Italian Pavilion - Arcipelago Italia
Curator – Mario Cucinella
The Italian
pavilion takes the visitor on a journey through the Arcipelago
Italia. The aim is to communicate the spirit of territories that are
far from the metropolitan imagination, territories that are the custodians of
an inestimable cultural heritage, which show Italy to be in contrast with Europe’s
urban structure, a chink in the armor. In projection in the first pavilion at the start of the tour, a
docufilm produced by Rai Cinema describes these territories. Eight large
books, metaphors for a printed guide, make it possible to explore them,
charting as many itineraries along which visitors can discover possible links
among a sampling of contemporary architecture, historical villages, excursions,
and other initiatives.
Curator Mario Cucinella
Italian Pavilion - Arcipelago Italia
The second pavilion
is the result of a polyphonic design process, multi-disciplinary and
wide-ranging, coordinated by the curator and his staff and conducted by a collective
embracing six emerging architectural firms in collaboration with the local
universities and various professional offices of excellence in the study of the
locations. In this space, left completely free and available for use, a large
table reproduces Arcipelago
Italia and the five prototype designs.
Off-Cells – a Work-Place for the
Foreste Casentinesi
architectural
and landscape models
Albanian Pavilion – Zero Space -
From Utopias to Eutopic Tirana
Curator -
Elton Koritari
Exhibitor -
VARKA Arkitekture - commonsense.studio
Fablab Tirana
Tirana’s Zero Space, where cosmos and
chaos are fused with no predetermined contact point, is exposed in this installation
through a sensorial experience created by composing elements that aim to
include all the senses and guide the visitor in a journey perceiving the free
space and true essence of the city. The public is therefore engaged with its
sounds, shadows, lack of perception of the verge, but at the same time free to
create the space and modify the physical configuration of the pavilion.
Intentionally or not, the public becomes not only a spectator but also the
protagonist creating a spatial form, growing cognitively into a tourist, or
even more a citizen of Tirana. The Albanian pavilion opens its comfortable
doors, full of colors, sounds, scents and shades of Tirana, in the
16th International Architecture Exhibition.
The Republic of Slovenia Pavilion – Living with Water
Curator - Matevz Celik Museum of
Architecture and Design (MAO)
Exhibitors: Ana Abram, Tim Daniel
Battelino, Bradley Cantrell, Moa Carlsson, Matt Choot, Nina Granda, Matevz
Granda, Ulrika Karlsson, David J Klein, Milos Kosec, Maj Plemenitas, Bika
Rebek, Marta Vahtar.
Water is an element essential to life and a
distinctive feature of landscape, an indispensable resource that can however
also be a source of danger if not managed appropriately. An interactive infinity
fountain invites us to reflect on a different approach to managing water, by
way of well-informed stakeholders and the necessary, courageous policies. The
Pavilion features installations on the relationships between geology,
architecture, regions and landscapes from spatial, temporal and operational
points of view.
Croatian Pavilion - Cloud
Pergola/The Architecture of Hospitality
Curator -
Bruno Juricic
Exhibitors - Alisa Andrasek, Vlatka Horvat,
Bruno Juricic,
Maja Kuzmanovic
Cloud
Pergola/The Architecture of Hospitality at the Croatian pavilion is conceived
as a collaborative site-specific environment, an installation crossing the
boundaries of architecture, art, engineering, robotic fabrication and computational
models. The exhibition is structured through the interplay of three
interventions: Cloud Drawing by Alisa Andrasek
in collaboration with Bruno Juricic, To Still the Eye by Vlatka Horvat and Ephemeral Garden by Maja
Kuzmanovic. In the cultural context of the Mediterranean, the
typology of pergola (a minor architectural element) maps a specific experience.
As a simple, elementary, vernacular structure, possessing a vivid spatial
gesture inhabiting the space in-between private and public, man-made and
natural environment, a natural shadow and shelter from the sun. The
installation proposes that the space of hospitality, as experienced under the
pergola, is based on the fact that the role of boundaries, either physical or
non-physical, is not any more to enclose space, or police its boundaries, but
rather to form tissue for osmotic exchange. Furthermore, to recognise the
active participation of non-human forces in ‘Events’ and understanding that the
agency of space spawns beyond human purposiveness.
Maja Kuzmanovic
The Kingdom of Bahrain – Friday
Sermon
Curators: Nora Akawi, Noura Al Sayeh
Exhibitors: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Khyam Allami, Batool Al Shaikh, Matilde Cassani, Jawad Dukhgan, Sarah Faruki, Hasan Hujairi, Giuseppe Ielasi, Maryam Jomairi, Mezna Qato, Sadia Shirazi, Gizem Sivri, Apparata – Nicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham
Exhibitors: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Khyam Allami, Batool Al Shaikh, Matilde Cassani, Jawad Dukhgan, Sarah Faruki, Hasan Hujairi, Giuseppe Ielasi, Maryam Jomairi, Mezna Qato, Sadia Shirazi, Gizem Sivri, Apparata – Nicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham
A ritual and
space organized by oratory practice, the Friday
Sermon has historically played an important role in the shaping of
collective life, public opinion and common space for Muslim communities. For believers, it is a regular pulse of
collective listening on the social and political conditions of the time. The Friday khutbah takes
root in a pre-Islamic Arab tradition
of epic poem and speech recitation. This ritual continued during the early days
of Islam, gathering people around
the mosque and eventually giving shape to planned congregational spaces in Arab
cities that would accommodate these gatherings. To this day, the sites of the
Friday sermon create a network of public spaces temporarily activated through
mass assembly. While they’re not quite sites of debate, they represent the most
visible expression of public gathering across the Arab world. Whether as a
channel for domination and propaganda or for emancipation and liberation,
whether conservative or progressive, the Friday khutbah has
the ears of millions of believers around the world. Khutbat
Al-Jom’ah/Friday Sermon traces the evolution and apparatus of this
ritual of preaching and collective listening in selected cities around the
world.
Shah Mosque – Esfahan – Iran
Nicholas Lobo Brennan, Matilde
Cassani, Noura Al Sayeh
Astrid Smitham
Matilde Cassani – Leonardo Gatti
Four unknown
types of minibars and their historical significance
The Republic of Kosovo - The City is Everywhere
Curator/Exhibitor
- Eliza Hoxha
Everything that
the center and the city in general provided for years for everyone, in the
period of 1990s for Albanians was dispersed into pieces and shrank into
the private houses and locations in the edge areas of the city. A house became
a school, a restaurant, a promotion place, an office, an art gallery, a
hospital and a home at the same time. This reversal and merge of private and
public, of closed and open, inside and outside, intimacy and transparency on
one side affected the housing typology and urban fabric in general extending
the city further into its margins. The private space opened to the public
making the house a metaphor for the city during occupation period. The city
became a net of heterotopic spaces parallel to official public spaces and
institutions. Every house provided a piece of a mirror of the city. All these
could be seen as “places where things found their ground and stability” during
a very uncertain, violent and unstable time in Kosovo.
Irish Pavilion – Free Market
Curators: Miriam Delaney, Jo Anne Butler, Laurence
Lord, Tara Kennedy, Orla Murphy, Jeffrey Bolhuis
Free Market investigates the
potential of the marketplace as a ‘free space’ in Ireland’s rural towns. Small town market places, once the economic
and social hubs of rural Ireland, have undergone fundamental changes;
contemporary forces of the global and online economy, technological
developments and car dependency have seen the market space lose its pivotal
position within towns. Free
Market provides observations on the rich history and character of
these spaces and proposes ways they could be reclaimed as valuable sites of
interaction and community. This exhibition is built on the research of the teams,
and on the lived experience of these spaces, to re-imagine the shared urban
territory of the small town market place. The Irish pavilion at Venice
is just one stage of an on-going project of study and proposal; the Free Market exhibition continues
to evolve as it will visits Irish market towns in 2019, where it will gather
stories, ideas and participants and act a catalyst for change in the way we
think about small market towns and plan for their future.
Tara Kennedy,
Jeffrey Bolhuis, Orla Murphy, Laurence Lord
Jo Anne Butler
Irish Pavilion – Free Market
Model - Market Square, Athenry with Free
Market Pavilion
The People’s
Republic of China Pavilion - Building a Future Countryside
Curator: Li Xiangning
Exhibitors: Dong Yugan, Hua Li, Liu Yuyang, Philip F. Yuan, Rural Urban Framework, Zhang Lei, Atelier Archmixing, Atelier Deshaus, Chen Haoru, China New Rural Planning and Design, Dong Gong, Drawing Architecture Studio, Hsieh Ying-Chun, Jin Jiangbo, Li Yikao, Li Xinggang, Seung H-ang, Nishizawa Ryue, Li Zhenyu, Lyu Pinjing, Naturalbuild, O-office Architects, temp architects, Xu Tiantian, Zhang Li, Zhao Yang, Zhu Jingxiang.
Exhibitors: Dong Yugan, Hua Li, Liu Yuyang, Philip F. Yuan, Rural Urban Framework, Zhang Lei, Atelier Archmixing, Atelier Deshaus, Chen Haoru, China New Rural Planning and Design, Dong Gong, Drawing Architecture Studio, Hsieh Ying-Chun, Jin Jiangbo, Li Yikao, Li Xinggang, Seung H-ang, Nishizawa Ryue, Li Zhenyu, Lyu Pinjing, Naturalbuild, O-office Architects, temp architects, Xu Tiantian, Zhang Li, Zhao Yang, Zhu Jingxiang.
Whether
in the yellow Loess Plateau or in
the water towns south of the Yangtze
River, in the vast and abundant land of north-eastern China or in the green and beautiful farmlands of southern China,
hundreds and thousands of villages have become sites for industrial
development, self-building and cultural creation. These sites are enjoying
tremendous opportunities offered by technological innovations in the Internet,
logistics business, sharing economy and so on. The development of the
countryside in contemporary China is unprecedented in both its scale and its
approaches. More importantly, it anticipates a new solution based on China’s
unique condition. Building a Future Countryside depicts
the countryside of contemporary China through six episodes. With poetical
dwelling, local producing, cultural practice, agricultural tourism, community
building and future exploring, the exhibition outlines a Freespace for
opportunity and anticipates future development. We return to the countryside
where Chinese culture originated to recover forgotten values and overlooked possibilities;
from there, we will build a future countryside.
The People’s
Republic of China Pavilion
Building a Future Countryside