The 20th Century was a time of significant political unrest, seeing two World Wars and the 70-year rise and fall of a major superpower, the Soviet Union, among countless other conflicts. In some ways, "modernity" could be characterized by the rapid creation and crystallization of huge numbers of nation states since the outbreak of World War One a hundred years ago.

Reacting to the theme of "Absorbing Modernity" set for the national pavilions at this year's Venice Biennale, the curators of the Austrian pavilion chose to investigate the area where this political unrest most overlaps with architecture: the Parliament Buildings of countries around the world.

Read the curator's take on the pavilion after the break

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Videos

The Argentine pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale analyzes modernity in terms of the IDEAL and the REAL by looking at how the country has used “ideal” modern ideas to construct the reality of its cities.

The curators, Emilio Rivoira and Juan Fontana, structured the exhibit around eight periods, selecting cinema clips to represent the ideal and the real.

Enjoy photos from the pavilion and read the description from the curators after the break. 

"We consider Bakema not so much an architect of buildings, but an architect of a new idea of what Holland could be--a new national identity, a new national landscape…with an architect in the center of this particular ambition." - Guus Beumer, co-curator of the Dutch Pavilion at the 14th Venice Biennale

Guus Beumer and Drik van den Heuvel, curators of "Open: A Bakema Celebration," sat down to speak with us about this year's Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. With the help of graphic designers Experimental Jetset, Beumer and van den Heuvel created an emblematic, stripped-down, research-focused display of a particularly Dutch idea: the "Open Society." This was all conveyed within and around a 1:1 model of architect Jaap Bakema's Lijnbaan Shopping Centre (Rotterdam 1954), constructed within the Netherlands Pavilion.

The hope, as Dirk van den Heuvel explains, is that "the elements of Bakema...may be useful, inspiring for our own practices today. Elements that he developed in questions to housing, planning, modernizing… I think when you come here you will recognize that there's lots of affinities, interesting things that we still work with and that we will work with in the future."

After you watch the video, make sure to read the curator's statement, and see images of the pavilion, after the break.

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From the Curators. By making space the manifestation of content and content an insight of the space, space and content are correlated in the China Pavilion in that content provides an explicit timeline of China’s 100 years’ of architectural thinking (dual theme threads), while space presents an implicit theme of Yi Xiang (imagery-scape) through the history of Chinese architecture.

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"Poi piovve dentro a l'alta fantasmi." ("Then rained down within the high fantasy...") Dante Alighieri (Purgatorio XVII.25)

From the Curators. Kosovo has never absorbed modernity. Modernity has been a synonym of destruction and foreign aesthetics.

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UPDATE: We've added our interview with Jimenez Lai.

Jimenez Lai, leader of Bureau Spectacular and curator of Taiwan's Pavilion for the 2014 Venice Biennale, claims that "domesticity is possibly one of the origins of architecture" and that "the standardization of the domestic program was...a very modern development." Thus, Lai built nine single-program houses within the Palazzo della Prigioni, each dedicated to one specific domestic act--such as sleeping, eating, etc. The result is a vibrant, colorful response to Rem Koolhaas' unifying theme: "Absorbing Modernity."

Township of Domestic Parts: Made in Taiwan, delves into the part-to-whole relationship and political implications of our domestic lives. But Lai also believes that, from this relationship, we can learn something about the way that cities function. See more images from the exhibition and read on for the curator's statement.

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From the Curators. The exhibition at the Nordic Pavilion has been titled FORMS OF FREEDOM: African Independence and Nordic Models. The exhibition explores and documents how modern Nordic architecture was an integral part of Nordic aid to East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. The resulting architecture is of a scope and quality that has not previously been comprehensively studied or exhibited.

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"We often invent the future with elements from the past."

From the Curators. Within the Biennale’s context of re-examining the fundamentals of architecture over the past century, the Swiss Pavilion focuses on the English architect Cedric Price (1925–2003) and the Swiss sociologist Lucius Burckhardt (1934–2003), two great visionaries whose work resonates with and continues to inspire the new generations of the 21st century.

Both were serial inventors. The trans-disciplinary cultural centre designed by Price, Fun Palace, for example, which was never realized, is emblematic of our own era. It lends itself more to the choreography of 21st century time-based exhibitions than to the object-based displays of the 20th century; it fosters a more communal experience, largely free to operate outside its material limits, and ventures into other realms of human experience. In Price’s own words, “a 21st century museum will utilize calculated uncertainty and conscious incompleteness to produce a catalyst for invigorating change whilst always producing the harvest of the quiet eye”.1

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From the Curators. Rather than conducting a historical account of modern epoch in Turkey, presenting an exhaustive catalogue, or trying to capture its unique local attributes, “Places of Memory” attempts to explore the main theme of the biennial via perceptions and experiences.

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Architectural photographer, José Campos had the privilege of being born in an architectural paradise: Porto, Portugal. Having trained as an architect as well as a graphic designer, Campos brings a mature architectural eye and a keen attention to detail, light and color to his shots. His work has been published in dozens of well-known national and international books and publications. ArchDaily interviewed Campos to learn more about his start and artistic process. Read the entire interview, and check out his amazing images, after the break.

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Allan Crow may be, as he humbly puts it, just one of "two blokes that take photos." But Hufton+Crow, the photography studio founded by him and Nick Hufton ten years ago, has reached far more than humble success. The duo have shot some of the most talked-about architectural works of the last few years -from Zaha Hadid's Galaxy Soho to Steven Holl's Sliced Porosity Block to BIG's Danish Maritime Museum - and have been published in renowned websites and magazines around the world. Learn more about how Crow began his career as well as his favorite architecture, after the break.

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