The social issues of today has changed the course of architecture. Once “good” architecture spawned from untouched sites and endless budgets; now, the trend is shifting more towards affordable and sustainable alternatives, such as adaptive reuse. As the epidemic of vacant buildings continues to flourish, the creators of the Dutch pavilion for the 2012 Venice Biennale continuously work to evolve their understanding of these desolate spaces and offer an array of possibilities that can successfully reanimate them.
Curated by Ole Bouman, Director of the Netherlands Architecture Insitute (NAi), the Dutch exhibition Re-set, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse will remain in constant flux as a “mobile, tactile intervention” visually transforms the 1954 vacant building of the Dutch pavilion throughout the entire length of the Biennale.
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Petra Blaisse: “We are not going to hang Objets d’Art, exhibit works or stage events. We are responding to the vacant architecture itself. One single mobile object occupies the space for three months and emphasizes the building’s unique qualities. This object will flow through the interior, re-configure its organization and create new rooms along the way. Through relatively simple interventions the experience of light, sound and space will be manipulated so that new perspectives emerge.”
Re-set is the sequel to the Dutch submission to the International Architecture Exhibition in 2010, titled Vacant NL, a presentation by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and Rietveld Landscape that shed light on the huge amount and enormous potential of disused buildings in the Netherlands. This presentation became a hot topic – in Venice, in the Netherlands, around the world – and one of the many things it spawned is the creation of an MA course on this very subject in the Netherlands.
