My Top Ten at the Venice Biennale 2012

For those yet to venture to the Venice Architecture Biennale this year, here’s a list of my top ten things not to miss (in no particular order).

1. Pasticcio by Caruso St John room, Central Pavilion, Giardini

Pasticcio draws together a group of seven contemporary European architects outside of the mainstream, whose practice is unusually engaged with the language and the history of architecture, both recent and ancient. I like how the work, old and new, John Soane to Caruso St John, fit in with eachother, establishing a common ground with an architecture before modernism.

2. Villa Rotunda Redux by FAT Architecture, Arsenale

FAT’s installation, the Museum of Copying, explores the idea of the copy in architecture as an important, positive and often surreal phenomenon. The museum centres around FAT’s own installation, The Villa Rotunda Redux, a 5m high re-make of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda. There is also a photocopy machine so visitors can make their own Book of Copies, from a library of volumes prepared by invited architects each of whom have assembled photocopies relating to a thematic building typology. Accompanying this is Ines Weizman’s ‘Repeat Yourself’, an interesting timeline of the legal disputes surrounding the ownership of Adolf Loos’ archive and work.

3. Light Houses, Nordic Pavilion

This year, Sweden, Norway and Finland celebrated 50 years of the Sverre Fehn-designed Nordic Pavilion, which was inaugurated in 1962 with the original concept of bringing the Nordic Light to Venice. The exhibition, playing on this theme, is titled Light Houses and shows the work of thirty-two young architects born after the year of 1962- eleven from Finland and Sweden, and ten from Norway- who have presented thirty-two small conceptual ‘houses’. Each participant’s installation responds to the spatial and atmospheric qualities of the Pavilion, while also being reflective of the architect’s own design principles. The result is simple, highly tactile and very Scandinavian.

4. Possible Greenland, Danish Pavilion

A comprehensive look at the future of Greenland, suggesting not just the problems, but some possible solutions, including a new airport designed by Bjarke Ingels.

5. Japanese Pavilion

The Japanese Pavilion, curated by Toyo Ito, recently won the Golden Lion Award for Best Pavilion. The exhibition presents alternative housing concepts for the homes that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Image: Dezeen

6. Inter Cities/ Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future

Opposite the entrance of the Arsenale, is a collateral exhibition which is just as worthy of attention. Titled Inter Cities/ Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future, the space shows twelve proposals, both real and speculative, for South East Kowloon in Hong Kong. Inside, a remarkable model, ‘Imaginary Kai Tak’, stands within the green scaffolding in all its Bartlett glory. It is by CAVE, a young Hong Kong-based architectural practice established in 2011 by three graduates from the Bartlett, and depicts a speculative future Kai Tak city. Here, among the glass test tubes, candy pink wind turbines and bubble-like clouds are six narratives that developed into six device systems.

7. Gort Scott sketches, Arsenale

This was one of my favourite pieces in the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale this year. The sketches by Fiona Scott of Gort Scott are beautiful for their subtle nuances and expressive penwork, you could practically spend hours discovering the unseen world behind the front facades of London’s high streets.

8. O’Donnell and Tuomey, Arsenale

Irish architects, O’Donnell and Tuomey, have created ‘Vessel’, a stacked timber construction which is a material response to the ubiquitous brick walls of the Arsenale.

9. Aldo Rossi exhibition

In an exhibition space designed and installed by Renzo Piano, on the southern most tip of the Dorsoduro, and adjacent to former boating warehouses, is a small but perfectly formed exhibition on Milanese architect Aldo Rossi. For the duration of the Biennale, the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova is showcasing sixteen theatre projects by the architect, from the early seventies to the late nineties. Among the highlights is the Teatro de Mondo from 1979, complete with an almost life-size blue and yellow construction of the theatre.

10. Formations, Australian Pavilion

This year’s australian pavilion, titled ‘Formations: New Practices in Australian Architecture’ was curated by Anthony Burke, Gerard Reinmuth and TOKO Concept Design. Six young architectural practices which regularly test the accepted perspectives of the profession are showcasing what it takes to become an architect. Look out for the foosball tables.

Images my own unless otherwise specified

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