The Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, has just announced the appointment of Alejandro Aravena as Chair of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury as of March 2021, in time for the award’s 43rd year. Moreover, the announcement also designated Manuela Lucá-Dazio, the Executive Director of the Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia, as an advisor to the Prize and the next Executive Director.
As founder of the “Do Tank” firm ELEMENTAL, Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena (born on June 22, 1967) is perhaps the most socially-engaged architect to receive the Pritzker Prize. Far from the usual aesthetically driven approach, Aravena explains that “We don’t think of ourselves as artists. Architects like to build things that are unique. But if something is unique it can’t be repeated, so in terms of it serving many people in many places, the value is close to zero.” [1] For Aravena, the architect’s primary goal is to improve people's way of life by assessing both social needs and human desires, as well as political, economic and environmental issues.
The Venice Biennale 2018 closed to the public yesterday after six months in operation. Curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the Biennale was titled FREESPACE and celebrated “generosity, thoughtfulness, and a desire to engage.”
With the exhibition closed, the organizers behind the Venice Biennale have released an impressive roundup of statistics related to the event, demonstrating the Biennale’s role as one of the most influential events in the architectural calendar.
As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage, we present the completed British Pavilion, which received an honorable mention in the Biennale awards. To read the initial proposal, refer to our previously published post, "Caruso St. John to Transform the British Pavilion Into a Politically Charged Meeting Space at 2018 Venice Biennale”
A joint venture from Caruso St John Architects and artist Marcus Taylor, "Island" creates an elevated public space, offering views of Venice and a unique place for both meeting and reflecting.
As always, this year’s edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale is brimming with exhibitions and installations—the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of research and work. When arriving at the Arsenale or Giardini, the overwhelming amount of "things to see" are neatly tucked into the national pavilions, or, in the case of the Arsenale, hidden on the sides of the sweeping corridor. In the likely event that you have limited time to enjoy all that FREESPACE has to offer, ArchDaily's editors have selected our favorite works displayed at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition.
Here, presented in no particular order, are some of our top suggestions from across the Biennale sites.
The curators of the 2018 Venice Biennale Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects have announced the winning contributions to the 16th International Architecture Exhibition. Selected with the help of jury members Frank Barkow, Sofia Von Ellrichshausen, Kate Goodwin, Patricia Patkau, and Pier Paolo Tamburelli, the winners of the Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to Switzerland. Meanwhile, in the Freespace exhibition curated by Farrell and McNamara at Venice's Arsenale, Eduardo Souto de Moura will take home the Golden Lion for Best Participant in the International Exhibition.
The Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia, upon recommendation from 2018 curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects, have announced the jury for the forthcoming Venice Biennale.
The jury will be responsible for awarding the Golden Lion for Best National Participation, the Golden Lion for Best Participant in the International Exhibition FREESPACE, and the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition FREESPACE. They will also have the opportunity to award one special mention to National Participations and two special mentions to the participants in the International Exhibition.
The Venice Biennale has released a list of 13 Collateral Events that will take place alongside the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, FREESPACE, curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara and chaired by Paolo Baratta. Previews of the main event begin May 24th and 25th, with the exhibition open to the public from May 26th to November 25th, 2018.
The collateral events, each promoted by a non-profit sponsor, will take place across the city in an attempt to enrich the diversity of voices that characterize the Biennale.
The complete list of events can be found below, and make sure to follow ArchDaily's complete coverage of the Venice Biennale.
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As director of the 2016 Venice Biennale, Alejandro Aravena has sought to shift the very grounds of architecture. Rather than an inward-looking interrogation of the profession's shortcomings, as Rem Koolhaas undertook in 2014, the Chilean Pritzker Prize-winner asks us to gaze in the opposite direction—to the vast swathes of the built horizon that traditionally lay beyond the profession's purview: urban slums, denatured megacities, conflict zones, environmentally compromised ports, rural villages far off the grid.
"We believe that the advancement of architecture is not a goal in itself but a way to improve people’s quality of life," states Aravena in his introduction to event. In other words, his biennale does not ask what architecture ought, yet often fails, to be, but rather what it could, yet often forgets, to do.
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