VeniceSuperBlog

The School of Architecture, Tsinghua Universit, Beijing, looked at turning New York City into a ‘Soft City’ with some great images of a water logged Manhattan with skyscrapers emerging from canals. The influence of a workshop in Venice, perhaps?

Interestingly…the curator of the Estonian Pavilion, Ülar Mark, also co-designed the stage set for their nation’s lavish hosting of the 2002 Eurovision Song Contest. Charming.

USA:manca l’acqua…
( proprio poi a Venezia )

FRANCIA: Clochard chic
( il contrario della nazione )

INGHILTERRA: Troppo ricercata la scelta di entrare dalla
la porta laterale…..no ?

SPAGNA Le tombe delle donne, noi donne,,,che barba,,,

GERMANIA l Vi prendete sempre sul serio, troppo sul serioooooo

ISRAELE Amen

GRECIA inbox, out of box……fragile !

GIAPPONE sinfonia degli uccelli

PADIGLIONE ITALIA DA NON PERDERE !!

Anon mailer:
ah ure joking!!!…
pasolina perdtuta:
no it’s true, he’s up for the sterling prize! I told him the most important thing as an architect is to have been on tv lording it over other people’s bad architecture. and of course a good suit.
anon mailer:
well he has the nice suit and the smooth skin…
paolina perduta:
…
anon mailer:
what? u’re trying to play paola?
pasolina perduta: impossible to emulate.. she is a diehard.. no pasolina is more nostalgic..
anon mailer:
stop being nostalgic! so.. did u see the russian pavillion…
pasolina perduta:
great, really childlike pleasure.. I liked the idea of occupying venice with cheap shop front signage..
that’s where architecture seems to be headed.. reoccupying and adapting.
anon mailer:
it’s funny how architects, in fact, are slightly anxious because they dont see ‘nu’ architecture around…
pasolina perduta:
odile d was furious about the endless boring urban data in the arsenale. she swept through it. NO ARCHITECTURE. paul finch described this moment as a cold shower: architecture is off the map…
architects can only balkanise..
aono mailer:
oh, i’m getting bored! lets not talk about architecture!!!!
pasolina perduta:
true… let’s use the euphemism (for scaffolding) /- social sculpture… what more do you need? a bar, kitchen, sauna, plunge pool for hot feet…
anon mailer:

pasolina perduta:
cedric p would have crossed the border into france. but isn’t the old colonial triumvirate looking HIP!!!
anon mailer:
i think when everybody is bored with the periphery they look forward to go back to the center…
pasolina perduta:
centrefold. that’s where new building should be.. it was great to hear the austrian and swiss reporters for A10 playing oneupmanship with mediterraneans on their copy.
anon mailer:
speaking about austria.. lets meet there at 5.30? I would love to see u…
pasolina perduta:
oh yeah, we need tickets for the hot viennese djs… on that obscure island…
anon mailer:
great! c u there : )

An interview with Patrick Bouchain, the architect behind the French pavilion. Lucky his wife was there to translate.

LUXEMBOURG: SOCIAL DIVERSITY AND TRANS-SPECIES LOVING IS PARADISE
(FILM OF MAN AND HORSE)

I started to write this blog a week before the Biennale opened.

29th August 2006
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
The logistics of getting an exhibition mounted in Venice are so formidable that it makes one question the sanity of having Biennale’s there at all. Everything has to be taken in by boat and it is well nigh impossible to source anything in a hurry once one is there. That means everything has to be shipped weeks in advance. And I mean everything. Part of our installation is a stack of 66 ply sheets. "Buy them there,” I plead. But to no avail: the British Council have had fingers burnt in the past, so 66 sheets of ply are carefully crated and shipped out.

All this means that there is a long period between frantically getting things ready to be crated and the actual opening. Catherine (Ince – the brilliant project manager from the British Council) gently suggested that it may be better for me not to be there during the installation; they have experienced nervous curators getting in the way. Added to which I have told her that I am genetically hopeless when it comes to sticking labels on straight.

So, I am in London whilst they are all busy in Venice. I feel like an expectant father, ineffective but willing. Doing an exhibition is not unlike doing a building; you just spend money faster doing an exhibition. I had therefore expected hourly phone calls with queries, just like when a building is on site, but instead it is me who calls up anxiously asking for signs of life. It is all going smoothly. There, I have typed it now. Just wait. But for the time being it is the calm before the storm.

30th August
ON BEING A BIENNALE VIRGIN
I’ll come clean. I have never been to an Architecture Biennale. I once went to an Art Biennale and came away bludgeoned into submission by the quantity of stuff on display, unable by the end to make any judgements as to what was good or bad. A kind of an-aesthetic, not unpleasant but rather numbing.

I have never been convinced by the idea of architecture exhibitions; they tend to edit out the world and present architecture as something that it is not – a shiny, perfected, timeless object. The problem is that things look so damn good as shiny, perfected, timeless, objects that viewer and architect alike are seduced into believing that this is something that architecture could be. Architecture exhibitions therefore set up expectations that can never be delivered. The idea of a REALLY BIG architecture exhibition therefore appealed still less.

This Biennale virginity is both an advantage and potential liability. An advantage because at the beginning I had no real idea as to what was expected and so could approach the whole thing afresh. A liability because one builds up preconceptions, and then work with or against them (i.e. the average attention span of a Biennale visitor is milliseconds so we cannot rely on people reading anything, the whole Biennale is full of models and videos so we must not have too many of those etc, etc.)

With a week to go, it is impossible to know whether we have got our judgements right. What we think might be provocative in the context of the Biennale, might in fact be deeply normative. Maybe every curator has had the same reaction to Ricky’s theme and we are all doing alternative takes on what constitutes an architecture exhibition, and so everything will look the same. Maybe there will be no models or videos anywhere, and if we had included them they would have been a refreshing change. These things worry me more than they should, mainly because of the business of Representing Britain.