For their fifth consecutive participation at the Venice Biennale, Luxembourg chose the authors of their pavilion through an open competition entitled Futura Bold – a term that illustrates the aim of this small European coutry to position itself through a project that analyzes and discusses the contemporary built environment on a national, european and global scale.

The chosen project is Post-City by Yi-der Chou, Radim Louda and Philippe Nathan. This young team assumed a sensitive approach to analysis of existing forces of Luxembourg’s built environment. They define their project as an attitude towards the city rather than an urban proposal.

Post—City proposes to link five specific environments of contemporary Luxembourg. Considered by the authors to be equally important, Belval, Berchem, Ingeldorf, Kirchberg and Schengen are connected by a dense corridor of urban scenes. Made of an extremely pragmatic infrastructure and an accumulation of existing and fictional built situations, Post-City acts as a visual concentration of urban realities and potentials. As a natural consequence of the process, a triangular urban fabric with a connected heart cuts through Luxembourg, creating, as a leftover, an undefined landscape, a territory of all possibilities.

The contribution, which is staged at an apartment at the Ca’ del Duca on the Grand Canal in the city centre, is composed of a plaster model installation which is being produced in collaboration with Vincent de Rijk (Rotterdam), five artworks/illustrations in DIN A0 format drawn by Eva le Roi (Brussels) and a book, for which Manuela Dechamps Otamendi (Brussels) did the layout and graphic design and Maxime Delvaux (Brussels) the photography. The latter does not only serve as a guidebook for the exhibition, but does also and foremost illustrate and open up new questions and discussions, and this through the intervention of writers, critics, researchers and architects.

We talked to Radim Louda, one of the pavilion’s authors. This young Belgium architect with an international experience answered several questions regarding the project and the exhibition concepts.

 CAB: We’ve read about the project in the Press release. We especially like the 7 situations and their illustrations. They present interesting futuristic ways of creating synergies of seemingly disparate spaces and programs. How much have you drawn from the actual urban reality of Luxembourg to create these scenarios? Are some of these synergies already present on site?

RL: First of all, Post-City should be consider as an attempt to investigate the potentials of the already present forces of the environment through a sensitive approach. We started by choosing 5 specific places that seemed to us to be representative of a certain reality of the country. With a photographer (Maxime Delvaux/354 photographers) we went to investigate the places ‘in-situ’. Some of the tensions or synergies that you can find in the scenarios are actually a blow-up or exageration of the reality. Luxembourg could be considered as a so-called ‘In-between city’ (confer. Thomas Sieverts), a place that doesn’t have either a straight urban or rural condition. This unplanned (r)urban state of the country leads to situations that are too often unconsidered or neglected by architects, for us it was important to explore them and consider them as our primary working material.

From those 5 existing situations, we have chosen 19 building typologies (the pavilion, the gas station, the office tower…) that compose those built environments. The scenarios are the consequence of a shift of those typologies in order to create new potential (r)urban dynamics.

CAB: Post-City proposes a network of connections between 5 locations in Luxembourg that each have their own specific character and importance for the country’s development. If we assume these connections are an infrastructure for future development, what do you think would happen to the left-over space, this ‘territory of all possibilities’?

RL: We decided to concentrate our energy in ‘an infrastructure for future development’ for two reasons. The first one is simply a practical one. If you want to approach the complexity of a territory you have to use simplified means. By concentrating the potentialities and realities of Luxembourg in this strip we were able to accentuate the narrative and to point out specific conditions and most of all the rough and direct connections between them. The second point leads us to the consideration of the leftover space, the ‘territory of all possibilities’. As young architects we have learned the failure of big urban gestures and planifications. At the same time we can not imagine to leave the the (r)urban developments without any directions or considerations about their future. In this sense, we wanted to develop a double discourse. The situations that we show in the Post-city strip are coming from specific Luxembourgish conditions but at the same time are totally retransposable in other european countries. The european map with the triangular net drawn by Eva le Roi, tries to show the repetition and the generic condition of such territories in the globalized Europe. The leftover or negative space created acts as a necessary space for everything that wants, should or have to escape from the condition of the contemporary global ‘city’. It’s upon to you to decide what you want to put in it, we prefer to leave it as it is, ‘a territory of all possibilities’.

CAB: The Biennale exhibition contains a physical model, 5 illustrations and a book. Could you explain how each of these are connected to the project and why are they important?

RL: With Post-city we try to ‘approach’ our contemporary built environment. We try to raise questions more than give answers. In this sense, we found important to surround the complexity of the territory by different means. Even though they are considered as of the same importance they propose different approaches to the territory. The physical condition of the model shows in a direct way the connections between the typologies, a new reality is shown. The illustrations made by Eva le Roi insist on the relations between the different scales, a zoom-out serie shows the approach that we had. We considered the territory as well in its domestic character as in its relationship to the global scale. The book is made in 3 parts, one shows the typologies and the pictures of the exisiting environments, the second one explain the scenarios that we created. For the third part we asked to different contributors to write about Post-city, a compilation of texts from renowned architects as from young ones creates a corpus that shows different points of views and creates in itself its own narration about the subject. Each ‘piece’ should be considered as well as a ‘tool’ during the process as the ‘final product’ of it.

CAB: How much did the site itself – the apartment at the Ca’ del Duca – inform the exhibition content and setup?

RL: The Ca’ Del Duca apartment is a very specific site. Situated in front of the Grande Canale, the apartment has a real historical and at the same time domestic feeling. Introducing an installation that talks about the country scale in an apartment created really unexpected but powerfull relations. The model ‘cuts through’ five rooms. Each of the 5 existing situations has its own room, its own specific condition. The impact of the context on a installation that tries to show the potential of the generic and existing conditions appeared to us as really exciting.

CAB: Did u get any feedback from the visitors of the Biennale? What was their reaction to the exhibition and the Post-City project?

RL: The aim of Post-city was to raise questions on different levels to different people. The Biennale has the chance to get the visitor ‘lambda’ as well as specialized people from the field. For now on we had a really good feedback from both. The installation works on different levels. We’ve seen people getting really excited by the ‘beauty’ or ‘sharpness’ of the model, the illustrations and the book and then, by taking time, getting really in to the depth and start to debate. I have to say that we are pretty glad with people reactions. We got proposals to exhibit the project in other cities in Europe, which actually is interesting in the sense that we consider Post-city not only as a specific project for Luxembourg but also as a broader reflexion about the contemporary city conditions.

Photo: 354photographers, Philippe Nathan, Manuela Dechamps Otamendi

Illustrations: Eva le Roi

© Fondation de l’ Architecture et de l Ingenierie, Luxembourg 2012 www.fondarch.lu

Grafton Architects from Dublin, Ireland, received the Silver Lion award at this year’s Venice architecture Biennale, for their impressive presentation of the project for a university campus in Lima, Peru. The Silver Lion is awarded to emerging architects who raise expectations, and it is the first time a practice from Ireland won this prestigious award.

Presenting their architecture as a “new geography”, the Dublin-based office uses this exhibition to explore characteristic historical examples of architecture merging with the landscape, as well as the work of Brazilian architect Paolo Mendes da Rocha, in order to better approach their first project in South America – a university campus in Lima, Peru.

The director of this year’s Biennale, David Chipperfield, who chose the topic “Common Ground”, placed the Grafton Architects exhibition as central in the main Giardini pavilion. The jury president, Dutch architect Wiel Arets,  said that this exhibition showcases on various levels the conceptual and spatial qualities and potentials of the way Grafton Architects explore and present the urban landscape.

In one part of the exhibition Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, founders of Grafton Architects, explore the surprising similarities between the Skellig Michael convent in Ireland and the Peruvian city of Machu Picchu. Despite the fact that these two places are separated by a huge physical distance and were created in disparate times, there is a common line that connects them. In both examples the intimate man-made spaces are in perfect harmony with their impressive natural surrounding and, as expressed by the exhibition authors, they tell the same tale.

The exhibition topic is transfered from the past into the present day, and the comparison of distant (yet very near) worlds is repeated in the second part, through the dialogue McNamara and Farrell started with the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha for the purpose of this Biennale.

Grafton Architects recently won a competition for a university campus in Lima, Peru, when they realized that the analysis of da Rocha’s works will improve their knowledge of building tradition and the cultural context of the local site and climate. The analysis features the Serra Duorada stadium designed by the Pritzker Award winner da Rocha in 1973. Using da Rocha’s idea of architecture as a “new geography” and the idea of the university as a “knowledge arena”, Grafton Architects manage to transform infrastructure into an urban landscape. By not treating the architecture as an isolated building, they show a new quality of the inevitable transformations of urban landscape – its complete remodeling.

Probably the biggest importance of this exhibition is the fact that it unequivocally demonstrates how openness to influences is the beginning and pre-requisite to quality architecture. In this sense, Grafton Architects present an excellent answer to the Biennale topic “Common Ground”.

Photo: Miloš Mirosavić

The Polish pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice received an honorable mention from the jury in the category of national pavilions. Curator Michał Libera, pavilion’s author Katarzyne Krakowiak,  sound designer Ralf Meinz and acoustic engineer Andrzej Kłosak created an architeture of sound. The seemingly empty space of the pavilion is actually filled with sounds, which also affected the architecture of the pavilion itself.

Michał Libera explains: “Architecture is built of sound. It is what makes the diffusion of sound possible—absorbing, filtering, and transferring it, amplifying some of its components at the expense of others. Enclosed spaces are room tones, while niches are specific echoes. The ventilation and heating systems are a quiet yet constant noise, whereas windows and walls are the filtered sounds of street bustle, the buzzing of cicadas, or neighbor’s living rooms. We live, work and play in gigantic complexes of sounds—their distribution is what we call architecture.”

Katarzyna Krakowiak’s sound sculpture Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers is the amplification of the Polish Pavilion as a listening-system. Rather than creating a new space, the artist’s proposal for the Architecture Biennale takes an empirical turn, taking the existing interior as its point of departure, with all its deficiencies and imperfections guiding the work. The art is in the “naked building”—presented through sculpture as a complex sonic process that generates, transforms, and transmits sound.

Studies in the natural acoustics of the Polish Pavilion offer several ways to perform the amplification process. Architectural micro-deformations of the building’s walls and floor, the renovation of the ventilation system, and reinforcement of the resonant frequencies serve to bring this latent acoustic experience to the fore.

None of the sounds in the Pavilion are alien to the building. They are all always already there. Yet, once amplified, the familiar ambient sounds become alien themselves. Beyond the visual and the material, they compel us to hear what was always there—the others just outside the walls. Hence, the real subject of the work is essentially the entire architectural complex that is home to four other pavilions: Egypt, Romania, Serbia, and Venice.

Photo: Miloš Mirosavić, Diana Pereira, © Zacheta

Drawing: © Katarzyna Krakowiak

Álvaro Siza Vieira has been chosen to be the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – Common Ground. The decision is made by the Board of la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, under Director David Chipperfield’s proposal, with the following motivation:

“It is difficult to think of a contemporary architect who has maintained such a consistent presence within the profession as Álvaro Siza. That this presence is maintained by an architect that lives and works at the extreme Atlantic margin of Europe only serves to emphasise his authority and his status.”

“Since the early appreciation of the Boa Nova restaurant and the swimming pools at Leca de Palmeira and a reputation confirmed by the early houses, Siza has maintained a unique position in the architectural galaxy. This position is full of paradox. Siza has upheld a consistent production of works at the highest level, yet without the slightest hint of the overt professionalism and promotion that has become part of the contemporary architect’s machinery. Apparently running in the opposite direction to the rest of the profession he always seems to be out in front, seemingly untainted and undaunted by the practical and intellectual challenges he sets himself.”

“Secured by his isolated location, he exudes worldly wisdom. Experimenting with forms of extreme geometry he manages to produce buildings of great rigor. Developing an architectural language that is uniquely his, he seems to speak to all of us. While his work exudes the security of judgment, it is clearly intensified through cautious reflection. While we are dazzled by the lightness of his buildings, we feel the seriousness of their substance.”

Alvaro Siza designed his structure  in the gardens of the Arsenale, right next to the pavilion by Eduardo Soto de Moura. This follows the longtime collaboration of the two Portuguese masters.

Siza’s pavilion establishes a relationship with a different aspect of Venice – that of the dense urban environment. It consists of a series of bright red walls amongst the trees and plants of the garden designed for the 12th Biennale in 2012 by Piet Oudolf.

Three faceted walls create  two intimate spaces in the middle of the garden,  a tribute to the compact urban tissue of Venice, which frames particular views of the exteriors of the Arsenale.

Siza’s piece also features a cantilevered canopy that shades visitors as they leave.

Siza’s pavilion evokes the human scale of the streets of Venice, and frames and makes new settings for the trees and planting of the Giardino delle Vergini.

Photo: Miloš Mirosavić, Ivana Popović

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

The exhibition POSSIBLE GREENLAND headed by the Danish Architecture Centre and curated by Minik Rosing & Nord Architects aims to give an insight into Greenland as a major political, cultural and business force in a globalized world. The exhibition at the Danish Pavilion provides a spectacular experience of ‘Greenlandness’ through images, film and artifacts. Representing central perspectives, including Cultivating, Connecting, Inhabiting, and Migrating, POSSIBLE GREENLAND explores the country’s main challenges and opportunities.

BIG in collaboration with TENU present Connecting Greenland: AIR+PORT as a part of the exhibition “POSSIBLE GREENLAND” at the Danish Pavilion, exploring the potentials and challenges that Greenland is facing as the country gains global attention.

Greenland’s political agenda is currently dominated by the global interest in its natural resources suggesting an international accessible airport in Nuuk and the upgrading of the capital’s industrial harbor. The current inefficient domestic aviation system together with the eruption of resources and impacts of climate change place Greenland uniquely in the center of the future maritime world map. Greenland Transport Commission identified the island of Angisunnguaq, south of Nuuk as a potential new epicenter for connecting Greenland.

Rather than seeing these major infrastructural developments as two separate investments, BIG envisions a symbiotic relationship between the two transportation systems air + port. Instead of creating a new mono programmatic piece of public infrastructure the project explores the potential mix of programmatic molecules creating a new DNA for efficient transportation and vibrant public programs benefitting not only Nuuk, but the country as a whole.

“Greenland has the potential to reposition itself from the periphery to the center of the major world economies of Europe, Asia and America. Greenlanders today are purely dependent on air traffic for domestic commutes but almost crippled by empty flights and staggering prices. The new Air+Port will become a transit hub between Europe and America – increasing potential transit tourism and cutting costs for the local commuters. By overlapping the water and airways in the Air+Port we seek to resolve a domestic challenge with a global investment. A piece of global infrastructure with a positive social side effect – Social Infrastructure.” Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.