Aileen Sage and Michelle Tabet have been announced as the creative directors of the Australian Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Selected by the Australian Institute of Architect's Venice Biennale Committee, their proposal "The Pool" will be the first architecture exhibition displayed at Denton Corker Marshall's newly inaugurated pavilion.
A multi-sensory installation, "The Pool" will use light, scent, sound, reflection, and perceptual illusions to profile a number of Australia's most remarkable natural and manmade pools. In doing, it hopes to explore the unique typology of the Australian pool, described by the creative directors as "a key architectural device, a memory and also a setting... a distinctively Australian democratic and social space— a great leveler of difference".
The Venice Biennale Committee have praised "The Pool", commenting on the proposal's "incisive interest in the connections between landscape, culture and architecture as observed through the frame of a singular architectural and landscape typology."
Helmed by urban strategist Michelle Tabet and Isabelle Toland and Amelia Holliday of Sydney-based firm Aileen Sage, "The Pool" takes a cross-disciplinary approach, using a range of skills and technical knowledge to generate and present new readings of the pool as an architectural form.
Opening in May 2015, the Australian Pavilion is the first to be built in Giardini since the turn of the 21st century. View our previous coverage of the pavilion after here.
