As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage, we present the completed Turkish Pavilion. To read the initial proposal, refer to our previously published posts, "Turkey's Entry to the 2018 Venice Biennale to Offer Space for Creative Encounter" and “Turkish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale to Host a Series of Student Workshops”
Kerem Piker of the firm Kerem Piker Mimarlık curated this year’s Pavilion of Turkey entitled Vardiya (the Shift), together with associate curators Cansu Cürgen, Yelta Köm, Nizam Onur Sönmez, Yağız Söylev and Erdem Tüzün. Coordinated by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and installed at Sale d’Armi, Arsenale, the pavilion functions as a space for gathering, conversation and sharing ideas, with a series of video installations projected on draped fabric screens as well as a lecture and meeting space designed to host the 122 architecture students invited from around the world to participate in workshops, discussions and keynote lectures in the space.
The group of students was chosen in a contest that asked them to submit answers to three fundamental questions—Why does the biennial exist? What does the biennial do? and for whom does the biennial exist?—and they will arrive in weekly shifts for workshops like “Future of Childhood,” “Architecture as Critical Media,” and “Redrawing Venice.”
We prefer to describe the Pavilion of Turkey as a space for meeting, encounter and production rather than merely an exhibition space. We see this project and the preparation process as an opportunity to rethink what a biennial does, for whom, and why it exists in our time.
– Kerem Piker
