La Biennale di Venezia - 14th International Architecture
Exhibition: Israeli Pavilion – The Urburb. The Urburb exhibition in the
Israeli Pavilion responds to the theme of Absorbing Modernity:
1914-2014 by presenting an artistic meditation on the development of
Israeli space under the sway of modernist conceptions of progress. Swaths of urban sprawl,
which are neither urban nor suburban, characterizes the great majority of
residential areas in contemporary Israel. In the endlessly expanding
Urburb environment, new residential communities continue to pop up, separated by
large expanses of open land, locked in and dislocated.
Above - The Sand Printer. The pavilion is transformed into a construction zone, where four printers inscribe images on desert sand, and then erase them. Every few minutes a new image replaces the previous one. Together they tell the stories of one hundred years of modernist construction in Israel. As quickly as the various schemes are etched into the sand, so are they wiped away, emphasizing how these generic pattern-oriented plans are “printed” from above according to changing ideologies and numerous ‘master plans’.
Curators-exhibitors:
Roy Brand, Keren Yeala-Golan Ori Scialom and associate curator, Edith Kofsky
La Biennale di Venezia - 14th International Architecture
Exhibition: Pavilion of Finland – Re-Creation – The Resilience of Architecture. In the
Finnish Pavilion, Re-Creation
is a two-part installation based on a concept by Anssi Lassila. With two
“primitive huts” that the visitor can enjoy from within, the installation
provides two examples of space and shelter at their purest. One part of the
installation was constructed by a Finnish master carpenter and his team, and
the other by a Chinese team. Together the two installations strike up a subtle
and complex dialogue between the architects and local builders. Re-Creation
takes a stand on our relationship with the modern legacy and its tradition of
international dialogue.
Above. The Finnish hut.
Commissioner and curator: Juulia Kauste, architect Anssi
Lassila and curator Ole Bouman
Re-Creation – The Resilience of Architecture. Re-Creation
embraces an appreciation for tradition as a source of identity, combining it
with an openness and curiosity toward international influences. Finnish
modernism has always essentially been about digesting these two into something
new, not copied or borrowed, but inspired both by the local tradition and by an
exposure to the world beyond one’s immediate sphere of experience.
Above. A drawing of The “Chinese“Hut.
La Biennale di Venezia - 14th International
Architecture Exhibition: United States of America Pavilion – OfficeUS. OfficeUS
was founded in 2014 with the mission to critically reflect on the production of
US architectural firms abroad, while simultaneously projecting a new model for
global architectural practice open to all of us.
OfficeUS
Founders: Eva Franch, Ashley Schafer and Ana Miljacki
OfficeUS. The library of OfficeUS lines
the pavilion’s perimeter walls and contains a repository of projects produced
by US architecture firms working abroad from 1914 to today. Chronologically
organized binders consist of office and project information along with
historical documentation of their press presence. Dispersed throughout these
histories, a series of Issues— each with its own binder—emanates from this work
provoking debate and outlining aspirations for the present office and its
future.
OfficeUS. Over the course
of the twenty-five weeks of the Biennale, the OfficeUS Issues function
as program and structure for the office operations, led by partners, Arielle
Assouline-Lichten, Cooking Sections: Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon
Schwabe, Curtis Roth, Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, Matteo Ghidoni, and
M-A-U-S-E-R: Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest. Working in collaboration with
ninety outpost offices, their mission is to look backward and forward
simultaneously, submitting historical material to contemporary critique while
projecting an alternative future where issues become assets.
La Biennale di Venezia - 14th International Architecture
Exhibition: British Pavilion - A Clockwork Jerusalem. The exhibition A Clockwork Jerusalem
inside the British Pavilion explores how the international influences of Modernism
became mixed with long standing British sensibilities. It examines how
traditions of the romantic, sublime and pastoral, as well as interests in
technology and science fiction were absorbed to create a specifically British
form of Modernism.
Above. A pair of Concrete Cows on loan from Milton Keynes, the
last of the post-war British New Towns. Originally produced by artist Liz Leyh
in 1978, shortly after Milton Keynes was established, the cows have become
unofficial mascots of the town. Shipped to Venice for the Biennale, the
Concrete Cows assume a formal position on either side of the entrance to the
British Pavilion in the manner of Venetian lions.
A Clockwork Jerusalem. The main room of the pavilion features a giant earth mound
which references thousands of years of British architecture, from ancient
burial mounds to the rubble of demolished slums, sculpted into mounds as the
central landscape feature of idealistic projects in places such as Arnold
Circus and Robin Hood Gardens. Surrounding the mound is a panoramic
narrative image that tells the story of British Modernism, referencing British
visual and architectural culture: William Morris, Stanley Kubrick, David
Hockey, Archigram and more. The eye of William Blake, author of the words to
the famous poem Jerusalem, sits at the center of the panorama, made up with a
cog like a Droog from Stanley Kubrick's famous A Clockwork Orange.
Curators:
Sam Jacob and Wouter Vanstiphout
A Clockwork Jerusalem. In the rooms around the central installation, images,
objects and artefacts tell the story of British Modernism from Stonehenge to
council estates, from Ebenezer Howard to Cliff Richard, from ruins and
destruction to rural fantasies.
Above. Sir
John Soane’s design for the Rotunda of the Bank of England as a Ruin Joseph
Gandy, 1789.
Take Me
High, Cliff Richard, album cover, 1973 – Concrete Island, J.G.Ballard,
book cover by Richard Clifton-Dey, Panther Books, 1976.
A Clockwork Jerusalem. Large scale models show three of the exhibition's
significant housing projects: Hulme, Thamesmead and Cumbernauld.
Above.
Hulme Estate, Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley, 1971.
A Clockwork Jerusalem. Thamesmead, location research for Stanley Kubick A
Clockwork Orange.
Stanley Kubick's
A Clockwork Orange
La Biennale di Venezia - 14th International Architecture
Exhibition: German Pavilion – Bungalow Germania. Germany is looking back at a century
full of political and social fractures and continuities, in which the nation
repeatedly defined itself anew. In this context, Bungalow Germania examines the
tension between national identity and its built, architectural expression. It
hereby not only understands architecture as a reflection of ideological power
structures, but also as a constitutive force within existing societal
circumstances.
Above. The entrance to the German Pavilion, two
nationally and historically significant buildings encounter each other in
Venice in 2014: the German Pavilion and the Kanzlerbungalow [Chancellor's
Bungalow] in Bonn, realized in 1964 by Sep Ruf.
Bungalow Germania. The situative meeting of the two
buildings plays with visitors’ expectations. When they enter the pavilion
through its ten-meter-high portico, visitors suddenly find themselves in the low-ceiling interior of the Bungalow.
Copyright Bundesregierung – Photograph by Ludwig Wegmann
Bungalow
Germania. Stroll through the
park: Secretaries of State Michael Kohl and Egon Bahr with the Chancellor’s
Bungalow in the background, 1972.