the participants in Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 have in common. Infra-Éireann, for example, focuses on the construction of infrastructure on Irish territory as the vehicle of a “modern” used to construct a sense of national identity after independence from Britain. It is amazing, from this viewpoint, that the recent invasion of the country by the multinationals of digital communication should be seen as the outcome of a linear process, and not as an alarming signal of a new form of colonization. In the dialectic between importers and exporters of modernity, it goes without saying that the United States belongs to the second category. OfficeUS puts on display the daily life of a big American architectural firm, location of a production that has no fear of quantity leading to #01 a renunciation of quality and that finds in the design of offices its preferred field of action on the global scale. The Brazilian pavilion responds to the hegemonic convictions of the USA by laying claim to the absolute centrality of the motherland in the worldwide architectural debate, now as in the past. Modernity as Tradition cancels out the dichotomy (temporal and cultural) between the two spheres and proposes, not without a touch of boasting, the image of an “always modern” nation that would certainly have deserved more courageous choices of presentation. Staying on the South American continent, Peru emphasizes the importance of Lima as a proving ground for the highly topical theme of the reconciliation between formal (modern) and informal (local) residential architecture, while Paraguay offers with humility its own original contribution to world modernity: the aptitude for the optimization of human and material resources proper to a peripheral and far from affluent nation. Denmark and Thailand propose more contradictory visions and look to tradition as a source of inspiration for the reactivation of virtuous processes ¬ photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Ireland [12] USA [31] 62 | 63 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 1 . I n S e a r c h o f a C o n t i n u i t y Brazil [20] Peru [10] #01 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Paraguay [5] of modernisation, running out of steam today: the natural element and the spiritual sphere are the key elements of the two approaches. Still greater anxieties emerge from two countries that were once part of Yugoslavia: while Serbia turns its back on history and takes architecture into the autonomous and abstract realm of drawing, Kosovo, which “has never absorbed modernity”, represents itself through a kaleidoscope of images without hierarchy, remains of a national identity that the 20th century has literally blown to smithereens. Frequent, finally, is the recourse to the expedient of the “archive of designs”, as guarantee of a thematic coherence that does not always reach satisfactory levels: in the case of Croatia and Uruguay there is a feeling that this might have been an alibi for research that has not attained a sufficient level of synthesis; Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have united their forces in a commendable attempt to track down and preserve the most significant episodes of ill-treated Arab modernism, as a cultural climate that held sway in the countries of the Near East throughout the century. Austria, finally, has had the merit of choosing a clear and well-defined theme (the space of the political debate, in its permanent as well as evolutionary dimension), of producing a rich taxonomy of it and of translating it into a presentation of great scenic effect – with three-dimensional reproductions of government buildings that define a surprising rustication on the inside walls of Hoffmann’s pavilion. 64 | 65 Denmark [34] photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Thailand [12] #01 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 1 . I n S e a r c h o f a C o n t i n u i t y 66 | 67 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Photo by Photo by Relja Ivanic photo by Relja Ivanic´ Serbia [18] Kosovo [12] photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 1 . I n S e a r c h o f a C o n t i n u i t y Croatia [12] photo by Jorge Gambini e Martín Craciun Uruguay [32] #01 photo by Andreas Balon United Arab Emirates [11] Austria [17] 68 | 69 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Chile [12] #01 Photo by Christiane Bürklein (Livegreen) Absorbing Modernity/2 Concentrated Modernity Great Britain, Japan, Chile, the Netherlands, France and the other countries that have chosen to look back at the events of the period between the 1950s and the 1970s in order to make their own contribution to contemporary architecture 70 | 71 A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 2 . C o n c e n t r at e d M o d e r n i t y TExT by SIMONA GALATEO The individual countries taking part in the Biennale reacted in different and sometimes even contrasting ways to Rem Koolhaas’s invitation: for all it was an opportunity to examine their particular contribution to contemporary architecture over a period of history. A sort of fil rouge, a unifying strand running through the exhibition, is the way both Old World countries and some overseas nations have focused in particular on the period between the 1950s and the 1970s for their critical analysis, and have traced the problems, the features, the strengths and weaknesses of the Modern Movement back to the happenings of those decades. It is no coincidence that this is the critical approach adopted by Great Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands: the profound changes of those years marked a turning point in the history of the architecture of those countries, leaving behind an indelible mark and a lasting legacy still to be explained and understood. Great Britain and France, for example, devote their investigations to the consequences of the technological, industrial, scientific and social development of the Modern Movement #01 on the society of the day and on contemporary society. The British Pavilion was curated by the London-based FAT studio, together with Crimson Architectural Historians, which has put together a colourful, pop-inspired exhibition entitled Clockwork Jerusalem. The contents prompt a reflection on how, starting from a combination of interests and disciplinary crossovers, the development of British modernism forged a new vision of society and on how all this still influences modern consciousness and contemporary panoramas. The French pavilion – curated by Jean Louis-Cohen – turns its attention to modernity and its contradictions, in terms of innovation on the one hand and of side effects on the other. Starting from sequences from Jacques Tati’s film Mon Oncle, which is a good example of the contradictory elements which the exhibition sets out to present, one wonders if the development of the modern, in all the various facets of technological, social and economic innovation, was a promise or a threat. A different approach was taken by Germany, the Netherlands and Chile, which each focused on a specific design project as a manifesto and a starting point for a reflection on the contemporary ¬ photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Cristiano Corte Great Britain [41] France [37] 72 | 73 #01 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Germany [43] The Netherlands [26] photo by Bas Princen photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 2 . C o n c e n t r at e d M o d e r n i t y Belgium [30] world. Germany asks questions on the subject of representation and the idea of architecture as a political and social medium, by reconstructing part of the Kanzlerbungalow, the chancellor’s reception space in Bonn before the German capital moved back to Berlin, searching for points of comparison, dialogue, interaction and new, virtual meeting places. The Netherlands goes even further presenting Jaap Bakema’s Open Society project – a utopian vision of the generative power of architecture in giving form and content to an open, democratic, egalitarian and inclusive society – as a possible model for the contemporary world to accompany development and the emancipation of society and at the same time to allow individuals to lead a fulfilling life, with plenty of special websites to open the debate. The Chile pavilion brings to Venice the first concrete panel (which once bore Salvador Allende’s signature) produced in the first prefabrication plant of 1972, and fills the space with original items from the living-room of a certain Señora Gutierrez, a resident of one of the first prefabricated concrete housing blocks, completing the exhibition with 28 models of building systems used in the world between 1931 and 1981. The Belgium pavilion has gone in a different direction, as have the Switzerland, Japan and Scandinavian pavilions. The Belgians offer a glimpse of domestic landscapes, taking the theme of interior design as a fundamental ¬ 74 | 75 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 2 . C o n c e n t r at e d M o d e r n i t y Switzerland [38] component of architectural theory. It thus investigates the lived-in spaces within the constructed environment, and the way their occupants modified, adapted and personalised them, in an almost ethereal space immersed in white, and closely related to previous editions, with fragments of furnishings, panels with plenty of printed images but little in the way of text. Switzerland, under the guidance of Hans Ulrich Obrist, chooses to develop the concept of its own research for the whole duration of the exhibition, through meetings, conversations and lectures, with Italian and international guests, offering the public a vision of two important historical archives, those of Cedric Price and of Lucius Burckhardt, explained to visitors #01 by young guides. The elaborate installation inside the Japan pavilion includes a collection of materials, archives, drawings, work books and videos, for visitors to consult, works by those architects who in the 1970s were taking their first independent and innovative steps towards modernity, giving substance and form to experimental research that would have an influence on later decades. The Scandinavian countries, meanwhile, have chosen to look at the legacy of their architecture in African countries, presenting an extensive panorama of idioms, encounters, transformations, crossovers and the work of little-known architects in the diverse landscapes of Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia. photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Japan [40] Nordic Pavilion [35] 76 | 77 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Absorbing Modernity/3 After Colonialism The complex reflections on the modern of countries that have experienced foreign rule in the past or more recent separations behind the Iron Curtain, from Czech Republic to Iran, from Romania to Mozambique, from Cyprus to China #01 Cyprus [6] 78 | 79 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 3 . Aft e r C o l o n i a l i s m Text by SIMONA GALATEO A varied group of pavilions approach Koolhaas’s chosen theme of one hundred years of architecture by regarding modernity in relation to the politic and historical events that took place in that period. Some explore the contrasting legacies of forms of colonialism, others look at civil wars and the succession of regimes that have seized power over the decades. The Cyprus pavilion, for example, offers an elaborate and colourful testimony (through a series of collages created using images and other fragments) of the way it has been invaded, conquered and colonised down the ages, highlighting not always in a perfectly clear way the legacy that each invading force left behind. Romania, on the other hand, commissioned Mihai Sima to curate the Site under Construction exhibition, which retraces the way in which the country pursued an urban policy based on intensive industrial development, presenting the construction of inner-city industrial plants as a symbol of acquired modernity that left a huge urban problem to resolve after their demise. Several different approaches were taken by Czech Republic and Slovakia (together at Giardini), Iran and Mozambique, all #01 of which carefully highlight – alongside the architectural developments – what has happened in their respective countries’ national histories. Czechoslovakia has lived through many turbulent periods in the last hundred years: Nazi occupation, socialism, Communist oppression, the Velvet Revolution and the breaking up of the country into two separate states. The exhibition 2x100 mil. m2 offers an interesting interpretation and takes social housing as the unifying theme underlying historical events over the time frame in question and takes the visitor on a journey that starts in the home of a 20th-century blue-collar worker, examines the collective homes of the Communist period, then progresses to the detached houses after the fall of Soviet power, indicating residential building work on a huge black map. Similarly, the Iran pavilion looks back at events in its history by focusing on three key periods in the 20th century on a long white wall, a narrative sequence that illustrates the architecture of the revolution, presented alongside the buildings that went up under the various Shahs, in an attempt to see in their differences the existence of a desire ¬ 80 | 81 photo by Alex Conu photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Cyprus [6] Romania [24] Iran [10] photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Czech Republic and Slovakia [36] #01 photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 3 . Aft e r C o l o n i a l i s m Mozambique [12] for experimentation that never bore fruit in contemporary production. The Mozambique pavilion offers its reflection on modernity in an exhibition entitled Architecture Between Two Worlds, with two extensive sections: the first gives an account of the country as it is today, in terms of landscape, infrastructure and social, economic and urban aspects, in a geographical and cultural context; the second brings together and compares examples of significant works of architecture from the hundred-year period with works of architecture in Mozambique, as the basis from which other forms of local architecture have developed throughout the country. Another interesting exhibition among the other events being held elsewhere in Venice fits in logically with the national analyses in the Giardini pavilions. Across the Chinese Cities – Beijing, curated by Michele Brunello and Beatrice Leanza, examines how the Chinese capital’s Dashilar district has managed to survive the process of demolition and upward development that has affected the rest of Beijing. The sober, fluid exhibition presents in chronological sequence models of the roads that encloses the district, together with a set of themed rooms that offer an account of local practices of conservation and productive development, concluding with a vision of how urban development might continue in the future. 82 | 83 A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 3 . Aft e r C o l o n i a l i s m #01 Across the Chinese Cities – Beijing [11] being held in the spaces of Arsenale Nord, can be reached with a special vaporetto service. 84 | 85 Photo by Photo By Andrea Avezzù Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Absorbing Modernity/4 The Future Has Begun Modernity is seen as a process that is by now complete and leaves room for new visions in the pavilions of Korea, winner of the Golden Lion at this Biennale, and countries like Morocco, Turkey, Canada, Spain or Kuwait #01 Russia [39] 86 | 87 A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 4 . T h e F u t u r e H a s B e g u n Text by Alessandro Benetti The Koreans of Minsuk Cho, curator of the pavilion that won the Golden Lion, look to the future above and beyond their ideological polarization. In the small pavilion overflowing with pictures, drawings and data, the socialist North and the capitalist South flaunt their own specific characteristics, convinced of the absolute extraneousness of the other half of the apple, but discover themselves, with surprise, to be far more alike than they expected. Perhaps this new awareness can inspire the contemporary construction of the Korean nation, which passes first of all through the reappropriation of the Demilitarized Zone that cuts the peninsula in half. Like the Korean, many pavilions take advantage of the research theme proposed by Koolhaas to turn their backs on the modernity of the last century, considered a process now concluded. Its logic, aesthetics and ambitions become a term of comparison for the development of new visions and processes projected towards the next hundred years. The settling of accounts with the recent past has not always been done peacefully. Fair Enough, at the Russian pavilion, sells off the symbols of the socialist utopia at a very lively “architecture fair”, full of stands with evocative names and #01 smiling hostesses. Through a schizophrenic mix of original materials and intentionally cheap reproductions, the curators shout to the world their scathing criticism of the impoverishment of the cultural debate in the country that was the cradle of the most visionary of the 20th-century avant-gardes. More cryptic but equally effective are the choices made in Potential Monuments of Unrealised Futures, Albania’s contribution to the 2014 Biennale. The paintings of Edi Hila – refined and aestheticizing reinterpretations of banal examples of architectural superfetations – and Adrian Paci’s video – which documents the transformation of a block of stone into a column on a voyage across the oceans – speak of a modernity that has invaded the country only to turn its back on it. On the other hand, it is precisely the omnipresent “incomplete” modern that carries the future “potentials” of a nation happy to be faced with a possible new beginning. Synthesis of the contents and elegance in the mise-en-scène are the best qualities of the Israeli pavilion too: the reflection on a century of settlement of the territory, which has determined the current “urburban” (a neologism rich in spatial and cultural meanings) condition, is rendered sublime in the ¬ Photo by Photo By Andrea AvezzùCourtesy la Biennale di Venezia Korea [42] Albania [10] 88 | 89 Photo by Photo By Kyungsub Shin Morocco [12] #01 Photo by Photo By Andrea Avezzù Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Israel [29] Photo by Photo By Andrea AvezzùCourtesy la Biennale di Venezia Photo by Image courtesy of Latreille Delage Photography 2014 A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 4 .T h e F u t u r e H a s B e g u n Canada [44] rhythmic ballet of pantographs on the sand, a very welcome poetic jolt at a Biennale that is sometimes too prosaic. Canada and Morocco look at the potentialities of their more peripheral regions where the climate is more extreme, the Nunavut and the Western Sahara respectively: in places where modernity has surrendered to the forces of nature, the architecture of the future may find its most effective design responses. Among the nations of the Iberian peninsula, Spain and Catalonia underline the importance of the themes of the Interior and Grafting as terrain of confrontation and material overlap between modern pre-existences and contemporary design, while Portugal aspires to take the debate over housing to the highest levels of disciplinary reflection, delivering it from the excessive power of market dynamics. Hungary and Turkey stress the centrality of the human being as constructor, user and producer of the imagery that accompanies architectural practice: in particular, the Eurasian nation investigates the role of immaterial memory as key to the understanding of the relationship between modern and contemporary. Curious, finally, is the response of Kuwait to Koolhaas’s call: Acquiring Modernity is the slightly out-of-sync perspective of a nation that is only now constructing its own modernity. 90 | 91 Portugal [12] Photo by Photo By Andrea Avezzù Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Spain [33] #01 Photo by Photo By Andrea Avezzù Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Photo by Photo By Andrea Avezzù Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 4 . T h e F u t u r e H a s B e g u n Turkey [10] Kuwait [12] 92 | 93 Italian Pavilion Continual Metamorphoses [13] It is an anomalous idea of modernity, the Italian one, recounted by the curator Cino Zucchi through “graftings”, i.e. actions that allow the incorporation of earlier states and the generation of new configurations #01 96 | 97 photo by Cino Zucchi I ta l i a n Pav i l i o n | C o n t i n u a l M e ta m o r p h o s e s TExT by Luca Molinari Innesti/Grafting is the title and underlying theme chosen by Cino Zucchi, curator of the Italian pavilion at this year’s Architecture Biennale and one of the best contemporary architects in Italy, in order to satisfy Rem Koolhaas’s request to reinterpret modernity over the last 100 years through a national point of view. For Zucchi the basic proposition is that «Italian architecture from the First World War to the present day exhibits an “anomalous modernity”, represented by its capacity to interpret and incorporate earlier contexts through constant change. This has not involved merely formal adaptations of the new with respect to what is already there, but “grafts” capable #01 of shaping the conditions of the context into a new configuration. This was an attitude once viewed by some as nostalgic or a compromise, but which is today admired in Europe and the rest of the world as the most original contribution of the Italian culture of design». And the question of “grafting” in design is tackled in the first place by the Milanese architect through a high quality form of journey that accompanies you physically through the different sections on show and offers some interesting innovations in the entrance and in the spaces of the gardens at the back, with a large and contemporary version of the “Ear of Dionysius” that invites you in and a long ¬ 98 | 99 photo by Cino Zucchi photo by Cino Zucchi #01 photo by Marina Caneve I ta l i a n Pav i l i o n | C o n t i n u a l M e ta m o r p h o s e s Cino Zucchi devotes the first part of the pavilion to Milan, which he considers the most original and extensive workshop for Italian-style modernity in the 20th century. 100 | 101 I ta l i a n Pav i l i o n | C o n t i n u a l M e ta m o r p h o s e s The second part of the pavilion presents over 90 works set in historical contexts, traditional landscapes, outlying metropolitan areas. #01 102 | 103 photo by Marina Caneve ¬ Left to right: Carmelo Baglivo, Display space on Piazza Navona, 2013, digital photomontage; Luca Galofaro, Stazione Spaziale – Ritorni 01, 2013, digital photomontage; Cherubino Gambardella, Supernapoli. Napoli with new structures grafted on, 2014, mixed technique and collage on paper; Agostino Osio, Milano Liberty, 2014, collage; Beniamino Servino, Squat tower with Nervi citation, 2014, digital photomontage. #01 photo by Cino Zucchi strip of metal that becomes a sinuous seat/roof in the outdoor area at the end of the exhibition. Inside Zucchi has sought to respond to the familiar limitations and potentialities of this space (the biggest national pavilion at the Biennale) by splitting it up into a series of thematic areas that aim to enter into dialogue with one another but that, when seen as a whole, are treated as stories with a clear independence of narration and language. The first part of the pavilion is devoted to Milan, which Zucchi considers the largest and most original experimental laboratory for Italian-style modernity of the last century. If the entrance space is taken up by a difficult attempt to look at the Expo from the perspective of the post-2015 future, most of the rest of the space is organized into a proper exhibition with sections that analyse the most significant experiences of Milanese modernity, starting out from the activity of the Fabbrica del Duomo, the institution responsible for the maintenance, preservation and restoration of the cathedral, and passing through Filarete’s Ospedale Maggiore and the Foro Buonaparte, but lingering above all on the golden age of the period following the Second World War and the I ta l i a n Pav i l i o n | C o n t i n u a l M e ta m o r p h o s e s Pad i g l i o n e I ta l i a 104 | 105 photo by Marina Caneve Behind the second room of the Italian Pavilion, a wall of images curated by Studio Azzurro brings together hundreds of videos published on social networks. #01 photo by Marina Caneve I ta l i a n Pav i l i o n | C o n t i n u a l M e ta m o r p h o s e s second generation of Italian modern architects, which is given a fresh visual interpretation. The second part of the pavilion pays greater attention to the current situation in Italy, with an increase in the number of voices and their potential, and a sense of necessary inconsistencies, which are regarded as the true richness of Italian architectural culture in today’s world and seen by the curator as a kind of landscape in which one can move freely around. Over 90 designs of buildings are grafted onto historical contexts, traditional landscapes and metropolitan suburbs to map out the state of Italian architecture and as one of the more traditional ways of interpreting it. A contrast with this landscape of actual constructions is provided by a great wall of architectural drawings curated with clarity and sensitivity by Emilia Giorgi, who focuses on one of the most lively and complex areas of research and discussion in terms of the current architectural scene through original drawings by Baglivo, Servino, Gambardella and Galofaro, which are used to create a powerful picture gallery. Behind the drawings is another wall of images curated by Studio Azzurro, which brings together hundreds of video testimonies collected through social networks and which tries to show the real, inhabited and most problematic landscapes in the country and which can be followed through a small and delicate presentation designed by Matilde Cassani. 106 | 107 Monditalia/1 Research on the Frontier [15] Limits, edges, thresholds, barriers, margins and enclosures: the theme of the boundary in a world undergoing constant geopolitical realignment and in a country that finds itself in a unique geographical position, that of gateway between North and South #01 Italian Limes 110 | 111 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Italian Limes #01 M ON D ITA LI A | 1 . R e s e a r c h o n t h e F r o n t i e r Text by Rossella Ferorelli One of the most interesting subjects of contemporary research in the areas that make up the vast fields that we call architecture today is that of the boundary. Limits, edges, thresholds, archipelagos, barriers, margins and enclosures: these are the names that a growing body of literature has chosen to apply, in recent years, to a series of multiscalar spatial phenomena, united by the role of impediment to movement that architecture plays in them. It may be because the changes underway in the geopolitical order are unprecedented, and it may also be that the pure architectural form is no longer a relevant paradigm, but it is evident that an attention to themes of a geographical and global nature is common to a broad swathe of the international research carried out by young designers. And so it has been given a prominent place in Monditalia, whose ambition is to constitute a representative sample of this transnational network devoted to investigation. The installation that has focused most clearly on the theme is Italian Limes, curated by Folder, whose interesting perspective treats the borders of Italy as a “territorial system” made up in equal measure of regulatory instruments and spatial questions. Starting out from a 2009 provision of the government that, owing to the melting of the Alpine glaciers, recognizes the mutability of the northern Italian border, Folder and its collaborators have built a machine connected to a series of GPS tracking units they have placed on the Similaun glacier. Thus the installation in the Corderie is a device consisting of a mechanical arm, controlled by an Arduino board, that draws the Italian boundary on the basis of signals received in real time via satellite from the sensors on the glacier, continually producing maps that visitors can take away with them. The story of the evolution of that border in the north is entrusted to a threedimensional model onto which a series of graphic images is projected. The project has been assigned a special mention by the jury of the Biennale. In an almost complementary manner, Pietro Pagliaro and Giacomo Cantoni propose Post-Frontier, a project that looks at Italy as the southern frontier of Europe and, at the same time, a territory in constant and contradictory relationship with the Mediterranean, itself an area of conflict and of negotiation over freedom and rights. Exclusion, confinement and surveillance are the paradigms around which the architecture gels, generating frontier-buildings which give concrete form to all the regulatory and biopolitical ambiguities that govern the movements of large numbers of human beings at a global level. Pagliaro and Cantoni’s device is a plaster model that constructs an impossible place, one with an absurd ¬ 112 | 113 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 1 . R e s e a r c h o n t h e F r o n t i e r Post-Frontier concentration of buildings and spaces that are in reality scattered all around the Mediterranean. What they have in common is their role as symbolic poles of this southern frontier. The installation also includes an acoustic side, recorded in airports and places of exchange, a collection of photographs and a videodialogue with Frontex, the agency for management of the borders of the European Union. The AUC, Cédric Libert and Thomas Raynaud’s 152 Mediterranea also looks at the Mediterranean. Here the theme of #01 the boundary is tackled through a study carried out into the insular condition. In fact there are 152 Italian islands, whose distinctive and ambiguous features are described with the aim of depicting the hybrid and disturbing condition that characterizes them. It is no coincidence that the installation is located in an outof-the-way place, the Gaggiandre of the Arsenale, and presents a table with a long collection of documents in the form of drawings and pictures, along with a video interview on the island of the Ottagono Alberoni in the lagoon. 152 Mediterranea 114 | 115 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Monditalia/2 Photographic Investigations [15] The documentary spirit of this exhibition on Italy has received a special contribution from images, narrations suspended between past and present, between monumentality and everyday life, between landscape and humanity #01 Alpi 116 | 117 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 2 . P h o t o g r a p h i c I n v e s t i g at i o n s The Third Island #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia A Minor History within the Memories of a National Heritage text by Emilia Giorgi Beginning in the deep South and ending in the Alps, a multifocal and wide-ranging journey that passes through the architecture, cities and landscapes of the peninsula and takes shape inside Monditalia. If the intent was to provide a theoretical key to the interpretation of Italy in a documentary style, then the approach taken by the photographers to drawing up this complex and varied map has proved fundamental. The starting point is The Third Island, the name that was given to Calabria, as its curator Antonio Ottomanelli recalls, because the configuration of the land made the region so difficult to reach. At the centre of his photographic investigation lies the unending construction of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, a project that is sculpting the territory and on which work continues despite having been started all the way back in 1964. Next comes Stefano Graziani’s installation A Minor History within the Memories of a National Heritage, an imaginary journey around the peninsula made through the photographic reproduction and consequent reinterpretation of 24 images selected from the archives of the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione in Rome. Alongside ¬ 118 | 119 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia The Room of Peace (Siena) this personal collection of visions that have contributed to forging the sense of national unity, the photographer has placed two symbolic pictures of an Ape Car and a basket of oranges to evoke the normality of the life that goes on around the monuments. Bas Princen proposes instead The Room of Peace (Siena), a new narrative woven out of the celebrated allegorical frescoes painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti for the Sala dei Nove of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico in the 14th century. Lorenzetti’s #01 representation of the city and the surrounding countryside under conditions of bad government (tyranny) and good government (the recently installed democracy) is reinterpreted by Princen in such a way as to establish a relationship with the architectural space that houses them and with the contemporary fabric of the city. With Nightswimming Giovanna Silva has chosen to portray Italy from a singular angle, that of the extraordinary vitality and recent decline of the discotheques photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 2 . P h o t o g r a p h i c I n v e s t i g at i o n s Nightswimming which from the 1960s until just a decade ago were theatres for experimentation in architecture and many other forms of art. She does so by combining a piece of photographic research that has never previously been shown and a series of interviews with the protagonists of this long period of creativity, from Pietro Derossi (Strum Group) and Andrea Branzi to Patty Pravo, with historic images from the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, we come to the Alps, with Armin Linke’s film of the same name, the fruit of research conducted for almost a decade with the architect and anthropologist Piero Zanini. One of the largest and most complex natural ecosystems in Europe, and at the same time the most anthropized mountain range on the planet, the Alps become an open-air laboratory in which to probe the social, economic and political relations of the present. At the centre of the research, the use that human beings make of the Alps and the imagery that has always been linked with these landscapes. 120 | 121 #01 photo by Filippo Romano Monditalia/3 The Many Paths of the Sacred [15] An exploration of the different forms of rituality that are still to be found in Italy and are at the centre of powerful social and cultural hybridizations 122 | 123 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 3 . T h e M a n y Pat h s o f t h e S a c r e d text by Emilia Giorgi Thousands of white light bulbs and Swarovski crystals outline an ephemeral structure that evokes the arches of Venetian Renaissance palaces to mark the entrance to Monditalia. An enormous illumination, handcrafted by one of the most important workshops in Puglia (Fratelli Parisi of Salento), that symbolizes the journey around a country in which numerous and diverse forms of rituality between the sacred and the profane still play a fundamental role, although one contaminated by contemporary experiences that construct wholly unprecedented landscapes. #01 The Felliniesque enchantment suggested by the illuminations finds an immediate counterpart inside the exhibition in Matilde Cassani’s installation Countryside Worship. Two large lenticular prints create an optical illusion to display different images of the same place. Looking at the photographs from a certain angle we see a typical and completely empty Italian landscape; changing position the space is suddenly filled with colour and people celebrating Vaisakhi, the harvest festival of the Sikhs. This happens every year in some small villages of the Po Valley, where the Sikh community is well photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Countryside Worship integrated and even helps to make one of Italy’s most famous products, Parmesan cheese. The installation Business of People by the photographer Ramak Fazel looks at the almost religious dedication to work. The space, which is reminiscent of a church, symbolically divides up the time of the working day with a series of kneelers. At the centre of the research the pictures and the private and everyday stories of Italian workers, giving rise to a multiple and anything but obvious portrait of the Peninsula. The theme of the sacred returns in the research conducted by Marco Sammicheli, Andrea Dall’Asta and Giuliano Zanchi. Designing the Sacred sets out to study the manner in which architects, designers and artists are capable of renewing – with more or less effective results – liturgical imagery in the light of progressive social changes, influencing the evolution of the Church as an institution that looks to the future. Sammicheli is the protagonist of an another investigation of the sacred in the interesting research he carried out with AMO studio and Giampiero Mariottini for Assisi Laboratory. The result offers much ¬ 124 | 125 #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 3 . T h e M a n y Pat h s o f t h e S a c r e d Business of People 126 | 127 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 3 . T h e M a n y Pat h s o f t h e S a c r e d Designing the Sacred #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Urbs Oblivionalis food for thought about the way that a small Italian town with just 28 thousand inhabitants is able to cope every year with an influx of six million tourists, many of them pilgrims. The interviews with four people working in the town show how it, rather than being frozen in the image of an ancient past, is in reality a workshop in continual movement. An efficient machine for tourism that aims to get an extraordinary heritage to hold a dialogue with the needs of a contemporary identity. Italy can become a global point of reference according to Elena Pirazzoli and Roberto Zancan too. Their proposal Urbs Oblivionalis is a study of the effects on architecture and the urban fabric of the repeated acts of terrorism carried out in the 1970s and 1980s. In what way can the country offer a response in terms of design to the attacks that afflict contemporary cities all over the world? Two imposing circular elements construct an ideal room in which to consider a question of extreme topicality. The two outer sides house highly symbolic images. On the one hand the PAC in Milan, the centre dedicated to contemporary art that was damaged by a bomb in 1993. On the other, in a provocative manner, the threat made by the Mafia boss Giovanni Brusca in very bad Italian: “Ma se un giorno vi svegliaste and non trovereste più la Torre di Pisa?” (But if you were to wake up one day and the Leaning Tower of Pisa weren’t there anymore?). 128 | 129 Monditalia/4 The Remains of the Boom [15] photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia The rhetoric of the economic miracle has at last been set aside, the necessary critical distance has been attained. Now it is possible to look at the phenomena of those sensational years of Italian modernization with the required maturity #01 The Remnants of a Miracle 130 | 131 M ON D ITA LI A | 4 . T h e R e m a i n s o f t h e B o o m Text by Rossella Ferorelli Although Absorbing Modernity is the theme reserved, at the Biennale, for the national pavilions, speaking of Italy in the terms suggested by Koolhaas – i.e. through a combination of research and journalistic investigation that also makes use of particular anecdotes to explore questions of general interest – easily leads to a situation where we have to face up to events that belong to the country’s more or less recent past. And so within the framework of Monditalia we find a small seam of projects that are able to present a picture of the Italy of the modern era (i.e. that of the economic boom) free from idyllic overtones, showing that a critical distance from that modernity, however powerful, has been achieved and that the process of mourning over this crisis has led to a long-awaited maturity. In this set of works we can include #01 The Remnants of the Miracle, curated by Luka Skansi and the result of a project structured as a journey through important fruits of research in planning and engineering in the 1950s and 1960s: fruits which have met a sad fate and therefore now lie in an abandoned state. Certainly not a new theme, that of the oblivion which follows the discarding of works of architecture, even the good ones (so that even the young people of de Gayardon Bureau are proposing a version concentrating on the places of entertainment of Milano Marittima in their installation entitled Dancing around Ghosts), but Skansi’s work must be given credit for not succumbing to the fascination of the ruin. Thus it has succeeded in producing an unvarnished account of a simple fact: that objects of great value were realized in those years, that some of them have been ¬ photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia The Remnants of a Miracle 132 | 133 #01 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 4 . T h e R e m a i n s o f t h e B o o m Z! Zingonia, Mon Amour 134 | 135 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 4 . T h e R e m a i n s o f t h e B o o m forgotten and that there therefore exists a precious architectural heritage which we still have time to salvage. The installation is perhaps even frugal, but the photos and videos of which it is made up show how buildings of the calibre of Gellner and Zorzi’s Mountain Holiday Home at Borca di Cadore, Nervi’s Tobacco Factory in Mantua or Gori and Savioli’s Flower Market in Pescia deserve to be preserved. Also very interesting from the documentary point of view is Z! Zingonia, Mon Amour, #01 curated by Argot ou la Maison Mobile and Marco Biraghi. Through wide-ranging and thorough historiographic research, the installation sets out to reconstruct the rise and fall of the dream of Renzo Zingone – an entrepreneur whose visions lay somewhere between Olivetti’s enlightened patronage and a Berlusconian populism before its time – and his most grandiose creation, Zingonia, a project for a town with 50 thousand inhabitants near Bergamo. Realized in the space of a few years from 1965 onwards, photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Dancing around Ghosts Zingonia was essentially a failure: divided administratively among five municipalities and prey to the economic and political instability of the First Republic, it rapidly became depopulated and subject to social decay. Notwithstanding the plan for it to be a self-sufficient town (with an integrated manufacturing district created from scratch) and not a satellite, Zingonia represents the breakdown of modernist positivism and provides evidence of the need for it to give way to the age of complexity. The installation tells this story, intertwining the factors that influence the destiny of a town with that of a nation and conveying the nature of that unpredictability. It does so by succeeding in grasping the naivety of the major operations launched in a country that was laboriously attempting to equip itself with an aggressive modernity, in order to quickly make up for the agonies of the war. The respectful way in which this story is told is perhaps the hoped-for sign of a maturity, one in which Italy has at last learned to look back without regrets. 136 | 137 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Monditalia/5 The Tradition of the Avant-garde [15] The spirit of the generation of the Italian Radicals, the only one to have questioned the standard methods of teaching architecture and experimented with alternatives, permeates many parts of the exhibition at the Corderie and defines its educational character #01 Space Electronic 138 | 139 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Space Electronic Text by Rossella Ferorelli At Koolhaas’s Biennale, the part played by research is unmatched in the entire history of the Venetian event. It is a record that no one was better suited to set than a man who, in his own studio, has a doppelgänger devoted entirely to cross-sectoral investigation, of great cultural breadth. The total lack of reserve towards research is what has made OMA a great factory for the production of architectural talent and, at the same time, a machine able to reproduce by means of infinite parthenogenesis, generating hosts of heirs and epigones. But, concentrating as it had to on the Italian phenomenon, it was inevitable that a substantial part #01 of the exhibition would be taken up with education and give a great deal of space to the generation of the Radicals, the only one to have experimented with any degree of constancy with possible alternatives to the standard methods of architectural training. Radical Pedagogies is the name of the imposing installation curated by Beatriz Colomina and numerous collaborators. A wall that assembles material produced in over three years of academic studies carried out at Princeton University, all focused on the development of unconventional methods of training by Italian architects, their success and ¬ photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 5 . T h e T r a d i t i o n o f t h e Ava n t- g a r d e Radical Pedagogies 140 | 141 photo by Giorgio Zucchiatti. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 5 . T h e T r a d i t i o n o f t h e Ava n t- g a r d e #01 142 | 143 photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia Superstudio. The Secret Life of the Continuous Monument their international dissemination. Through atlases and timelines tracing these moves, a collection of texts related to the most important experiences between 1940 and 1980 placed at the disposal of the public and an interesting experiment in augmented reality conducted by dprbarcelona, the installation is an exhaustive and significant one, almost the exploded diagram of a thematic library. But Monditalia has found room for the Radicals and their legacy in other installations too. Space Electronic, curated #01 by Catherine Rossi, is an interesting account of one of the few projects realized by a collective of the Italian avant-garde (although not a very well-known one). In 1969 the Gruppo 9999 designed a discotheque in Florence, with the same name as the installation, that throughout the 1970s functioned as a stage for multimedia experimentation involving architecture, music and theatre, establishing itself as one of the symbolic locations of the movement. There is space too for total revival. Gabriele Mastrigli has photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia M ON D ITA LI A | 5 . T h e T r a d i t i o n o f t h e Ava n t- g a r d e in fact curated the re-enactment of an installation created by Superstudio for Venice Art Biennale in 1978, juxtaposing an original video of a performance they put on in the same years with a book-interview brought out, instead, for this year’s exhibition. The spirit of the Radicals pervades the whole exhibition, peppering other works not expressly focused on the subject with their legacy. This celebration has long been awaited in Italy, where the heritage of the Radicals has been slow in finding space in the official channels used for the cultural dissemination and discussion of architecture. Perhaps it was necessary for an intellectual perspective from outside to make its importance clear, expressing in a concrete form within the framework of as powerful an operation as only a Biennale can be. But now that this face of modernity is also ready to be absorbed, it will be necessary to ensure that its extremism does not yield to the dizzy temptation of becoming a new “tradition”. 144 | 145 Press Review curated by Chiara Maranzana «I think it’s very important to have lived in the time of Rem, like to have lived in the time of Corbusier» Peter Eisenman interviewed by Dezeen Magazine, 9.6.2014 «Chi si attendeva una mostra [Elements] rivolta al futuro, è costretto a volgere le spalle all’indietro per fissare il recente passato. Chi si aspettava la girandola dei linguaggi, si è trovato sotto al naso il grado zero della scrittura architettonica: quegli elementi primari [...] che gli esteti considerano come il lato oscuro dell’arte di costruire» Fulvio Irace, Domenica del Sole 24 Ore, 8.6.2014 «Questa volta tutte fuori le archicelebrità, tranne lui, Rem Koolhaas» Natalia Aspesi, la Repubblica, 5.6.2014 Belgium: «John Pawson does Ikea» Korea: «Megastructural utopianism» Germany: «Strenght through joy» Britain: «Electric-pastoral-psyco-brutalism» Austria: «Parliament as ornament» Iran: «Persian heroism» Poland: «Mausoleum of modernity» Antarctica: «Technofrostscape» Nutshells by Oliver Wainwright, theguardian.com, 10.6.2014 «The show [Elements] deliberately lacks much commentary on the cumulative significance of these architectural elements in contemporary design, making the selected objects, as well as the exhibition design, feel somewhat arbitrary. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing» William Hanley, archrecord.construction.com, 5.6.2014 «Après avoir passé l’immense porche lumineaux où clignote Monditalia, la visite est beaucoup moins ludique. Trop à lire. Trop de vidéos. Si bien que, assoiffé d’emotion, on finit par s’extasier devant la tour en tabourets de bois du pavilion du Kosovo» Béatrice de Rochebouët, Le Figaro, 7.6.2014 148 | 149 «Cual George Orwell, Koolhaas previene que la casa inteligente – capaz de registrar todos los datos y movimientos de sus habitantes – se “ha enmascado como un eufemismo para un potencial agente de inteligencia”» Vanessa Graell, elmundo.es, 5.6.2014 «Of course the digital revolution is upon architecture and its elements just like every other discipline and the idea of my waste product or my hot flashes being controlled by some Orwelliam sensor system feels, well, somehow almost pornographic. I’m not sure I like my privacy invaded by body sensors any more than my credit card bouncing all over the web» Patricia Zohn, huffingtonpost.com, 4.6.2014 «Die diesjährige Architekturbiennale ist keine Leistungsschau, sondern ein öffentlich zugängliches Labor. Wenig Architekten. Viel Architektur. Endlich!» Ute Woltron, diepresse.com, 13.6.2014 «Il richiamo di questa Biennale appare quello di non abbandonarsi al piacere per la magnificenza delle rovine e, tantomeno, alle rovine frutto di una corruzione che affonda anche la pietra. Bensì, invertendo il noto passo di Eliot, puntellare su queste rovine italiane (la gloriosa antichità) i nuovi frammenti di architettura» Pierluigi Panza, Corriere della Sera, 7.6.2014 «Ringraziamo Koolhaas per averci indicato come non deve essere l’architettura del futuro e gli rendiamo grazie, come si rende grazie ai capi di abbigliamento passati di moda» Valerio Paolo Mosco, doppiozero.com, 17.6.2014 #01 P r e ss R e v i e w «Visitors to Elements will be presented not with the usual array of the latest, show-off “iconic” buildings, but the bits and pieces, the elements of buidings that, drawn from around the world and across the centuries, aim to demonstrate ways in which we have come to live increasingly in Calvino’s Trude» Jonathan Glancey, telegraph.co.uk, 10.6.2014 «Elementos de arquitectura [es] un riguroso recorrido que sirve en sus enciclopédicos contenidos no solamente para profesionales, sino para el hombre contemporanéo en general. Se trata de un ilustrado viaje a la génesis y desarrollo de cosas con las que convivimos» Roger Salas, El Pais 6.6.2014 «The portrait of Italy that Monditalia paints is certainly not rose-tinted: it also includes surveys of the residences of Mafia members in Milan and the sites of terrorist activity in Bologna [...] Describing two possible visions of collective lifes – one ideal, one nightmarish – they establish a dichotomy that runs through Monditalia’s portrait of this most marvellous and troubled of nations» Ellis Woodman, architectsjournal.co.uk, 9.6.2014 «This year’ s Italian Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia is well worth a visit. […] It’s a relief to see – again – an exhibition worthy of its special place and occasion… even if some serious curatorial issues remain» Davide Tommaso Ferrando, zeroundicipiu.it, 18.6.2014 «Come ha potuto questa mente prodigiosa creare la più noiosa delle biennali? Inutile girarci attorno, è un classico caso di hubris. Koolhaas, che odia la condizione dell’architetto sempre “in bilico tra onnipotenza e impotenza”, ha scelto la prima, e la seconda si è vendicata» Lucia Tozzi, Alfadomenica, 29.6.2014 150 | 151 Booklist text by Luca Galofaro Chilean Pavilion Monolith Hatje Cantz 2014 An exhibition of architecture like the Venice Biennale is an opportunity to start up debates again and to exchange more or less coherent and interesting views. It is a starting point. Usually the comments die down just a few days after the opening, ending with an “I like it” or not, and with a collection of more or less new picture cards to take home. This time, however, it is different. The debates that have taken place have exceeded all expectations. We have begun to talk about architecture again. We are doing this by following another track, that of books, which this time are the protagonists of many interesting stories. We should not forget that a book stays with us longer than an exhibition. We are able to visit it again and again, looking for its meaning. Here is my list, more or less in order of preference. #01 While every exhibition at this Biennale is a reflection on the theme of Absorbing Modernity, the book on this one in particular goes beyond, in a coherent way, what is in the exhibition itself and begins to tell more complicated stories; stories that become a perfect metaphor for the way the history of architecture merges with the political history of a country, with that of its inhabitants, who have turned even a simple prefabricated concrete panel into a symbol. Thus the fine volume published by Hatje Cantz overcomes any dispersion of energies around this Biennale through the telling of a simple tale. The story is that of the first panel produced by the KPD plant, donated by the Soviet Union in 1971 to support President Salvador Allende in his attempt to lead the country towards socialism. From the moment the first panel was cast and signed by the president, it has been the subject of a number of political and ideological controversies. Allende signed the wet concrete and for this reason alone the panel was turned back-to-front, plastered and transformed into an altar for devotees of the Virgin Mary on Pinochet’s ascent to power. The panel was then abandoned in the yard of the factory, where it remained for many years, only to be brought today to Venice to symbolize this story of modernity. The book contains the voices of workers at the factory and people who live in the houses, photos of the interiors of those houses and articles from newspapers. And it does not forget to pay attention to the individual components that have been combined to give rise to all the buildings constructed with this technique. Korean Pavilion Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula Archilife 2014 At the end of the Second World War, the Korean peninsula was divided in two. Today it is still one of the few nations split between worlds that are completely different from one another in spite of their common origins. The Cold War produced a fracture in a country with thousands of years of history that has developed over the last 80 years in two opposite ideological, political and economic directions. The trauma of that war, in addition to simplifying this contrast, has also consigned the whole cultural tradition of this nation’s past to an uncertain future. This situation threatens to shatter a culture rich in complexity forever, and it is precisely the attempt to present a picture of this complexity that is described in the book edited by Hyungmin Pai and Minsuk Cho. The title Crow’s Eye View is taken from a collection of poems written by an architect-poet influenced by the Dada movement. The poem, published in 1934, is the symbol of a fragmentation in terms of the vision of this poet, who aspires to be a modern architect: a vain aspiration for someone trained under Japanese colonial rule and who cannot reconstruct his past with clarity. In this subtle account, we meet a divided country that is courageously seeking to re-forge its unity through architecture. Images and texts construct a dense sense of narration that explores through different sources the possibilities of a unitary reconstruction of the Korean peninsula. This is an invaluable book for anyone who wishes to know more about this history. La vita segreta del monumento continuo Edited by Gabriele Mastrigli Artist’s book Here, three members of Superstudio tell their stories in La vita segreta del monumento continuo (The Secret Life of a Continuous Monument). The book is in a sense a continuation of the work on the Superstudio archives carried out in collaboration with Stefano Graziani and presented on San Rocco’s ¬ 152 | 153 great table at the last Biennale. It is also the last duty of three architects who through their secret life together, as well as through their individual contributions, have pursued a very personal idea of architecture, giving rise to the work of Superstudio. The most important new aspect here is that this book is dedicated to three individuals, Adolfo Natalini, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia and Piero Frassinelli, and to the different perspectives they bring to telling the same story, their story, the story of a project they have always shared, despite the diversity of their approaches, and their unquestioned love of architecture. Belgian Pavilion Interiors. Notes and Figures Interiors. Notes and Figures assembles and organizes the landscape of domestic spaces through photographs, diagrams and descriptive texts that underline the processes of accumulation and modification in the various rooms of the house. This is a demonstration of how the objects produced by modernity are capable of consuming and absorbing themselves. The immobility of furniture, or rather the stratification of the household objects that occupy the spaces of our daily lives, is the main subject of this book, which is a long series of photographs, and a catalogue of typical spaces. This piece anthropological research starts with an analysis of the thousands of photographs that the team of curators of the exhibition, Sébastien Martinez Barat, Bernard Dubois, Sara Levy and Judith Wielander, gathered in five months of investigation of Belgian territory. This #01 is a work of stratigraphic interpretation around how interiors of houses show us what it means to have a home today, or rather how objects accumulate in domestic settings that represent the habits, aspirations and personalities of their respective inhabitants. Italian Pavilion Innesti/Grafting  Marsilio 2014 Here we have not just one book but three which aim to describe what Italian architecture is in the mind of the curator of this pavilion Cino Zucchi, and also attempt to look at it from a completely new point of view. Works from different periods are re-examined in original ways to reveal their capacity to unite interpretation and innovation, existing material and future form. Over three volumes, with a long essay by the curator around the theme of the exhibition, accompanied by a lavish set of illustrations, this catalogue also contains around twenty short, illustrated texts (“postcards”) by foreign architects of international standing centred on the theme of modernity in Italy. Kingdom of Bahrain Pavilion Fundamentalists and Other Arab Modernisms George Arbid (ed.) 2014 The book gives the space of this installation its shape: 40,000 copies of the catalogue line a wooden circular space with a table at the centre that suggests to visitors that they stop to read what can be considered as the only book on the history of modern architecture Booklist in the Middle East, which is presented as a dense and also homogeneous phenomenon. Slovenian Pavilion First Space Architect: ´nik Herman Potoc Noordung A small book that explores a very interesting theme (for me at least): architecture in the absence of gravity – and looks at it through the work of the Slovenian architect Herman Potoc´nik Noordung, who is a pioneer of architecture in outer space. Speaking of fundamentals, in fact, we should never forget how the whole of our life is influenced by gravity. With his 1928 book The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor, Potoc´nik offered a first vision of an architecture that would permit the survival of human beings in an extreme situation like that of space, in the absence of gravity. Do You Read Me? Harvard Design Magazine, n. 38 The Biennale is also a good occasion for the presentation of new magazines. An example of this is Do You Read Me? which marks a new direction for this Harvard University magazine, which has changed its format slightly, getting bigger, and at the same time it invites its readers to look at its themes through the lenses of different disciplines. This issue, concentrates on the theme of understanding or the lack of it, and the question of legibility or illegibility, terms of the ambiguities contained within contemporary architectural thinking. As the colophon of the magazine states: Do You Read Me? «suggests that role of design is not just to construct certitudes, to clarify, but also to enable more nuanced realities to coexist». British Pavilion A Clockwork Jerusalem The book A Clockwork Jerusalem is something more than a mere catalogue. Rather, it tells a story in which a new and interesting reading of the history of modernity in Great Britain is hidden away. While the exhibition guides us through images, which move between reality and its interpretation, the book’s coherent text by Sam Jacob and Wouter Vanstiphout is able to show us how questions about the past can shape the future of architecture. Canadian Pavilion Arctic Adaptation The ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions is the metaphor through which a contrast is made between the rapid colonization of the Arctic and the longterm view of the Inuit people, who have lived there for millennia. This is a strange book, in which this contrast between different realities and times shows us how modernity is in fact nothing but a fleeting moment of adaptation and resistance. Luca Galofaro, one of the founders of the IaN+ studio, is the author of The Booklist, a blog devoted to books, “a journey through the words and stories that describe art, architecture and beyond”. 154 | 155 #01 photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia Awards The Lions of Architecture They have been won by Korea and Chile. Special mentions have gone to Canada, France and Russia 158 | 159 #01 photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia P rem a z i o n i | I L e o n i d e l l’a r c h i t e tt u r a Awa rids 1 4 photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia 2 3 1 The international jury has awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation to Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula, the Korean exhibition curated by Minsuk Cho with Hyungmin Pai, Changmo Ahn and Jihoi Lee. 2 The Silver Lion went to Chile for Monolith Controversies, curated by Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola. 3 The Silver Lion for the Best Research Project in the Monditalia section went to Sales Oddity. Milan 2 and the Politics of Direct-to-home TV Urbanism by Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation. 4 The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was awarded to Phyllis Lambert. The jury also decided to assign three special mentions, to Canada (Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15), France (Modernity: Promise or Menace?) and Russia (Fair Enough: Russia’s Past Our Present) and three special mentions to research projects in the Monditalia section: Radical Pedagogies: Action-Reaction-Interaction (Beatriz Colomina, Britt Eversole, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister, Federica Vannucchi, Amunátegui Valdés Architects, Smog.tv), Intermundia (Ana Dana Beroš) and Italian Limes (Folder). 160 | 161 Fuori Biennale Experiences between Art and Architecture Between Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, an interesting journey through the city in search of the exhibitions and installations that accompany this year’s Biennale Text by Sara Banti The Venice Biennale of Architecture is already in itself a good excuse for an outing on the lagoon. In addition, the event this year is accompanied by an extensive calendar of dance performances and concerts put on by the Biennale itself, which we advise you to consult before fixing the date of your visit (www.labiennale.org). And then there are the exhibitions in the city. Always numerous and interesting, they are particularly so between the summer and autumn of 2014. We propose to you an itinerary that starts from Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal (www.palazzograssi.it). Here there are two exhibitions, both open until 31 December. Resonance is a magnificent retrospective of the work of the American photographer Irving Penn (1917-2009), the most complete ever to be staged in Italy: in addition to the photos he took in Morocco and New Guinea in the 1960s and 1970s and portraits of famous personalities (Picasso, Truman Capote, Duchamp, Marlene Dietrich), it presents #01 less well-known works like the series from the 1950s devoted to the “small trades” (the rag picker, the chimney sweep) and the evocative though gloomier still lifes of the 1970s and 1980s, with compositions of cigarette butts, skulls and bones. The other exhibition is devoted instead to the role of light in contemporary art, and is entitled The Illusion of Light. Here the fascination is already strong from the foyer on the ground floor, “taken over” completely by the spatial installation of the Californian artist Doug Wheeler, who by playing with white backdrops and an artificial mist succeeds in turning light into matter. The effect is that of the cancellation of space-time, a suspension that closely resembles a mirage. From there, climbing the grand staircase of the palazzo, the route then winds through the rooms, proposing around twenty large works “on the theme”: from the one created by Vidya Gastaldon with coloured woollen yarn to Dan Flavin’s monument to Tatlin, from Julio Le Parc to Gilbert & George. ¬ 1 2 3 4 5 Irving Penn, Resonance [13] 6 1) Black and White Vogue Cover (Jean Patchett), New York, 1950 © Condé Nast Publications. 2) Deep-Sea Diver (C), New York, 1951 © Condé Nast Publications. 3) Cuzco Children, 1948
© Condé Nast Publications. 4) Lion (Front View), Prague, 1986
© The Irving Penn Foundation. 5) Poppy: Showgirl, London, 1968
© Condé Nast Publications. 6)Truman Capote, New York, 1965 © Condé Nast Publications. 162 | 163 F u o r i B i e n n a l e | E x p e r i e n c e s b e tw e e n a r t a n d a r c h i t e c t u r e 1 2 3 4 The Illusion of Light [13] 5 1) Latifa Echakhch, Fantôme (Jasmin), 2012 / A chaque stencil une révolution, 2007. Courtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris. 2) Robert Whitman, Untitled (Light Bulb), 1994-1995. 3) Vidya Gastaldon, Escalator (Rainbow Rain), 2007. Courtesy the artist and Art : Concept, Paris. 4) Julio Le Parc, Continuel Lumière Cylindre, 1962-2012. Courtesy the artist and Bugada & Cargnel, Paris © Julio Le Parc by SIAE 2014. 5) Dan Flavin, Monument for V. Tatlin, 1964 © 2014 Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York/ London. Photos: ORCH orsenigo_chemollo © Palazzo Grassi. Opposite page, photos by Hiroshi Sugimoto: 1) MoMA, Bauhaus Stairway, 2013. 2) Serpentine Pavillon (Triptych), 2012. 3) Rotary Demisphere, Marcel Duchamp
2013. #01 Hiroshi Sugimoto, Modern Times [23] At the end of this visit, if you’re not familiar with the nearby Palazzo Fortuny (www.fortuny.visitmuve.it), we suggest you make a little detour to discover this house-museum, owned today by the municipality, in a Gothic building renovated at the beginning of the 20th century by the artist and collector Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (before he bought it, the palazzo was occupied by 350 impoverished people). Fortuny and his wife Henriette Nigrin not only made their home in the rooms, furnished with eclectic and surprising pieces, but set up an artistic workshop for the creation of fabrics, lamps and theatrical scenery. Right in front of Palazzo Grassi, on the other side of the Grand Canal (Ca’ Rezzonico vaporetto stop), stands Palazzetto Tito, one of the seats of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (www.bevilacqualamasa.it), where we strongly recommend a visit to the exhibition Modern Times by the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (until 12 October): it presents the world première of eleven photographs of important architectural landmarks and famous museums (from Erich Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower in Potsdam to the Serpentine Gallery in London), in which the artist has taken an unusual and evocative approach, strictly in black and white. On the occasion of the Biennale, Sugimoto has also designed the Glass Tea House Mondrian, his first work of architecture: an elegant glass cube for the tea ceremony, set up in a small Japanese ¬ 164 | 165 2 For Your Eyes Only [22] 1 3 4 garden (open for visits until 29 November at the Fondazione Cini, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, www.cini.it). The itinerary then proceeds in the direction of the Accademia. Right next to the famous bridge stands Palazzo Franchetti (www.palazzofranchetti.it), another Gothic building, although much altered in the 19th century by Camillo Boito. The exhibition Genius Loci – Spirit of Place, staged by the Lisson Gallery, one of the best-known contemporary art galleries in the world (with branches in London, Milan, Singapore and New York) is open here until 23 November. The pieces on display, in part site-specific, are stunning, representing a reflection on the relationship between architecture and public space. Visitors are welcomed in the garden by Daniel Buren’s shelter of coloured plexiglass and the “cloud” #01 of bicycles designed by Ai Weiwei. Among the works and installations that line the staircase and rooms of the palazzo there is no lack of surprises and big names, from Tony Cragg to Richard Long, from Dan Graham to Joana Vasconcelos. You only have to cross the Ponte dell’Accademia and walk a few hundred metres to reach another Venetian venue that is not to be missed, the Museo Guggenheim (www.guggenheim-venice.it). Where, apart from Peggy’s collection, always open, the exhibition For Your Eyes Only (works ranging from Mannerism to Surrealism, from the collection of Richard and Ulla Dreyfus-Best in Basel) will be staged until 31 August; and from 20 September until 19 January 2015 its place will be taken by the exhibition Azimut/h, devoted to the neo-avantgardes and the work carried out by the ¬ F u o r i B i e n n a l e | E x p e r i e n c e s b e tw e e n a r t a n d a r c h i t e c t u r e 1 2 3 4 5 Genius Loci – Spirit of Place [14] 6 1) Daniel Buren, 4 colour at 3 meters high, 2014. 2) Shirazeh Houshiary, Sylph, 2014. 3) Daniel Buren, A white triangle for a mirror, 2007 © the artist. Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London. 4) Ai Weiwei, Forever, 2014. 5) Tony Cragg, Hedge, 2010 © the artist. Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London. 6) Spencer Finch, Night Sky, Over the Painted Desert, Arizona, 1/9/04, 2004 © the artist. Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London. Opposite page: 1) Gustave Doré, Cupid with a Pistol on Top of a Mountain of Skulls (private collection). 2) Austrian master, XVIII century, Vanity Portrait of a Lady (private collection); 3) René Magritte, The Ready Made Bouquet, 1956 (private collection) © C.H./ADAGP, Paris 2014, by SIAE 2014. 4) Andy Warhol, Skull, 1976/77 (private collection) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., by SIAE 2014. 166 | 167 1 2 3 4 5 Art or Sound [3] 6 1) Artworks by Edward Kienholz, Milan Knížák, Tom Wesselmann and Stephan von Heune. 2) Riccardo Beretta,
Donnerwetter, 2011–12.
Performer: Gabriele Rendina.
3) Exhibition view.
4) Ken Butler
K-Board, 1983.
Performer: Ken Butler. 5) From the back: Amelotti,
Orchestrion Accordeo Jazz, around 1920
and
Pierre Jaquet-Droz
Singing Bird Cage With Clock, around 1785.
6) Arman,
The Spirit of Yamaha, 1997. Photos: Attilio Maranzano.
Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Opposite page: 1) Left: Mario Merz, Se la forma scompare, la sua radice è eterna, 1982. Courtesy Archivio Merz, Torino © M. Merz by SIAE 2013. Right: Alighiero Boetti, Catasta, 1967, © Fondazione Alighiero e Boetti, Roma © A. Boetti by SIAE 2013. Photos ORCH orsenigo_chemollo © Palazzo Grassi. 2) Thomas Schütte, Fratelli, 2012 (detail). Courtesy of the artist © T. Schütte by SIAE 2013. 3) Llyn Foulkes, The Rape of the Angels, 1991 © Llyn Foulkes. #01 F u o r i B i e n n a l e | E x p e r i e n c e s b e tw e e n a r t a n d a r c h i t e c t u r e 1 2 3 gallery and magazine of the same name (founded in Milan in 1959 by Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani). Continuing in the direction of Santa Maria della Salute, drop by the Punta della Dogana (www.palazzograssi.it), the former warehouse bought by the French magnate François Pinault, already the owner of Palazzo Grassi, to host exhibitions “constructed” largely out of his own vast collection of contemporary art. The exhibition held there until 31 December is called Prima Materia and compares works and tendencies that emerged in the same years in very different geographical and cultural areas, from Italian Arte Povera to the Japanese Mono-ha movement. A reversal of direction along the Canal Grande back towards piazzale Roma, for the resounding finale of our tour. At Ca’ Corner, for some years Prima Materia [24] the seat of the Fondazione Prada (www.fondazioneprada.org), the curator Germano Celant has staged an extraordinary exhibition entitled Art or Sound (until 3 November). Here, on the three floors of the magnificent palazzo, the history of the interactions between art and music (from 1520 to 2014) is explored through a collection of precious instruments, cages of singing birds, music boxes, barrel organs and juke-boxes, 0as well as through the many reworkings of the theme carried out by the historical avant-gardes, Futurism and Pop Art. Here you will find Claes Oldenburg’s mandolins that seem to melt in the sun and Maurizio Cattelan’s kid banging a drum. A bizarre soundtrack to the exhibition is provided by the many sounds and melodies emitted by the devices and instruments: over 180 pieces, many of them in working order. 168 | 169 #01