Where are they now? Number 13

MA A+U graduate Justina Job was recently in Venice for the presentation of a group project from the University of East London 'A portal between two cities: enhancing the dialogue between Venice and London' which is installed in the Doge's Palace during this year's Architecture Biennale. Who should drop by to admire the students' work but Charles Jencks? The eminent architectural figure is pictured below with Justina and other members of the team.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends "Venice Architecture Biennale 2014"

Director of the 14th Architecture Biennale Rem Koolhaas writes about the theme ABSORBING MODERNITY 1914-2014

"In 1914, it made sense to talk about a “Chinese” architecture, a “Swiss” architecture, an “Indian” architecture… One hundred years later, under the influence of wars, diverse political regimes, different states of development, national and international architectural movements, individual talents, friendships, random personal trajectories, and technological developments, architectures that were once specific and local have become seemingly interchangeable and global. Has national identity been sacrificed to modernity?

Participating countries will engage a single theme – Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 – and will show, each in their own way, the process of the erasure of national characteristics in favor of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language and a single repertoire of typologies. But the transition to what seems like a universal architectural language is a more complex process than we typically recognize, involving significant encounters between cultures, technical inventions, and hidden ways of remaining “national.” In a time of ubiquitous google research and the flattening of cultural memory, it is crucial for the future of architecture to resurrect and expose these narratives.

By telling the history of the last 100 years cumulatively, the exhibitions in the National Pavilions will generate a global overview of architecture’s evolution into a single, modern aesthetic, and at the same time uncover within globalization the survival of unique national features and mentalities that continue to exist and flourish even as international collaboration and exchange intensify…"

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'HERITAGE AND ARCHITECTURE OF LANDSCAPE UNDER PRODUCTION'

Heritage and Architecture of Urban Landscape under Production 16-28 September 2013 Venice

This workshop will involve faculty and students from the Universita IUAV di Venezia, Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Granada and Manchester School of Architecture. The programme offers an intensive design workshop focused on the redevelopment of sites of production, which are recognizable for the architectural and landscaping value built-in urban context. Design in particular will face the problems of complex redevelopment of historical and cultural interest related to water landscapes in a space frame defined by whether out-dated productive processes, or by ancient uses which have left unresolved spaces in the city, but with significant potential. The recognisability of places of cultural value and of vital importance for the transformation of the landscape will place an intensive workshop that will produce integrated and sustainable design solutions in the requalification of landscapes of post-production. The need to define improvement processes that include and protect the architectural and landscape value of an organizing structure that recognizes places built by particular technical forms of production, imposes nowadays reinterpreting capacity with proper and sustainable programmes in which truths prefiguring a urban or territorial role. The design for these subjects should express its -inclusive aptitude and of innovation aimed at giving quality to strategic transformations. The areas of study and project related analysis are linked to urban and quality contexts. In particular it will be the subject of study and reuse project, those interstitial spaces and buildings still to be recovered of the Arsenale (the Old Shipyard) of Venice, either in relation to the city, as to those parts occupied by the Navy, or the spaces and activities of the Biennale and the Magistrato alle Acque as well as the lagoon landscape. The students participating in the Programme will face the problems of design in areas heavily transformed throughout the history and with considerable cultural value. The learning experience will investigate different ways to reuse the architectural heritage and the cultural resources correlated to productive activities that identify parts of the city and landscape. The ground of industrial post-production is today a significant power in the transformation of territory, highlighting how nature and culture have achieved in their different outcomes a formal balance strongly identified, although with contradictions and conflicts, to which the integrated project can give adequate interpretation for the achievement of a sustainable regeneration. The workshop will end with a travelling exhibition among the different Universities in the consortium. In that manner the programme aims to make a contribution to the definition of new strategies of recovery and reuse of architecture and post-production landscapes. In particular, it will offer the results to the attention of the Biennale of Architecture, in order to open the international participation of Intensive Programme for a direct comparison with the issues faced by the international exhibition that will take place in 2014. The volume that will collect the results and theoretical contributions, provided by the Erasmus intensive programme and the various dissemination actions, will also be published in digital version by August 2014. IUAV announcement here This project follows on from the international workshop ARCHAEOLOGY'S PLACES AND CONTEMPORARY USES

Architecture + Urbanism recommends "Common Ground: 13th Venice Architecture Biennale"

29 August - 25 November 2012 Venice

          “The emphasis of the 2012 Biennale – explains Director David Chipperfield – is on what we have in common. Above all, the ambition of Common Ground is to reassert the existence of an architectural culture, made up not just of singular talents but a rich continuity of diverse ideas united in a common history, common ambitions, common predicaments and ideals. We began with a desire to emphasise shared ideas over individual authorship, and realized that this required us to initiate dialogues rather simply make a selection of individuals. We began by asking a limited group of architects to develop ideas that might lead to further invitations: everyone was asked to propose a project along with a dialogue that reacted to the theme and showed architecture in its context of influence and affinity, history and language, city and culture.
The final list of contributors demonstrates a rich culture of difference rather than a selection of edited and promoted positions. We want to emphasise the common ground that the profession shares, notwithstanding the apparent diversity of today’s architectural production. The sharing of differences is critical to the idea of an architectural culture.”
 
          “The role of the architect – clarifies Chipperfield - is at best one of critical compliance. Architects can only operate through the mechanisms that commission them and which regulate their efforts. Our ideas are dependent on and validated by the reaction of society. This relationship is not only practical but concerns the very meaning of our work. In the increasingly complex confrontation between the commercial motivations of development and our persistent desire for a humane environment there seems to be little dialogue. If architecture is to be more than the privileged, exceptional moments of our built world, we must find a more engaged collaboration of talents and resources. Common Ground invites us to consider how these shared perceptions, concerns and expectations may be better directed.”


A short film of the 2008 Biennale is available here, and a brief comment on the 2010 Biennale is available here.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends: Villa Frankenstein

The current exhibition at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale curated by muf is well worth exploring. Read more about it here.