See the 2018 Architecture Biennale through the Instagrammers’ eyes

The images of the 16th International Exhibition of Freespace Architecture taken by the Instagrammers reveal unexpected aspects of the Venetian pavilions

Sometimes architecture raises the quality of people’s lives, it is generous towards nature and it helps us finding the recollection necessary to communicate with our more inner, spiritual part. Sometimes architecture and its emblematic places like stadiums or markets or public housing say everything about the character of a country, explain its history and its level of freedom. Sometimes architecture is necessary to generate activities and relationships, and when architecture is a commitment to the greater good it creates prosperity, beauty and harmony.

Libraries, roofs of antennas, openings to infinity, places for the spirit. With Freespace the curators Farrell and McNamara offer us a journey to the different countries of the world: a space for living, a space for meeting people, a space to create. The dynamic eye of an Instagrammer goes beyond the theme of the exhibition and offers us new interpretations of the pavilions at the Giardini and the Arsenale: this is the first of our itineraries for the 2018 Architecture Biennale.

Swiss Pavilion

During the award ceremony for the Golden Lion at the Swiss installation 240: House Tour, the team invited the public to re-interpretation of the domestic spaces: ‘Switzerland 240 invites you to reconsider the empty apartments. We want to show visitors an exaggerated architectural sensibility to observe their home from the perspective of a stranger. We want to open up new ways of reflecting on the role that the inner shell of the apartments plays in shaping up our lifes and our identities’.

Svizzera 240 – House Tour
Exhibitors: Alessandro Bosshard, Li Tavor, Matthew van der Ploeg, Ani Vihervaara E
Location: Giardini
Photos: Roberto Rosa @ r2photo

German Pavilion

United Germany has just turned 28, the same age of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989).
Unbuilding Walls questions the evolution of an important gap at the center of a new capital. From the division of the two Germanies the exhibition reasons on the barriers, the contemporary walls of separation from an extra-national point of view.

Unbuilding Walls
Curators: Marianne Birthler, Lars Krückeberg, Wolfram Putz, Thomas Willemeit
Location: Giardini
Photos: Roberto Rosa @ r2photo

 

Australian Pavilion

Architecture and vegetation converse in the Australia pavilion, where architects Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright collaborate with the artist Linda Tegg. A multi-sensory experience for the three installations: Grasslands Repair connects plants with the place. To keep the lush vegetation alive, a second installation has been created, Skylight, a support system with LED lighting fixtures. The third element of the exhibition is the fifteen projects that in the form of video – Ground – run through the walls of the pavilion to explain how architectural interventions affect the environment and human, economic and cultural life

Repair
Curators: Baracco + Wright Architects in collaboration with Linda Tegg
Exhibitors: Baracco + Wright Architects, Bower Studio, Collins and Turner, d_Lab, RMIT University, Gilby + Brewin Architecture, iredale pedersen hook, James Mather Delaney Design, Greenaway Architects, Kerstin Thompson Architects, Monash Architecture Laboratory, m3architecture with Bryan Hooper Architect P / L Neeson Murcutt Architects Pty with his barnsley design landscape architecture, NMBW Architecture Studio Lucinda Mclean, William Goodsir and RMIT University, Robin Boyd, Woods Bagot with Trident Architects and Oxigen.
Location: Giardini
Photos: Roberto Rosa @ r2photo

Nordic countries Pavilion (Finland – Norway – Sweden)

We are in the anthropogenic era where human beings shapes the world by changing the planet’s structure. Another Generosity investigates the relationship between nature and the built environment and questions how architecture can promote a symbiotic coexistence. An experience of the space with moments of debate, dialogue and awareness, identifying new forms of generosity between human beings and nature.

Another Generosity
Curators: Juulia Kauste, Eero Lundén
Exhibitors: Lundén Architecture Company
Location: Giardini
Photos: Rossana Viola @rossviola

 

Holland Pavilion

The Holland pavilion is an international research to encourage creativity and responsibility in the architectural field as a  response to the emerging automation technologies. The installation Work, Body, Leisure investigates different urban developments; it is a dressing room of a bright orange, open the lockers to access installations and stories.

Work, Body, Leisure
Exhibitors: Amal Alhaag, Beatriz Colomina, Marten Kuijpers & Victor Muñoz Sanz, Simone C. Niquille, Mark Wigley, Matthew Stewart & Jane Chew, Northscapes Collective (Hamed Khosravi, Taneha K. Bacchin & Filippo laFleur), Noam Toran, Giuditta Vendrame, Paolo Patelli, Liam Young, Florentijn Boddendijk and Remco de Jong, Giulio Squilacciotti.
Location: Giardini
Photos: Lorenzo Bettio @bettio

Pavilion Albania

The visitor becomes a spectator-protagonist in Zero Space, the installation of the Albanian Pavilion where cosmos and chaos merge, involving all the senses in a perception journey of the free space. The public is carried away by the sounds, the shadows, by the lack of perception of the Tirana limit, but at the same time people are free to create space and to change the physical configuration of the pavilion.

Zero Space
Curator: Elton Koritari
Exhibitor: VARKA Arkitekturë, commonsense.studio, Fablab Tirana
Location: Arsenale
Photos: Rossana Viola @rossviola

 

Argentinean Pavilion

A transversal dialogue between geographical and architectural spaces is the proposal of the Argentine pavilion with Vértigo Horizontal. A selection of art works built since 1983, the year in which democracy was restored in Argentina. The public is invited to view the Argentine territory as a collective construction, through a horizontal reading, always open, where each project reflects the link between architecture and society.

Vértigo Horizontal / Vertigine Orizzontale / Horizontal Vertigo
Curators / Exhibitors: Javier Mendiondo, Pablo Anzilutti, Franciso Garrido, Federico Cairoli
Location: Arsenale
Photos: Eleonora Milner @elemilner

Indonesian Pavilion

In the Indonesian Pavilion the production of an architectural space is simplified by using the ‘Emptiness’. The installation frees the architectural experience from the visual-centric and geometric approach, to overcome the substance itself of the spatial volumetric order: in this poetry of the void the public becomes the protagonist.

Sunyata: The Poetics of Emptiness
Curators: Ary Indrajanto, David Hutama, Adwitya Dimas Satria, Ardy Hartono Kurniawan, Jonathan Aditya Gahari, Johanes Adika Gahari
Location: Arsenale
Photos: Marta Formentello @itsmartaeffe

 

Conditions – Greenland

Surrounded by an infinite space, in the Arctic the conditions are very hard. The Ilulissat Icefjord glacier in Greenland is on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list and the Danish Dorte Mandrup Icefjord Center will serve as a meeting place for climate scientists and climate-conscious governments.

The climate and the immensity of the space have inspired the immersive installation at the Corderie dell’Arsenale that invites visitors to experience the unique conditions of Greenland. Beyond the snow, the gusts of wind, the light that keeps changing in the absence of any reference points, what is striking it is the poetry of a place where nature is so powerful and endless.

Conditions
Exhibitors: Dorte Mandrup
Location: Arsenale
Photos: Rossana Viola @rossviola

United Arab Emirates Pavilion

During the opening of the Pavilion of the Arab Emirates Lifescapes Beyond Bigness, the Instagrammers met the curators and architects. With a satisfying exchange of photos and information, they were the first to experience the meeting space at the centre of the pavilion, a typical environment of Arab houses that encourages conversations and events. With its different areas, subdivided by translucent sand and resin walls – a petrochemical product – the project contemplates the social dynamics of a country with a rapid urbanization, where the great city centres are built and designed to be travelled around by car; in here the architecture of public spaces can improve people’s lives and contribute to a harmonious development of the country.

Lifescapes Beyond Bigness
Curator: Khaled Alawadi, Jawaher Al-Sudairy, Sumaya Al-Solaiman
Exhibitors: Abdulrahman Gazzaz, Turki Gazzaz
Location: Arsenale
Photos: Courtesy of Pavilion of Saudi Arabia / Misk Art Institute and Eleonora Milner @elemilner

 

Pavilion Croatia

Cloud Pergola / The Architecture of Hospitality is a site-specific collaborative environment that interprets the Freespace theme transforming the traditional pergola, a zone of hospitality belonging to the Mediterranean cultural context, into an installation that breaks the boundaries of architecture, art, engineering, robotized manufacturing and computational models. In the pergola space the boundaries lose their border role to form a tissue of osmotic exchange. The purpose is to let the public understand that the action of space extends beyond human intentionality.

Cloud Pergola / The Architecture of Hospitality
Curator: Bruno JuričićExhibitor: Alisa Andrašek, Vlatka Horvat, Bruno Juričić, Maja Kuzmanović
Location: Arsenale
Photos: Marta Formentello @itsmartaeffe

 

Pavilion Kosovo

The Cityiseverywhere traces the history of the nineties in Kosovo, when citizens’ public services were confined to private homes on the outskirts of the city. The interpenetration of public and private, internal and external space, intimate and social, creates a transformation. Represented by hundreds of thousands of satellite dishes, the house becomes a metaphor of the city. The houses, quoting Foucault, are the ‘places where things found their stable and secure land’ in a period of uncertainty, violence and instability for Kosovo.

The Cityiseverywhere
Curator / Exhibitor: Eliza Hoxha
Location: Arsenale
Photo: Rossana Viola @rossviola

The cover photo is by Roberto Rosa @ r2photo and the model is Alessia Peroni @havebeento_ of Veneziadavivere.