Russian Pavilion at the 13th edition of Venice Biennale is awarded with a Special Mention, in the category of national pavilions. Exhibition was curated and designed by Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, team responsible for exhibition Russia’s Factory – which took place two years ago, also in this pavilion.

Awarded pavilion is divided into two parts, ‘i-city’ and ‘i-land’  contrasting Russia’s past and future, in a highly interactive and subtle way.

Exhibition called secret country ‘i-land’, that’s presented on the ground floor, addresses Russia’s past – curators took as their subject the secret settlements formed during the cold-war period from 1945 until 1989.  More than 60 gated towns and cities were created in the Soviet Union for scientific and technological research. The existence of these cities was kept secret. They were everywhere in the country, and yet it was as if they did not exist. The people who worked within were isolated from society and were sometimes, for the sake of secrecy, given new identities. These cities and their inhabitants were invisible except to the watchful eyes of the secret service.

Addressing the future is the exhibition ‘i-city,’ on the upstairs level, that consists of three rooms with a grid of QR codes wrapping the walls, floors and ceilings – all decoding as information about the Skolkovo project, a new city near Moscow, which promotes architectural and technological innovations in Russian urbanism.

The new city – the Skolkovo innovation centre – is an instrument for transforming science after the end of the Cold war. This is an open city which is being created by some of the world’s most acknowledged architects  including David Chipperfield, Mohsen Mostafavi, OMA, SANAA, Herzog & de Meuron, etc.

This project already involves some of the most important scientific centres in the world and will include a new university and homes for more than 500 firms working in distinct fields of science – IT, biomedical research, nuclear research, energy, and space technology.

Offering probably the best infrastructure for development of science, creators of Skolkovo are hoping to attract some of the world’s advanced scientists.

Photo: Miloš Mirosavić, Ivana Popović, Diana Pereira