Venice Biennale

The 2016 Beinnale is the Architecture Biennale. I'll dig up a trip report that I wrote for the 2014 Archi Biennale. I am going to the 2016 Biennale in September, and I have given myself two weeks for the visit.

The Architecture Biennale started last week, multiple yachts lined up along the Riva Schiavoni, yachts that in former times were described as "gin palaces". They've mostly gone now, and the Biennale is pretty quiet. I was wondering if I would enjoy the Biennale, or whether it might be a bit too esoteric for a non-archi, and I've really enjoyed a day at the Arsenale, another at the Giardini, and a day at various other locations around town, with several more to come.

The Korean pavilion. A combined pavilion, operated by both Koreas, north and south. When the pavilion was first proposed, the Biennale folk dictated that, "there's only one pavilion. Get along and get over it". So part of the pavilion hosts pictures of dedicated, well fed, happy tradesmen, constructing with enthusiasm a socialist workers paradise north of the 39th parallel. All the workers wear belts, supported by braces, and broad smiles. By contract, the south side has something to say about the social problems that can be created by architecture.

A similar theme was apparent at the Great Britain (Great Britain is not so much heard, replaced by the ubiquitous U.K.) pavilion, "A Clockwork Jerusalem" being the theme. Taking Blake's poem, applying it to contemporary architecture, with particular reference to the Thamesmead development. Thamesmead, developed in the 1970's. Abandoned as a suitable place for families, providing a place for squatters and heavy metal musos, a backdrop for Stanley Kubric, and demolished a decade or two ago.

Israel, a trio of A0 sized plotters, drawing diagrams in sand.

Germany. Impossible, the chancellors bungalow from Bonn recreated in Venice, along with a three thousand word commentary in 6-point font. A political statement, and I didn't get it. German nihilism maybe.

Italy. A 300 metre long installation in the Corderie in the Arsenal, Venice's longest building, with film, dance, installations, showcasing Italy, and also showcasing some pretty disastrous developments in Italy.

Albania. Paintings of ruins. Except that the ruins are just unfinished, never ever to be finished, buildings.

A full scale construction of one of Le' Corbusier's never-built structures. I've never really "got" Corb's architecture, but seeing a work at full scale makes it approachable.

The Stati Uniti d'America, aka the USA. A great resource - the curators have collected a compendium of work by American architects that have worked outside the USA, displaying it simply as a resource. So, for me, possible to see details of work by Walter Burley Griffin, who laid out our national capital, Canberra, and also designed Newman College at Melbourne University, a building that I know well.

And onto the Elements of Architecture in the central pavilion in the Giardini. Fascinating, looking at a set of architectural features. Floor, wall, window, balcony, stairway, escalator, door, corridor, facade, roof, toilet and so on. Interesting, in that architecture is about assembling elements into a building, but this display de-constructs the set. Rem Koolhaas curated this display, and said about the balcony "Without my parents' balcony, I would not be here. They lived on the 5th floor of a new social democratic walk-up. Born in the last months of the war, a cold but very sunny winter, when everything that could be burned had been burned, I was exposed to the sun, naked, to capture its heat, like a mini solar panel."

That caused me to think a little.