For the first time ever, the Vatican was represented at the 2018 Venice Architecture bienniale. On the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, an oasis of tranquillity just one vaporetto stop from San Marco square, ten architects from various countries were invited to build their idea of what a modern-day chapel could be.
The Dutch pavilion at this year’s Architecture biennale in Venice was designed by The New Institute to look like a locker room, with bright orange doors that you could open to discover the secrets within. The theme was the future of work, now that everything, even sex, is being automated. In the main exhibition hall, Crimson created a thoughtful and attractive exhibition about the impact of migration on cities.
For its entry to this year’s Architecture biennale in Venice, citizens of Tirana lent their doors – a symbol of the country’s hope that the EU will open its doors to Albania. I spoke to Tirana’s mayor, the fireball Erion Veliaj, about his plans for the city and the role he sees for contemporary architecture in making the city more liveable.
David Chipperfield called the 2012 edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale which he curated ‘Common Ground’. It was a call to his fellow architects to build for the common good rather than creating costly icons. At a panel at the Biennale Harvard’s Rahul Mehotra echoed his sentiments when he said: “Impatient capital is running the world and architecture has become a slave to it.” In this article for the American online magazine Next City Tracy discusses how in many places ordinary citizens are now bypassing professional architects and planners and are taking the lead in shaping their own environment.
With beer, Latin food, loud music and salsa dancing, Urban Think Tank’s Venezuelan bar was of course the hottest venue at the 2012 Architecture Biennale, which closes this weekend. Architecture’s bad boys Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, together with co-curators Justin McGuirk and photographer Iwan Baan, won the Golden Lion for the Biennale’s best project with their portrait of Torre David, a ‘vertical slum’ in downtown Caracas. Read the article…