OMA’S MONDITALIA:
14 TH VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2014
Curated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
OMA’S MONDITALIA:
14 TH VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2014
Curated by Ippolito
Pestellini Laparelli
The component parts
of Monditalia,
the 41 projects that line the vast corridor of the Arsenale, provide
contextualization for architecture operating within larger systems, be it
politics, media, border control, religion, etc. When we spoke to Ippolito
Pestellini Laparelli of AMO, Monditalia’s
head curator, he stressed that “the exhibition is a method, more than anything.
This idea of the scanning through the country, selecting case studies,
selecting another way to represent the case studies…it’s a method that can be
applied also elsewhere.”
Monditalia mobilizes the other sectors of the
Venice Biennale — Cinema, Dance and Music — in order to capture a “polyphonic”
portrait of a European country with what Laparelli describes as “extreme
conditions.” Infographics produced in preparation for the
exhibition demonstrate the statistical disparities between Italy and other
nations. The scan of Italy begins from the south and continues to the north,
allowing “different topics to collaps[e] or collid[e] onto each other, such as
you would find when you travel through a real territory.”
Monditalia’s events
have been programmed to take place between June and November in conjunction
with a series of 21 Weekend Specials that allow further
exploration of the issues/topics/case studies brought forth in the exhibition
at large.
From the Official Catalog of the 14th International Architecture
Exhibition. The physical presence of the Arsenale is
interpreted as an ideal set. Rather than a sequence of individual episodes that
typically do not connect to form a single narrative, we propose to dedicate the
Arsenale to a single theme (Italy) and to mobilize other sectors of la Biennale
di Venezia (Cinema, Dance, Music and Theater) to collectively contribute to a comprehensive
portrait of the host country.
In a moment of
crucial political transformation, we decided to look at Italy as a
“fundamental” country, completely unique but sharing certain
features–particularly the coexistence of immense riches, creativity, competences,
and potential, combined with political turbulence–that make it a prototype of
the current moment.
Monditalia conducts
a scan of Italy. Along the Corderie, either-two Italian movies and forty-one
architectural case studies, developed in collaboration with many young
researchers, are arranged geographically from south to north–from northern
Africa to the Alps. Cinema and architecture together offer a series of virtual
sections at progressive latitudes, gathering and illustrating significant Italian
subjects: history, architecture, politics, religion, technology, economics,
industry and media, representing the complex Italian reality as a paradigm of
local and global conditions.
Between June and
November, throughout the Corderie, the Dance, Theater, and Music sectors will
rehearse and perform in the same spaces, along with other that complement the
permanent exhibition. Each production could leave a physical trace in the form
of sets, objects, written material, projections, or the extended presence of
“actors.” A series of “stages,” different in size, permeability and
transformability, will accommodate lectures, debates, shows, workshops,
performances, reenactments, turning the Corderie into a multidisciplinary work
in progress, constantly evolving and on permanent display.
Together, these
espies generate a portrait of the entire country as depicted by the Tabula
Peutingeriana, a fifth-century map of Italy as the core of the Roman Empire
that is still entirely relevant today…
All the photographs for Monditalia:14 th Venice Architecture Biennale of this news had taken by © Nico Saieh.
http://www.archdaily.com/536640/how-oma-s-monditalia-paints-a-dynamic-portrait-of-italy/
You may visit Rem Koolhaas's project of Hamburg Science Center to click below link from my blog archive.
14TH VENICE
ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE: FUNDAMENTALS
June 7, 2014 –
November 23, 2014
Rem
Koolhaas has stated: “Fundamentals will be a Biennale about
architecture, not architects. After several Biennales dedicated to the
celebration of the contemporary, Fundamentals will focus on histories
– on the inevitable elements of all architecture used by any architect,
anywhere, anytime (the door, the floor, the ceiling etc.) and on the evolution
of national architectures in the last 100 years. In three complementary
manifestations – taking place in the Central Pavilion, the Arsenale, and the
National Pavilions – this retrospective will generate a fresh understanding of
the richness of architecture’s fundamental repertoire, apparently so exhausted
today.
In 1914, it made
sense to talk about a “Chinese” architecture, a “Swiss” architecture, an
“Indian” architecture. One hundred years later, under the influence of wars,
diverse political regimes, different states of development, national and
international architectural movements, individual talents, friendships, random
personal trajectories and technological developments, architectures that were
once specific and local have become interchangeable and global. National
identity has seemingly been sacrificed to modernity.
Having the decisive
advantage of starting work a year earlier than the Biennale’s typical schedule,
we hope to use this extra time to introduce a degree of coordination and
coherence among the National Pavilions. Ideally, we would want the represented
countries to engage a single theme –Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 – and
to show, each in their own way, the process of the erasure of national
characteristics in favour of the almost universal adoption of a single modern
language in a single repertoire of typologies.
The First World War
– the beginning of modern globalization – serves a starting point for the range
of narratives. The transition to what seems like a universal architectural
language is a more complex process than we typically recognize, involving
significant encounters between cultures, technical inventions and imperceptible
ways of remaining “national.” In a time of ubiquitous google research and the
flattening of cultural memory, it is crucial for the future of architecture to
resurrect and expose these narratives.
By telling the
history of the last 100 years cumulatively, the exhibitions in the National
Pavilions will generate a global overview of architecture’s evolution into a
single, modern aesthetic, and at the same time uncover within globalization the
survival of unique national features and mentalities that continue to exist and
flourish even as international collaboration and exchange intensify…
President Paolo
Baratta explained the evolution of the Architecture Biennale and
consequently the choice of Rem Koolhaas:
“We are universally
recognized as the most important event in the world for Architecture; we are
the place where Architecture talks about itself and meets life and
society at large. For this reason over the past few years our choices of
curators and themes have been based on the awareness of the gap between the
“spectacularization” of architecture on the one hand, and the waning capacity
of society to express its demands and its needs on the other hand. The
architects are called upon prevalently to create awe-inspiring buildings and
the “ordinary” is going astray, towards banality if not squalor: a modernity
lived bad.
At the culmination
of this process we have asked Rem Koolhaas to engage himself
in an original research project.
The Exhibition is
also evolving in the way it is organized. Born as an “imitation” of the Art
Exhibition and developed to “invite” architects to bring us their
installations, just like for the Art Biennale, it is evolving into a major
Exhibition-research project conducted directly by the curator (who is in
fact appointed as the director of the Architecture sector of the Biennale). The
countries are offered the opportunity for a better integration into this
research project. The Exhibition will be enhanced by an increasing number of
activities throughout its duration, with workshops and seminarsthat enrich
it as an active-Exhibition. For this reason we have decided to anticipate
the opening date to the 7th of June and to make the Exhibition last
as long as the Art Exhibition (about 6 months).”
The 14
International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia also
present, as is traditional, the National Participations with their
own exhibitions in the Pavilions at the Giardini and at the Arsenale, and in
the historic city centre of Venice.
This edition also
include selected Collateral Events, presented by international entities
and institutions, which present their exhibitions and initiatives in Venice
concurrently with the 14th Exhibition.
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/news/25-01.html
REM KOOLHAAS PHOTO BY MARK SELIGER
PAOLO BARATTA & REM KOOLHAAS
REM KOOLHAAS
Rem
Koolhaas (Rotterdam 1944) founded OMA in 1975 together with Elia and
Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Koolhaas worked as a journalist and
screenwriter before beginning architecture, and writing has remained central to
his architectural practice. At the same time as designing buildings around the
world with OMA, Koolhaas works in non-architectural disciplines – including
politics, publishing, media, fashion, and sociology – through his think tank
and research unit, AMO.
After studying at
the Architectural Association in London, and at Cornell and the Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies in the US, Koolhaas wrote Delirious New
York (1978) and simultaneously began producing projects and proposals with
OMA. In 1995, S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA in a
1,200-page book that redefined architectural publishing. As director of the
Project on the City research program at Harvard University, Koolhaas produced
the books The Harvard Guide to Shopping (2001), an analysis of
the role of retail and consumption in society and architecture, and Great
Leap Forward(2002), a study of China’s Pearl River Delta; he also produced
studies on Lagos, Roman architecture and communism.
Recently completed
OMA buildings include De Rotterdam, three interconnected towers on the river
Maas; Shenzhen Stock Exchange; the G-Star headquarters in Amsterdam; the new
headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) – a tower reinvented as a loop
– in Beijing; a new headquarters for Rothschild Bank in London; and Milstein
Hall, an elevated slab that extends Cornell’s college of Architecture, Art and
Planning.
OMA-designed
buildings currently under construction include the Taipei Performing Arts
Centre; three buildings in Doha, Qatar; the Bibliothèque Multimédia à Vocation
Régionale, a four-story public library in Caen; and Bryghusprojektet in
Copenhagen, a mixed-use project accommodating the new headquarters for the
Danish Architecture Centre.
In 1998, Koolhaas
established AMO as a platform for using architectural thinking in non-architectural
realms. Recent AMO projects include research into the countryside (globally)
and the Russian hinterland; the design of catwalk shows for Prada and Miu Miu;
“Cronocaos,” an exhibition on preservation, at the 2010 Venice Biennale;
participation in the EU Reflection Group think tank, with the task of making
proposals for Europe in 2020; Roadmap 2050, a masterplan for a Europe-wide
renewable energy grid; and the development of an educational program for
Strelka, a new architecture school in Moscow. AMO has also guest edited an
issue of Wired magazine as well as consulting on the future of
Conde Nast magazines; proposed a “barcode” EU flag; and developed a curatorial
masterplan for the Hermitage museum, St. Petersburg.
SELECTED BUILDINGS
De Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, 2013
CCTV Headquarters,
Beijing, 2012
Rothschild Bank,
London, 2012
Millstein Hall,
Cornell, NY, 2010
Maggie’s Center,
Gartnavel, 2010
Wyly Theatre,
Dallas, 2009
Prada Transformer,
Seoul, 2009
Serpentine pavilion,
London, 2006
Zeche Zollverein
Museum and masterplan, Essen, 2006
Seoul National
University Museum of Art, 2006
Casa da Música,
Porto, 2005
Prada Epicenter, New
York, 2001
Seattle Central
Library, 2004
Netherlands Embassy,
Berlin, 2003
IIT Campus Center,
Chicago, 2003
Hermitage Guggenheim,
Las Vegas, 2001
Maison à Bordeaux,
1998
Educatorium,
Utrecht, 1997
Euralille Congrexpo
+ masterplan, 1994
Kunsthal, Rotterdam,
1992
Nexus World Housing,
Fukuoka, 1991
Villa d’allava,
Paris, 1991
Netherlands Dance
Theatre, The Hague, 1987
SELECTED BOOKS
Project Japan: Metabolism Talks, Taschen, 2011
Al Manakh
I and II, Archis, 2007 and 2010
Content, Taschen,
2003
Great Leap Forward,
Taschen, 2002
Harvard Guide to
Shopping, Taschen 2001
S,M,L,XL, Monacelli,
1995
Delirious New York,
Oxford University Press, 1978
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
(Im)pure,
(In)formal, (Un)built, L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2011
OMA/Progress,
Barbican, London, 2010
Cronocaos, Venice
Biennale, 2010
Dubai Next, Vitra
Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 2008
The Gulf, Venice
Biennale, 2006
OMA in Beijing,
MoMA, New York, 2006
Expansion and
Neglect, Venice Biennale, 2005
Image of Europe:
Vienna, Brussels, Munich, 2004
Content, Neue
Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2003
Cities on the Move,
Hayward Gallery, London, 1999
Less is More, Milan
Triennale, 1986
Strada Novissima,
Venice Biennale, 1980
TEACHING POSITIONS
Strelka Institute,
Moscow
Professor in
Practice of Architecture and Urban Design, Harvard University
Architectural
Association, London
Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies, New York
SELECTED AWARDS
Johannes Vermeer
Prijs, 2013
Golden Lion for
Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale, 2010
RIBA Gold Medal, 2004
Praemium Imperiale,
Japan, 2003
Membership Legion
D’Honneur, 2001
Pritzker Prize, 2000
Mies van der Rohe
Award, 2005
EDUCATION
Architectural
Association, London, 1969–72
Cornell University,
1972–73
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/director/
