November 18, 2016

THE VENICE BIENNALE ARCHITECTURE 2016 DIRECTED BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA - NINE PROJECTS FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES




THE VENICE BIENNALE ARCHITECTURE 2016 DIRECTED 
BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA & ORGANIZED BY PAOLO BARATTA
NINE PROJECTS FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES 




THE VENICE BIENNALE ARCHITECTURE 2016 DIRECTED BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA
ORGANIZED BY PAOLO BARATTA 
May 28, 2016 - November 27, 2016
Open to the public from Saturday May 28th to Sunday November 27th 2016 at the Giardini and the Arsenale, the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, titled REPORTING FROM THE FRONT, will be directed by Alejandro Aravena and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta. 
The Exhibition will also include 63 National Participations in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the historic city centre of Venice. Four countries will be participating for the first time: Philippines, Nigeria, Seychelles and Yemen.
The Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale, sponsored and promoted by the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Direzione Generale Arte e Architettura Contemporanee e Periferie Urbane, has been assigned to the curatorial team TAM associati: Massimo Lepore, Raul Pantaleo, and Simone Sfriso.
The International Exhibition
The Exhibition REPORTING FROM THE FRONT will be laid out in a unitary exhibition sequence from the Central Pavilion (Giardini) to the Arsenale, and will include 88 participants from 37 different countries. 50 of them will be participating for the first time, and 33 architects are under the age of 40.
“The lady on the ladder who, climbing up onto the highest steps can gaze over a far broader horizon, and by doing so conquers an “expanded eye”, announces the Biennale Architettura 2016 curated by Alejandro Aravena. We immediately loved this picture – stated President Paolo Baratta - because in a way it represents la Biennale as a whole, with our attitudes and our goals.
“It is also in part a counterpoint to the image chosen for the most recent Biennale Arte. The symbol selected last year by Okwui Enwezor – Baratta noted - was Paul Klee’s famous “Angelus Novus” as interpreted by Walter Benjamin; the winged angel looking backwards in shock, seeing only the past and in the past, debris and tragedy, but also insights that could be useful some day, in a future towards which the hidden forces of providence are driving him, like a wind blowing on his wings.”
“What does the lady see? I think - commented Baratta -mainly desolated land comprising immense swathes of human habitation which no human could be proud of; great disappointments representing a sad, infinite number of missed opportunities for humanity’s ability to act intelligently. Much of this is tragic, much is banal, and it seems to mark the end of architecture. But she also sees signs of creativity and hope, and she sees them in the here-and-now, not in some uncertain aspirational, ideological future.”
“Is this a sign of optimism? We have often deplored, in previous Biennale Exhibitions – the President recalled – that our present time seems to be characterised by increasing disconnection between architecture and civil society. Previous Exhibitions have addressed this in different ways. This time, we wish to investigate more explicitly whether and where there are any trends going in the other direction, towards renewal; we are seeking out encouraging messages.”
“And we are not just interested in exhibiting concrete results for critical appraisal. We also want to see into the phenomenology of how these positive examples came about. In other words: what drives the demand for architecture; how are needs and desires identified and expressed; which logical, institutional, legal, political and administrative processes lead to demand for architecture and how they allow architecture to come up with solutions which go beyond the banal and self-harming.”
“Because this is clearly a serious impasse; not as much in architecture as a discipline, but in human organisation, in our ability to harness it, be saved by it and enter into dialogue with it.”
“We feel the need to highlight how positive outcomes have been achieved through the evolution of decision-making chains which link need - awareness - opportunity - choice - execution in a way that leads to a result where “architecture makes the difference”, as Aravena puts it.”




“We are not interested in architecture as the manifestation of a formal style, but rather as an instrument of self-government, of humanist civilisation, and as a demonstration of the ability of humans to become masters of their own destinies.”
“Architecture in action as an instrument of social and political life, challenges us to assess the public consequences of private actions at a more fundamental level.”
“Presenting architecture in action is also one of the answers to the permanent question raised by La Biennale. What is an architecture exhibition? – asked Baratta. And what should an architecture biennale be? In the Biennale Arte, which is the parent of the Biennale Architettura, the works are there in front of the visitors; with an architecture exhibition, the works are elsewhere. What should there be here? And indeed, the search goes on. We must avoid turning into a magazine, a convention, a critical essay, or a place for specialists alone: an exhibition just for architects. We also need to avoid condescension and falling into the trap whereby architects are tempted to present themselves as artists.”
“We need to engage with the public and with all possible stakeholders in the decisions and actions whereby our living spaces are created, both as individuals and as communities. As Architecture is the most political of all the arts - concluded the President - "the Biennale Architettura must recognise this.”
“In his trip to South America – related Alejandro Aravena - Bruce Chatwin encountered an old lady walking the desert carrying an aluminium ladder on her shoulder. It was German archaeologist Maria Reiche studying the Nazca lines. Standing on the ground, the stones did not make any sense; they were just random gravel. But from the height of the stair those stones became a bird, a jaguar, a tree or a flower. “
Aravena thus expressed his hope that the Biennale Architettura 2016 might “offer a new point of view like the one Maria Reiche has on the ladder. Given the complexity and variety of challenges that architecture has to respond to, REPORTING FROM THE FRONT will be about listening to those that were able to gain some perspective and consequently are in the position to share some knowledge and experiences with those of us standing on the ground.”
“We believe  - explained Aravena - that the advancement of architecture is not a goal in itself but a way to improve people’s quality of life. Given that life ranges from very basic physical needs to the most intangible dimensions of the human condition, consequently, improving the quality of the built environment is an endeavour that has to tackle many fronts: from guaranteeing very concrete, down-to-earth living standards to interpreting and fulfilling human desires, from respecting the single individual to taking care of the common good, from efficiently hosting daily activities to expanding the frontiers of civilization.“
The curator’s proposal is therefore twofold: “on the one hand we would like to widen the range of issues to which architecture is expected to respond, adding explicitly to the cultural and artistic dimensions that already belong to our scope, those that are on the social, political, economical and environmental end of the spectrum. On the other hand, we would like to highlight the fact that architecture is called to respond to more than one dimension at a time, integrating a variety of fields instead of choosing one or another.”
“REPORTING FROM THE FRONT will be about sharing with a broader audience, the work of people who are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural disasters, housing shortage, migration, informality, crime, traffic, waste, pollution and the participation of communities. And simultaneously it will be about presenting examples where different dimensions are synthesized, integrating the pragmatic with the existential, pertinence and boldness, creativity and common sense. “
“It is not easy – concluded Aravena – to achieve such a level of expansion and synthesis; they are battles that need to be fought. The always menacing scarcity of means, the ruthless constraints, the lack of time and urgencies of all kinds are a constant threat that explain why we so often fall short in delivering quality. The forces that shape the built environment are not necessarily amicable either: the greed and impatience of capital or the single mindedness and conservatism of the bureaucracy tend to produce banal, mediocre and dull built environments. These are the frontlines from which we would like different practitioners to report, sharing success stories and exemplary cases where architecture did, is and will make a difference.”
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/exhibition/15/








TURKIYE PAVILION BY MEHMET KÜTÜKÇÜOĞLU & ERTUĞ UÇAR & FERIDE ÇİÇEKOĞLU
DARZANA: TWO ARSENALS, ONE VESSEL AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016




TURKIYE PAVILION BY MEHMET KÜTÜKÇÜOĞLU & ERTUĞ UÇAR & FERIDE ÇİÇEKOĞLU
DARZANA: TWO ARSENALS, ONE VESSEL AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016
This project builds a bridge between the dockyards of Venice and Istanbul, borrowing its title from a hybrid word which has its roots in the Mediterranean. The title of the project makes a reference to Lingua Franca, as the term Darzanà corresponds to the Turkish word tersane and the Italian word arsenale in this hybrid language and in fact all three words share the same origin. A Lingua Franca was used in the Mediterranean basin from the 11th to the 19th century between people who needed to communicate with each other, such as sailors, travellers, merchants, and warriors. In the same vein, it is possible to talk of a common architectural language and to define it as Architectura Franca.
Venice and Istanbul, despite their different identities and different dimensions today, both featured considerable dockyards that once reflected one another in size and production. The common core of these dockyards were the shipdecks called “volti” in Italian and “göz” in Turkish – the sites where ships were built and then launched, which were positioned perpendicular to the sea and constructed in proportion to the ships. For the project Darzanà, a last vessel, a baştarda will be built at an abandoned volti at the Haliç dockyards in Istanbul, using the waste materials on site. It will then be taken to Sale d’Armi, the volti that hosts the Pavilion of Turkey, and re-installed there.
Derived from the Latin bastardo, a baştarda is a type of vessel that is a cross between a galley and a galleon, propelled by sails and oars. A symbol of the hybridity specific to the Mediterranean as a concept, it will be the vessel of the project. The baştarda will be a bridge between two shipyards, one which has been left to rot away in the megacity of Istanbul and the other springing to life only at certain times of the year in a museum-city. It will exhibit that which you cannot demarcate water or put a wire fence between words, all the while looking for the clues to transform fronts and borders into thresholds and spaces of consensus. Architectural practice is a field prone to confrontation, conflict, to drawing borders and withdraw, to quitting the profession and taking up other things. The question of whether or not it is possible to transform spaces of conflict into those of consensus by continuing the practice of architecture will be the main theme of the project Darzanà.
DARZANA BOOK
A book will be published to accompany the project Darzanà, which will make use of different archive materials to narrate the history of the dockyards in Haliç from their first establishment through their golden ages to our times when they eventually became unusable. Edited by Feride Çiçekoğlu and featuring texts by Namık Erkal and Vera Costantini and photographs by Cemal Emden, the book will be available in two editions, English and Turkish, at the opening of the International Architecture Exhibition and will later be distributed by Yapı Kredi Publications in selected bookstores. The book and the exhibition’s visual identity are designed by Bülent Erkmen.
























BAŞTARDA
In Istanbul, Baştarda was constructed beneath a reproduction of the wooden trusses of the hall of Sale d’Armi in the Venice shipyard that hosts the Pavilion of Turkey. Measuring 30 metres long and weighing four tons, the vessel was built from more than 500 pieces    including seven kilometres of steel cable and abandoned materials found on site including wooden moulds, discarded furniture, signboards and boats. In April, the components were shipped to Sale d’Armi, where Baştarda was re-constructed in May for the Pavilion of Turkey. When La Biennale closes in November 2016, Baştarda will continue her journey and she will eventually become the centrepiece of a museum of arsenal in Tersane, when the site is opened to public in Istanbul.
Darzanà’s main theme raises the question of whether it is possible to transform borders, fronts and other spaces of conflict into thresholds and spaces of consensus. In this vein, Baştarda becomes a vessel of frontier infringement. She came to Venice, and she will eventually go back to İstanbul, travelling back and forth, just as the languages, the      architectural forms, and people of the Mediterranean, have done throughout history. She will continue to tell her stories, and to show that one can trespass borders within cities or between cultures. Reporting from Darzanà, one can see the futility of demarcations on the seas and in between the words.
http://pavilionofturkey16.iksv.org/#














REPORTING FROM THE FRONT
Central to the concept behind Darzanà is the emphasis on frontier infringement and on hybridity. Challenging the increasing confinement within borders of religion, language, race, nationality, ethnicity and gender, the common cultural and architectural heritage shared between the arsenals of Istanbul and Venice is highlighted. For the Biennale Architettura 2016, a last vessel, a baştardahas been constructed out of abandoned materials found in the old dockyard of Istanbul and transported to Venice to suggest a new connection in Mediterranean
http://pavilionofturkey16.iksv.org/#












TURKIYE PAVILION BY MEHMET KÜTÜKÇÜOĞLU & ERTUĞ UÇAR & FERIDE ÇİÇEKOĞLU
DARZANA: TWO ARSENALS, ONE VESSEL AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016








KUNLE ADEYEMI DOCKS MAKOKO FLOATING SCHOOL AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2016




KUNLE ADEYEMI DOCKS MAKOKO FLOATING SCHOOL AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2016
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi has been awarded the Silver Lion for bringing his floating school to the Venice Biennale, as part of his ongoing research into building for flood-prone regions.
Adeyemi and his studio NLÉ developed an "improved, prefabricated and industrialised iteration" of the Makoko Floating School in Lagos, Nigeria, adapting its engineering to suit the Venetian climate conditions.
The Amsterdam- and Lagos-based studio originally created Makoko Floating School as a building prototype for coastal regions of Africa that have little permanent infrastructure because of unpredictable flooding.
Like the original, MFS II is a pointed three-storey floating structure. It spans 220 square metres, over three floors that decrease in scale towards the building's apex.
"Just as our first prototype sourced local intelligence from the Makoko waterfront community, MFS II is an improved iteration designed to suit Venetian conditions and a wider waterfront population," said the studio.
"Adapted for easy prefabrication and rapid assembly, it is more robustly engineered and affords a wide range of uses. It is mobile, deployable, and ready to be reassembled at its next waterfront."
MFS II was assembled for the Biennale by four builders in just 10 days – using one tonne of metal and 13.5 tonnes of wood for the structural framework, and 256 plastic barrels as a floatation device.
It forms the venue for an exhibition titled Waterfront Atlas, which looks at developing coastal communities.
Adeyemi was awarded the Silver Lion for the project, and described by the jury as a "promising young participant".
The jury praised the project as "a powerful demonstration, be it in Lagos or in Venice, that architecture, at once iconic and pragmatic, can amplify the importance of education".
The Makoko Floating School – shortlisted for the 2016 Aga Khan Award for Architecture – and MFS II are part of the studio's wider African Water Cities research project, which is investigating how aquatic architecture could provide infrastructure for Africa's coastal communities.
The studio is also currently developing an amphibious radio station named Chicoco Radio Media Center to provide a platform for the Port Harcourt waterfront community in Nigeria, amidst government plans to demolish its settlements.
The original Makoko Floating School was built for Lagos Lagoon
Waterfront Atlas is located at the Arsenale as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, which is curated by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena and runs until 27 November 2016.
Aravena's theme, Reporting From The Front, is a bid to encourage architects to address some of the most important global issues.
Kunlé Adeyemi is also working on an architectural folly to accompany this year's Bjarke Ingels-designed Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens, which will be unveiled next week.
Photography is by Luke Hayes, unless stated otherwise.
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/31/kunle-adeyemi-docks-makoko-floating-school-venice-architecture-biennale-2016/











KUNLE ADEYEMI DOCKS MAKOKO FLOATING SCHOOL AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2016








SINGAPORE PAVILION: SPACE TO IMAGINE, ROOM FOR EVERYONE AT 
2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE




SINGAPORE PAVILION: SPACE TO IMAGINE, ROOM FOR EVERYONE AT 2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE
Responding to the primary theme of 15th International Architecture Exhibition, ‘Reporting from the Front,’ Singapore’s presentation places the small “battles” fought at the home-front. These efforts are contributing to the emergence of an invigorated Singapore.
From within the comfort and the security of the domestic environments and public spaces that have been created over the past five decades, we are now pushing the home-front from within – to create more Space to Imagine, and Room for Everyone.
Through actions, guided and spontaneous, initiated by individuals, establishments and groups, we are witnessing active participation of our citizens: stepping out, taking actions, owning and adopting their environments. They have also heightened the role of design advocacy and participation, both real and imagined, at various scales and levels in schemes of future renewals, intensified in-fills of left-over spaces, in the narrow confines of domestic spaces.
In two broad themes (archetypal terrains), at every scale, in the boundary between the private and public realms, actions like participation, contestations, activations, appropriations, transgressions and occupations are enacted. All these happen in the building and urban fabric – on the grounds, in the void decks in the private abodes of our housing estates, and in our public spaces.
In a battery of actions on these terrains, we forge through design a new society built on the gains of the previous more austere generation. In pushing against this front, in turning Singapore inside out, we move beyond from being productive and technocratic, to be creative and egalitarian. Thus, these “battles” at the front is a poignant visual account of our human capacity building, in looking at the past with new eyes and broadly, and in our attempts to humanize the environments of Singapore.
The design of the exhibition uses the grid as a base onto which different meanings and potentials are projected. The grid (a frame with equal intervals in the x & y dimensions) signifies the order and rationality with which Singapore is planned. The grid however, also provides openness and freedom. In the exhibition space, we set up a grid that allows everyone to move freely, to appreciate the diversity of stories that thrive within.
The effect created is an atmosphere to envelope and immerse the viewer. The curatorial team endeavoured to make an emotionally charged experience using the hundreds of interior scenes from everyday life in our public housing estates, the Housing Development Board (HDB). More than experiencing any one of these HDB interiors in the skin, the exhibition would immerse the viewer intimately in the diverse collection of interiors, an intensified domestic experience.
Close-up of post-it notes handwritten by participants in PID's (Participate in Design) engagement programmes. 
Eighty-one (81) customised image lanterns are suspended at eye level in the central space. On three faces of each lantern, a photograph from the HDB: Homes of Singapore collection will be mounted. On the fourth side, one will look into the lantern2 to see a small model of the HDB block in which the interiors described in the photographs are sited. A bulb in the centre lights the model as well as the photographs from behind. A viewer will freely meander through these scenes of everyday life, glowing gently.
One may notice that in this pavilion staged for an International Architecture Exhibition, it is not showing buildings. Rather it is showing the connections between people and their spaces. The challenge is that while buildings are traditionally documented in drawings, photographs, and models, the stories of these small “battles” that were found on our home-front had no ready-made form.
To embody the spirit of each participant, the curatorial team selected from each an artefact, a visually striking object that bears the marks of their endeavour or tells the stories succinctly. In one example, the Ground-Up Initiative (GUI) displays the mud-bricks that their volunteers are making for the walls of their new campus. For Participate in Design (P!D), an array of the colourful, now universal, Post-It notes that the protagonists gathered from their consultation sessions is presented.
Singapore Pavilion – Space to Imagine, Room for Everyone - at Biennale Architettura 2016, Venice. Image © Don Wong


















SINGAPORE PAVILION: SPACE TO IMAGINE, ROOM FOR EVERYONE AT 
2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE








ROMANIA’S PAVILION: SELFIE AUTOMATON AT THE 2016 VENICE BIENNALE
BY TIBERIU BUCSA, GAL ORSOLYA, STATHIS MARKOPOULOS & ADRIAN ARAMA




ROMANIA’S PAVILION: SELFIE AUTOMATON AT THE 2016 VENICE BIENNALE
BY TIBERIU BUCSA, GAL ORSOLYA, STATHIS MARKOPOULOS & ADRIAN ARAMA
The Romanian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia showcases “Selfie Automaton”, an exhibition by Tiberiu Bucșa, Gál Orsolya, Stathis Markopoulos, Adrian Aramă, Oana Matei, Andrei Durloi. The exhibition consists of 7 mechanical automata, featuring 42 built in marionetes — 37 human and 5 creatures. Three of the automata will be placed in the Romanian Pavilion in Giardini, another three in the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, and one nomad that will wander through the streets of Venice.
Caricatures of characters, fantastic animals, golden eggs, music boxes and mirrored reflections are assembled in predefined show parts that place the visitor on stage, in various positions, as dynamo and puppet in the same time. The authors thus propose a generic portrait of social relations, stereotypes and wishes, broken into pieces, to be reassembled by the user’s imagination, in an introspective self-portrait, or perhaps a selfie. It could be all just entertainment or it can be seen as an absurd show. It raises a few questions, but it certainly does not give answers.
To define the role that was given to marionettes in the exhibition, the authors of “Selfie Automaton” approached puppetry, where it is common for the manipulator to play with the meanings and possibilities of control. One is that the marionette can, and should, cross the usual human limits, of gravity for example, as it can jump and remain suspended. Another, to a tragic extreme, is to let it become aware of its manipulator and cut, or not, its own strings. Still, no such possibilities of escape were used for the installations. Even though constructed with the necessary joints that would allow them the “freedom of movement”, the wooden puppets are unstrung and literally nailed into a mechanism that allows them nothing but one predefined repetitive movement. And the visitor is no exception. Seated as part of the automaton, he is given one choice only: to make it work, by his own repetitive action.
Consequently, the comfortable bipolar stereotype of the manipulated (us) and the manipulator (them) – most often placing people’ actions at one end of the string, as humble and direct consequences of an unexplained exterior force responsible for them – is replaced by a system of closed choices, built in a series of automata. The exhibition takes these two directions further, by positioning the visitor in various relations with its objects of entertainment and himself, from leaving him the comfort or discomfort of the distant observer, up to making him a giant ballerina in a micro banquet, a victim of a Kafka-like commission, or a beggar of wishes.
Handles and pedals make the various shows possible, when provided with one human power. An apparent system of gearwheels transmit the motion to cyclical scenes: a bicycle is moving a circle dance, a cooking pot generates a “grand buffet”, a crank awakens a commission or a never ending fight, a turning handle moves a golden sh, a golden hen, or a flying bird – prisoner outside its cage.
“Selfie Automaton” reflects on the characters and actions embodied by the puppets that are nothing but dispersed parts of our own and can be combined or split, in search of a self-portrait, be it of an architect or of anyone else.
What remains, still, is the question of predetermined patterns. Whether they really exist, whether we are part of them, their victims or their generators. 
Exhibition concept: Tiberiu Bucșa, Gál Orsolya, Stathis Markopoulos, Adrian Aramă
Puppet design and construction: Stathis Markopoulos, Gál Orsolya, Tiberiu Bucșa, Andrei Durloi, Perényi Flóra, Oana Matei
Automata design and construction: Stathis Markopoulos, Kostis Zamaiakis
http://selfieautomaton.ro/exhibition/gallery/romanian-cultural-institute/




















































ROMANIA’S PAVILION: SELFIE AUTOMATON AT THE 2016 VENICE BIENNALE
BY TIBERIU BUCSA, GAL ORSOLYA, STATHIS MARKOPOULOS & ADRIAN ARAMA


















VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016
CURATED BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA 
In his trip to South America Bruce Chatwin encountered an old lady walking the desert carrying an aluminum ladder on her shoulder. It was German archeologist Maria Reiche studying the Nazca lines. Standing on the ground, the stones did not make any sense; they were just random gravel. But from the height of the stair those stones became a bird, a jaguar, a tree or a flower.
We would like the Biennale Architettura 2016 to offer a new point of view like the one Maria Reiche has on the ladder. Given the complexity and variety of challenges that architecture has to respond to, REPORTING FROM THE FRONT will be about listening to those that were able to gain some perspective and consequently are in the position to share some knowledge and experiences with those of us standing on the ground.
We believe that the advancement of architecture is not a goal in itself but a way to improve people’s quality of life. Given life ranges from very basic physical needs to the most intangible dimensions of the human condition, consequently, improving the quality of the built environment is an endeavor that has to tackle many fronts: from guaranteeing very concrete, down-to-earth living standards to interpreting and fulfilling human desires, from respecting the single individual to taking care of the common good, from efficiently hosting daily activities to expanding the frontiers of civilization.
Our curatorial proposal is twofold: on the one hand we would like to widen the range of issues to which architecture is expected to respond, adding explicitly to the cultural and artistic dimensions that already belong to our scope, those that are on the social, political, economical and environmental end of the spectrum. On the other hand, we would like to highlight the fact that architecture is called to respond to more than one dimension at the time, integrating a variety of fields instead of choosing one or another.
REPORTING FROM THE FRONT will be about sharing with a broader audience, the work of people that are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural disasters, housing shortage, migration, informality, crime, traffic, waste, pollution and participation of communities. And simultaneously will be about presenting examples where different dimensions are synthesized, integrating the pragmatic with the existential, pertinence and boldness, creativity and common sense.
Such expansion and synthesis are not easy to achieve; they are battles that need to be fought. The always menacing scarcity of means, the ruthless constraints, the lack of time and urgencies of all kinds are a constant threat that explain why we so often fall short in delivering quality. The forces that shape the built environment are not necessarily amicable either: the greed and impatience of capital or the single mindedness and conservatism of the bureaucracy tend to produce banal, mediocre and dull built environments. These are the frontlines from which we would like different practitioners to report from, sharing success stories and exemplary cases where architecture did, is and will make a difference.
Alejandro Aravena

http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/exhibition/aravena/














VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016: NATIONAL PAVILION
MONOCLE MAGAZINE
















VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016
CURATED BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA 














IRISH PAVILION: LOSING MYSELF AT THE 2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 
BY NIALL McLAUGHLIN & YEORYIA MANOLOPOULOU




IRISH PAVILION: LOSING MYSELF AT THE 2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 
BY NIALL McLAUGHLIN & YEORYIA MANOLOPOULOU
Our report is a reflection on the lessons learnt through designing and revisiting buildings for people with dementia. Visitors enter our space at the end of the Arsenale through a gap in the partition walls. The room is darkened, in contrast with the projected brightness on the floor. The floor accommodates a 4.8m x 6.4m animated drawing of the Alzheimer’s Respite Center. The drawing is dynamic, with multiple projected hands moving across the plane of the floor as they create fragments of a plan. They merge and overlap. These hands represent sixteen individuals inhabiting a series of rooms at the Alzheimer’s Centre. The projection consistently labours towards the clarity of a completed plan but falls short of achieving it.
Suspended speakers create a soundscape, consisting of the physical sounds of the act of drawing itself, layered with murmured conversations; sounds of rain and the sea; quotidian noises—a kettle boiling, children playing, people eating—and the bells of the Angelus.
This installation is an attempt to communicate and interpret some of the changes to spatial perception caused by dementia. In order to understand these changes, we have read, researched and questioned. We have spoken to a broad range of people—neuroscientists, psychologists, health workers, philosophers, anthropologists, people with dementia and their families—about dementia, the brain, and the role of design in dementia care. 
We are interested in the social function of architecture: how it can improve the lives of people with dementia. Beyond this, we hope that our research into the impact of the condition on spatial cognition will equip us with a deeper understanding of how all of our minds interpret space.
Our project has also highlighted the shortcomings of the traditional architectural plan: an inhabitant may never experience the building from the architect’s complete and fixed vantage point. This disconnect is particularly apparent if the inhabitant has Alzheimer's Disease, and has lost the ability to use memory and projection to see beyond their immediate situation and create a stable model of their environment. Our projected animation attempts to address this, by working to develop a technique for drawing the building from the perspective of inhabitation.
The process has been collaborative, enlisting the skills of an animator, a composer, AV experts, graphic designers and many drafters. We have consulted people with dementia for feedback on the website design. We have been planning, testing and adapting our drawing technique with our drafting collaborators. At times, we have needed to design tools of production, such as glass tables for recording the drawing process. We have had to accept a certain level of unpredictability and uncertainty regarding the finished product, perhaps as a consequence of attempting to represent a cognitive state which is only partially understood, using a medium that we are developing through iteration and experiment.

http://www.niallmclaughlin.com/
























IRISH PAVILION: LOSING MYSELF AT THE 2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 
BY NIALL McLAUGHLIN & YEORYIA MANOLOPOULOU








ARMADILLO VAULT AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016




ARMADILLO VAULT AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: a team led by ETH Zurich researchers has constructed an expansive canopy using 399 slabs of limestone and no glue, showcasing a "milestone for stone engineering".
ETH Zurich's Block Research Group worked with engineering firm Ochsendorf DeJong & Block and masonry specialist The Escobedo Group to create the Armadillo Vault – the centrepiece of the Beyond Bending exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
The curving canopy features structural spans of up to 16 metres, but is supported entirely through compression rather than with the use of adhesives or fixings.
"Without any glue or mortar, with perfectly dry connections, this is really a milestone for stone engineering," explained Philippe Block, who runs Block Research Group with Tom Van Mele.
"We have some main spans of 16 metres, but it is only five centimetres thick where it touches on top," he told Dezeen.
"So it's an extremely thin shell – if you were to compare it to an eggshell, it is half the thickness proportionately."
The project was developed using Rhino VAULT, a digital design plugin that is licensed by ETH Zurich and has over 16,000 users.
It is intended to demonstrate that, with detailed knowledge of how compressive forces affect architectural structures, buildings can be constructed more efficiently using sustainable materials rather than steel.
Block's team chose to work with limestone – one of the most difficult materials to use structurally – to show how optimised geometries make it possible to build ambitious structures, even with limited resources.
"We're showing a new way of designing where you understand the constraints, so that you're not just focusing on geometry but on the relationship between geometry and forces," explained Block.
"This is limestone – it's the most extreme way to show that our new geometries are both expressive and efficient in the same way," he continued.
"If you do something silly in masonry, masonry doesn't lie, it's going to collapse on you."
To speed up the construction time, each piece of limestone was left unfinished on the underside – meaning the time spent on each piece averaged about 45 minutes, rather than several hours.
This created a canopy that looks similar to an armadillo shell on top, but has a rough, stripy underside.
"We took this optimisation in the fabrication as an opportunity to celebrate the aesthetic," said Block. "Because the marks are actually aligned following the forces, you see how this structure is working and it helps you read it a bit more."
The team carried out a test assembly of the structure with the building team in Texas before constructing it inside the Arsenale venue. This allowed them to create gentle grooves in some of the pieces, which provided a guide second time around.
Once the Biennale is over, the structure will be moved to a new location. This process could be repeated in various future sites without compromising the structural integrity, as the form is simply an "intricate 3D puzzle", according to Block.
"There is a lot of very sinuous architecture and very exciting architecture, but we want to offer this balance, this compromise between expression and efficiency," he concluded.
"In a way, this is my critique of free-form architecture – that it is not just a spiffy surface, a shiny smooth surface that needs a substructure to hold it; this is both the structure and the geometry, it is everything, a true structure."
The Beyond Bending exhibition also includes four vaulted floor prototypes and a series of graphical force diagrams.
It forms part of Reporting from the Front, the exhibition curated by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena for the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. Running until 27 November 2016, it aims to shine a light on some of the most important global issues.
Photographs by Anna Maragkoudaki & Iwan Baan

http://www.armadillovault.com/














ARMADILLO VAULT AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016








GABINETE DE ARQUITECTURA: BREAKING THE SIEGE 
WINNER OF THE GOLDEN LION AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE




GABINETE DE ARQUITECTURA: BREAKING THE SIEGE 
WINNER OF THE GOLDEN LION AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE
Bricks are an iconic element of Solano Benítez’s studio. An ancestral material, forged by man using an ancient technique of modeling and baking. Bricks are very versatile, cheap and easy to manufacture – even marginalized areas of the world can afford to build houses with brick. Benítez feels the poetry of brick and has experimented with its versatility, relying solely on bricks as the main construction material.
Gabinete de Arquitectura's exhibition, designed by Solano Benítez, Gloria Cabral and Solanito Benítez, was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Participant in the International Exhibition, Reporting From the Front, for “harnessing simple materials, structural ingenuity and unskilled labour to bring architecture to underserved communities.”
All photographs had taken by © Laurian Ghinitoiu



















GABINETE DE ARQUITECTURA: BREAKING THE SIEGE 
WINNER OF THE GOLDEN LION AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE








SPAIN PAVILION: UNFINISHED BY INAQUI CARNICERO & CARLOS QUINTANS EIRAS
AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016




SPAIN PAVILION: UNFINISHED BY INAQUI CARNICERO & CARLOS QUINTANS EIRAS
AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: this year's Golden Lion-winning Spanish Pavilion focuses on unfinished structures left in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and architects who are developing a "radical" approach to rebuilding Spain.
Titled Unfinished, the pavilion presents a series of photographs of incomplete construction projects, alongside 55 recent buildings that demonstrate a range of solutions to working under economic constraints.
According to co-curator and architect Iñaqui Carnicero, the economic crisis – which hit Spain harder than many other European countries – forced local architects to become more resourceful.
The main room of the Spanish pavilion displays photography of unfinished buildings in the country after the economic crash
"[We have become] more radical, and more intelligent in many cases," he told Dezeen.
"My own experience of working under this economic constraint [is that] when you are suffering from budget cuts sometimes the solution becomes more intense, more radical, and even better."
The exhibition is a direct response to Biennale curator Alejandro Aravena's request for architects to show work that responds to the major challenges in their countries as part of his theme, Reporting from the Front. The Spanish Pavilion was awarded the Golden Lion for best national pavilion at the 2016 Biennale.
Carnicero and fellow curator and architect Carlos Quintáns Eiras collected photographs by seven different artists of structures they describe as "contemporary ruins". These are displayed in the pavilion's central space on steel frames hanging for the ceiling, and range from major construction projects to small private houses and apartments.
Carnicero said there were few places on earth where so many unnecessary construction projects had been started in such a short period of time, and then abandoned because they couldn't be finished or maintained after the economy collapsed.
"Many of the buildings that were under construction remain unfinished," said Carnicero. "We wanted to present this problem, but we didn't want to do it in a narrative way. We didn't want to find who was guilty or be complaining about it."
"When you look at these pictures you discover a certain beauty, the beauty of architecture in process, the beauty of things that are meant to be hidden," he said.
The rooms around the main space are devoted to displaying 55 contemporary projects in Spain or by Spanish architects, grouped into nine categories.
Projects are displayed with photographs and drawings in wooden frames mounted on a steel structure to suggest and unfinished building
Carnicero said that the projects were selected for "under economical constraints, showing new solutions and new strategies to intervene in what already exists, instead of building new things."
The Consolidate section features examples of architects who have helped save historic buildings, with examples including the installation of new structures by Morales de Giles Arquitectos inside the Convento de Santa Maris de los Reyes in Seville.
Reappropriation focuses on the revival and reuse of abandoned heritage buildings like churches, industrial spaces and military complexes. These include the renovation of a Baroque palace in Palma de Mallorca by Flores & Prats and Duch-Pizá to create a new cultural centre.
Adaptable looks at projects that explore changing use and flexibility in buildings, with projects like an an apartment in Madrid by PKMN Architectures, which features sliding chipboard units that can be used to change the space. Also in this section is Casa Luz, a renovated Spanish home organised by Arquitectura-G around a new central courtyard.

http://www.inaquicarnicero.com/






























SPAIN PAVILION: UNFINISHED BY INAQUI CARNICERO & CARLOS QUINTANS EIRAS
AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016








PERU’S PAVILION: OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2016 
BY EQUIPO EDITORIAL




PERU’S PAVILION: OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2016 
BY EQUIPO EDITORIAL
As part of ArchDaily's coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, we are presenting a series of articles written by the curators of the exhibitions and installations on show.
The Amazon rainforest is our common frontline: constant battles are being fought to preserve the greatest source of biodiversity, oxygen production and climate regulation of the planet.
The Amazon is also the battlefront between the ancestral vision of its inhabitants and the modern vision that western society has over this territory. If we were to learn from the indigenous knowledge, now endangered by hegemonic “western civilization”, we would open an unforeseen insight about medicine, nutrition, and the sustainable production of the rainforest. The dissolution of this last frontline would have global implications and it would even change the way we see our world.
The Peruvian Pavilion tells an unprecedented action in this sense: fighting poverty and preserving the Amazon Rainforest through education. The “Plan Selva”, a large-scale public program in our amazon region that reconstructs and rebuilds hundreds of schools scattered in inaccessible places without services, with a new educational program that favors multiculturalism and rescues the native languages.
The starting point for the project is an attentive dialogue with the Amazonian communities. It proposes a kit of modular parts that allows adapting to particular pedagogic requirements, topographical conditions and size of communities. The result is a climatic-sensitive modular architecture, respectful to the Amazonian way of life.
This project sets a unique precedent in a Peruvian public institution:  it relies on architecture for a massive educational program, restores dignity to a population that was historically relegated and offers a space for the balanced encounter between two apparently irreconcilable worlds.
Accompanying this architectural action, the exhibition immerses us in the Peruvian Amazon through visual actions that show the immeasurable mystery of its inhabitants and give a true " radiography " of the impenetrable lushness of the jungle.
The visitors will follow a ribbon printed with the faces of the Amazonian children by Musuk Nolte, and the footprint of the jungle, the “Amazogramas” created by Roberto Huarcaya.  This ribbon is suspended from a wooden canopy, in permanent equilibrium. Also suspended, a group of tables and chairs brought from the Amazonian schools, reveal the precarious and harsh conditions in which teachers and students interact today. The balance of the fragile and undulating ribbon compels us, as in the Amazon rainforest, to be responsible for preserving its balance.
Our Amazon Frontline / Pabellón de Perú en la Bienal de Venecia 2016. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu
OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE
Venue: Sale d’Armi, Arsenale
Participants: Ministry of Education – Plan Selva Project: Project leader: Elizabeth Añaños Team: Militza Carrillo, Miguel Chavez, Sebastián Cillóniz, Alvaro Echevarria, Gino Fernandez, Claudia Flores, Luis Miguel Hadzich, Daisuke Izumi, Alfonso Orbegoso, Carlos Tamayo, Alejandro Torero, Karel Van Oordt, José Luis Villanueva















PERU’S PAVILION: OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2016 
BY EQUIPO EDITORIAL








VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016: ARSENALE & GIARDINI ENTRY’S 
DESIGN BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA




VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016: ARSENALE & GIARDINI ENTRY’S 
DESIGN BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA 
May 28, 2016 - November 27, 2016
Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena has used over 90 tonnes of waste generated by the Venice Art Biennale 2015 to create two introductory rooms for this year's architecture event.
The Elemental founder, who curated the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, created installations in the first rooms of both the Arsenale and Central Pavilion venues using seven miles of scrap metal and 10,000-square-metres of plasterboard leftover from last year's Art Biennale.
"The opening halls of Biennale Architettura 2016 were built with 100 tons of waste material generated by the previous Biennale," said a statement from Aravena.
Lengths of crumpled metal channelling are suspended vertically from the ceiling like fringing in the first room of the Arsenale – a 300-metre-long building on the eastern side of Venice that once operated as the rope works of a shipyard, but is now used as one of the Biennale's two primary venues.
Similarly, the walls are covered by stacks of multi-tonal plasterboard that incorporate display shelves.
A similar installation is also hosted in the foyer of the Central Pavilion, which is located in the Giardini.
Venice's Art and Architecture Biennales take place on alternate years in the Arsenale and the Giardini.
Aravena's title for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 is Reporting From The Front – a theme intended to encourage architects to address some of the most important global issues. His star-studded list of contributors include Tadao Ando, Peter Zumthor, David Chipperfield and SANAA.
Wide-ranging interpretation of the theme has resulted in installations and exhibits dealing with economic crisis, housing, waste, migration and robotic construction.
You may visit to see more details from news of Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: Arsenale & Giardini Entry's Design by Alejandro Aravena to click below link from my blog.
https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2016/06/venice-architecture-biennale-2016.html














VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2016: ARSENALE & GIARDINI ENTRY’S 
DESIGN BY ALEJANDRO ARAVENA 












ALEJANDRO ARAVENA & PAOLO BARATTA




ALEJANDRO ARAVENA
Alejandro Aravena was born on June 22, 1967, in Santiago, Chile. He graduated as an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992. In 1994, he established his own practice, Alejandro Aravena Architects. Since 2001 he has been leading ELEMENTAL, a “Do Tank” focusing on projects of public interest and social impact, including housing, public space, infrastructure, and transportation.
ELEMENTAL has built work in Chile, The United States, Mexico, China and Switzerland. After the 2010 earthquake and tsunami that hit Chile, ELEMENTAL was called to work on the reconstruction of the city of Constitucion, Chile. Aravena's partners in ELEMENTAL are Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó and Diego Torres.
Alejandro Aravena is the Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016. He was a speaker at TED Global in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2014. He was a member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury from 2009 to 2015.
In 2010 he was named International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and identified as one of the 20 new heroes of the world by Monocle magazine. He is a Board Member of the Cities Program of the London School of Economics since 2011; Regional Advisory Board Member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; Board Member of the Swiss Holcim Foundation since 2013; Foundational Member of the Chilean Public Policies Society; and Leader of the Helsinki Design Lab for SITRA, the Finnish Government Innovation Fund. He was one of the 100 personalities contributing to the Rio +20 Global Summit in 2012.
Aravena was a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2000 and 2005); and also taught at Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (2005), Architectural Association in London (1999), and London School of Economics. He has held the ELEMENTAL Copec Chair at Universidad Católica de Chile since 2006.
Author of Los Hechos de la Arquitectura ( Architectural Facts, 1999 ), El Lugar de la Arquitectura ( The Place in/of Architecture, 2002 ) and Material de Arquitectura ( Architecture Matters, 2003 ). His work has been published in more than 50 countries, Electa published the monograph Alejandro Aravena; progettare e costruire ( Milan, 2007 ) and Toto published Alejandro Aravenathe Forces in Architecture ( Tokyo, 2011 ). Hatje-Cantz published the first monograph dedicated to the social housing projects of ELEMENTAL: Incremental Housing and Participatory Design Manual ( Berlin, 2012 ) launched at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia.
http://www.elementalchile.cl/en/