L'Arca International N° 109

November / December 2012

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The rabbit is new beef

 

The Venice Biennial of architecture opens every two years at the end of August. This is the world’s only major exhibition devoted uniquely to architecture, with the backing of the Italian government and outside aid from enlightened sponsors.

 

An important event because it takes place in a city which is, itself, synonymous with architecture and also because, at least in Europe, it is still the only public exhibition designed to take stock every two years of the very best in terms of quality and innovation that architectural design and construction has to offer around the world.

 

Unfortunately, in my opinion, once again this year mediocrity and provincialism holds sway here in Venice, as the Biennial Foundation has yet again appointed an architect-director (moreover, a foreigner) without taking into account specific merits and expertise in terms of organising major international events. Something which, of course, has already happened at previous editions.

 

I say provincialism due to the fact that the exhibition has been organised using Italian public funding and Italy has always been famous for the calibre of its experts in directing and organising major exhibitions, and so it should not have been difficult to appoint an Italian to represent our nation’s cultural image and expertise.

 

The press conference held in English only was exemplary of this provincialism I was referring to. Again in English, Chipperfield made an exemplary quote from somebody whose name I cannot remember, “if architecture is the mother of all the arts, then Italy is the mother’s mother”.

 

The exhibition, directed by David Chipperfield and entitled “Common Ground”, which we will be commenting on briefly through the words of critics and other experts, does not, overall, manage to help the general public in any way to understand what architecture is really like and all about at the moment.

 

Once again it is described like the product of some obscure mental workings influenced by such matters as university career-making and extreme social situations, without ever offering any ideas connected with the real possibilities offered by the modern-day world and the latest construction techniques, rather than linguistic theories of the past. Bland and conventionally hermetic installations, thousands of photographs on paper and thousands of slides using the kind of old-fashioned projectors for creating sequences of images like slideshows. And to think that we can now even watch football matches in 3D.

 

As I have already mentioned, this year’s edition is particular lacking in terms of expertise and experience, notably in the set design of the installations and means of communication to the general public.

 

We are living in an incredible period of globalisation in the development of new means of communication, which the Biennial appears to be completely oblivious to, expressing itself the same way it did 30 years ago.
 This is, perhaps, the thing that really highlights the mediocrity pervading this vast exhibition, both in the Arsenal and Gardens.

 

Fortunately there are, of course, some exceptions from just a few foreign countries out in the Gardens and the Italian Pavilion in the Arsenal, cleverly curated by Luca Zevi. A fine installation, which also explains the importance of patronage and the contribution of research into technology and materials provided by Italian industries.

 


It should not be very difficult to comprehend that architecture is not just the result of aesthetic architectural design, but the product of an array of skills such as building techniques, scientific research, the social and cultural situation of building sites, and the quality of clients, but this always seems the Venice Biennial always finds it hard to understand. We now eagerly await the 2014 Biennial.

 

Cesare Maria Casati