To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Nordic Pavilion designed by Pritzker laureate Sverr Fehn in 1962, “Light Houses: On the Nordic Common Ground” invites 32 architects from Finland, Sweden and Norway born in that year to present a model of a conceptual house that reflects their philosophy. The models not only offer a visual proposal, but some also include smells, sounds or tactile experiences.
Contemporary Nordic architectural culture offers both exemplary approaches and significant constructed works addressing these challenging circumstances. The classic hallmarks of Nordic architecture – simplified form, frugal use of materials and sensitive treatment of daylight and the natural setting – embody the basic principles of responsible, sustainable architecture.
News from the 2012 Venice Biennale: Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima has been appointed as the first architecture mentor for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiative – a unique program that pairs major artists with young talents. Recognized as “one of the most important creative disciplines”, architecture has added as the seventh category in the Rolex’s global philanthropy program, which already includes literature, music, visual arts, dance, film and theatre.
Kazuyo Sejima is expected to announce her protégé in the Fall. She and the young architect will collaborate for a year on the international project Home For All, which she established with other leading Japanese architects – Toyo Ito, Riken Yamamoto, Hiroshi Naito and Kengo Kuma – in response to the 2011 housing crisis caused by Japan’s devastating tsunami.
The idea will be to design community meeting spaces for people who are living in emergency accommodation. Continue after the break to learn more.
The first national pavilion that we visited was the Russia pavilion, curated by Sergei Tchoban. The exhibit, designed by SPEECH Techoban / Kuznetsov (Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, Marina Kuznetskaya, Agniya Sterligova), showcases the Strolkovo Innovation Center, a new development that aims to concentrate intellectual capital around five clusters (IT, Biomed, Energy, Space, Nuclear Tech), with projects by David Chipperfield, SANAA, OMA, Herzog & de Meuron, Stefano Boeri, SPEECH, Valode & Pistre architectes and Mohsen Mostafavi among others (more details about the project itself in a future article).
An interesting project, presented in detail with tons of information, yet invisible inside the space of the pavilion. A series of QR Codes wrap the inside of the Russia pavilion spaces, and all you can sense at first is light and space. At the entrance you are provided with a tablet, and you walk around the pavilion scanning these codes to obtain the information about Strolkovo.
On the lower level, a dark interior is perforated with peep holes that show images of former Soviet Scientific Towns, a legacy from the past that serves as background of the Strolkovo project.
What we liked about this pavilion is the fact that technology is used as a medium, and what prevails is light and space, a particular atmosphere that wraps you in information, in an intangible way.
This pavilion was awarded with a Special Mention at the Biennale, “the ‘i-city’ takes a dialectic approach to Russia’s past, present and future and in the process turns us all into digital spies. The jury was drawn into this magical mystery tour and beguiled by its visual presentation.”
We had the chance to interview Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, we will post the video later on.More photos by architectural photographer Patricia Parinejad (who will be featured in our next AD Photographers series) and Nico Saieh after the break:
Architecture Firm: Dok Architekten Architect: Liesbeth van der Pol Location: centrum-Delft-Vesteplein 100-2611 WG Delft, The Netherlands Design Team: P. Cannon, M. Hardonk, R. Bos, A. Koch, A. Derksen Client: Gemeente Delft Photographer: Arjen Schmitz
A few minutes ago we attended to the awards ceremony at the Biennale, after which it opened officially to the public (until Nov 25th).
David Chipperfield, director of the 13th Biennale, and Paolo Baratta, president of the Biennale, presented the awards for Lifetime Achievement, National Participations and International Participations.
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was already announced, and it went to Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza. Alvaro couldn’t attend the ceremony due to a broken arm, so Ines Lobo, curator of the Portuguese pavilion, accepted the award on his behalf.
For the National pavilions, the jury decided to give three mentions: Poland, Russia and USA. The Golden Lion was awarded to the Japan Pavilion, with the exhibit “Architecture, possible here? Home-for-All” curated by Toyo Ito, with the participation of Kumiko Inui, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata and Naoya Hatakeyama. Toyo Ito dedicated the award to the victims of the tsunami.
The Recession’s ripples have reached far. We, in the midst of a veritable architecture meltdown, can attest to that. But even our situation can’t compare to Spain’s, a country where “the mother of all housing bubbles” meant the Recession didn’t just land – it tsunami-ed onto her shores.
Spain, once a beacon for architects across the globe, has hit a standstill. For the first time in decades, thousands of architects are fleeing its shores. So what does this mean for architecture in Spain – and the world? Has the Recession signified the end of an era? Has the torch of architectural innovation been passed?
In a word? Yes.
Exclusive insight from some of Spain and Portugal’s acclaimed architects, after the break…
We found this great short video by London-based illustrator, artist and animator Patrick Vale. The Manhattan perspective is taken from the Empire State Building looking south toward the new development of the Freedom Tower. The Flat Iron building lies in the foreground, while the Brooklyn and Verrazzano Bridges anchor the eastern edge with Jersey City’s Goldman Sachs Tower flank the western edge. After marveling at the final illustration at the end of the time-lapse clip, we were hooked and wanted to see more of Vale! Check out more illustrations by Vale – including great ones of Florence and London – after the break.
With Greenland’s glaciers turning into icebergs, this could be considered as a sustainable motive force for Greenland economy by reactivating “white gold rush”. In response to this, the Iceberg Trading Post project, by Alexandre Bralerest, proposes icebergs as mass shipping supported by a constellation of ice-recycling trading posts along the west coast of Greenland. The “21st century Iceberg Trading Post” is a central rig system that mediates local market, iceberg transportation, price setting, harvesting deck and scientific facilities. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by, RMC (Raafat Miller Consulting) Architects & Engineers, their proposal for the National Museum of Afghanistan aims to best represent the heritage and the people of the country through a practical, innovative and enduring physical plan. This building would provide a clear and simple organization for the visitor to follow a natural progress through the site. They accomplish this by using a spatial concept where the visitor of the museum is led through a sequence of visual and physical experiences to draw them to the next encounter. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Established in June 2010, 100Landschaftsarchitektur shared with us the current status of Jardin de la Connaissance which is still up and thriving. With the knowledge truly disappearing into the forest, the book structures have decayed in the natural setting, but have also provided various micro-environments for a range of local creatures. Interacting with the forest, seedlings and insects have activated the walls, carpets and benches while mushrooms – those cultivated and those who have come by themselves – have made the garden their home. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Venezuela’s participation at the 13th Venice Biennale is presented through a series of reflections about the urban situation – the city of the 21st century.
La ciudad socializante vs la ciudad alienante is aimed for the general audience, not just the architects, presenting a series of graphic-chromatic notes and sketches by Domenico Silvestro, who was very kind and showed us the pavilion. You can see him on the photos below.
In the exteriors of the Arsenale we found Radix, the installation designed by Portuguese office Aires Mateus (Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus), an elegant contemporary response to the architectural setting of the Biennale.
The installation recognises the nearby docks of the Arsenale designed by Jacopo Sansovino between 1568 and 1573, which is flanked by arched walkways that inspire this structure. Radix is an arch supported on three points with the fourth corner hanging over the water, turning the otherwise massive steel structure into a lightweight balanced volume.
Pasticcio, the exhibition curated by Caruso St John, invites a group of seven contemporary European architects from different countries and generations, whose practice in engaged with the language and the history of architecture, both recent and ancient. Their work tries to establish continuities with an architecture before modernism.
Themes include a consideration of proportion, ornament, typology, and interest in making interiors, in colour and in working with existing buildings, but the works are linked in spirit rather than in form or programme. The intention is to show how potent and diverse a contemporary architecture grounded in continuity and a common culture can be.
SPURA is one of the many adopted acronyms used to describe New York City’s division of neighborhoods. But unlike SOHO, NOHO, or Tribeca, SPURA is actually the name of a development site in Lower Manhattan, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, to be exact. The history of the site is a story of politics, economics and social pressures. After fifty years of debates between community leaders, activists and designers, the City Planning Commission has given a proposed development plan the green light. That means that following a land-use review process called ULURP, a city council vote and the Mayor Bloomberg’s final approval, the site may finally transition from a street level parking lot into a mixed-use development full of retail stores, offices, community facilities, a new Essex Street market, a hotel, a park and 900 apartments that will occupy 1.65-million-square-feet.
Join us after the break to read more on the development and to see other alternative creative proposals that this site has inspired over the years.
Alvaro Siza, winner of the 13th Venice Biennale Lifetime Achievement, created this structure in the gardens of the Arsenale, right next to another structure by Eduardo Soto de Moura that we will feature on a separate article. This follows the longtime collaboration of the two Portuguese masters.
Alvaro Siza’s structure establishes a relationship with a different aspect of Venice – that of the dense urban environment. Three faceted walls generate two intimate spaces in the middle of the garden designed for the 12th Biennale in 2012 by Piet Oudolf, a tribute to the compact urban tissue of Venice, which frames particular views of the exteriors of the Arsenale.
Curated by Toshiko Mori. All architecture must inevitably contend with history and gravity. These two forces are both fundamental and universal; to confront them is accordingly not only to take the crucial step in any attempt to reinvent the contemporary language of architect but to connect to a vast lineage of historical precedents, creating a platform for developing the discipline’s future as well as reflecting on its past. In Toshiko Mori’s case a series of dialogues with five American masters transpired from projects that required her to work next to, in addition to, or in reference to their creations.
Through these projects they discovered that close studies at the level of the detail create moments of complex interchange, both literal and historical, disciplinary and existential. The details presented here are wall sections, the interface between interior and exterior. This minimal one has always been contested: the twentieth century strove for a transparent boundary that could expose interior through psychoanalysis, while the twenty-first century attempts to erase that boundary through virtual space. And so these five pairs of “totems” express common technical and tectonic concerns even as they mark the historical transition of architecture from the pas, through the present, into the future.
The exhibit consists of 10 detailed sections of major architects such as: Frank Lloyd wright, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Marcel Breuer, and Paul Rudolph.
We jump back to the end of 1940′s to remember the film based on Ayn Rand’s acclaimed book, The Fountainhead. The movie talks about the architectural debate between the industrialisation of the profession and the individual creation. An issue that we can consider still questionable nowadays.
I guess most of our readers have seen this classic or have read the book instead. Let us know your thoughts about the “creation” concept in architecture.
Although our digital age allows us to peruse the latest in fashion, furniture and leisure all digitally, sometimes, there’s nothing quite like mindlessly flipping through the pages of a catalogue. Yet, the digital world is quickly penetrating even the tangible pages of furniture magazines, such as IKEA’s latest 200+ million print copies which are replacing labor intensive sets with digital renditions of furniture layouts and color combinations.
As architects who are constantly bombarded with renderings and spend hours perfecting that chosen perspective, can we spot what’s real and what’s not in the catalgoue pages below? Does that glossy kitchen countertop or fluffy blue couch really exist? Or, did IKEA’s digital modelers work their magic and fool us with the renderings – a move that saves IKEA money and still maintains the desired effect.
For over a century, the VeniceBiennale (La BiennalediVenezia) has been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. The avant-garde institution has remained at the forefront in the research and promotion of new artistic trends, while leading international events in the field of contemporary arts that are amongst the most important of their kind. Over the past thirty years, the Biennale has given growing importance to the Architecture Exhibition, which is still a young component of the Biennale considering that its first exhibition was held in 1975. Today, the Venice Biennale captures a multitude of interest from around the globe and attracts over 370,000 international visitors.
Before the festivities of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale begin tomorrow, read up on the origin of this highly acclaimed international exhibition.
A timeline history of the Venice Architecture Biennale:
