Inter/Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future at the Venice Biennale 2012

This was originally on the Venice Blog for Building Design, you can see it on BDonline.

Opposite the entrance of the Arsenale, is a collateral exhibition which is just as worthy of attention. Titled Inter Cities/ Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future, the space shows twelve proposals, both real and speculative, for South East Kowloon in Hong Kong. Curated by The Oval Partnership, the exhibition seeks to find new ways of maintaining the commercial momentum which has so far defined the city, while, at the same time, engaging it’s citizens into more sustainable and diverse ways of living. The curators, with a team including founding director Chris Law and Bartlett teaching fellow Jonathan Pile, see themselves as ‘ghostwriters’, threading stories from the past, present and future, as a way of re-framing and re-contextualising both existing and new work. The latter director probably explains the strong presence of work from former Bartlett students within the exhibition.

The redevelopment of South East Kowloon was made feasible with the closure of the Kai Tak Airport in 1998. Since then, the area around the former international airport has lost some of its vibrancy, with an abandoned manufacturing industry and a huge left over stock of industrial buildings. At the same time, the traditional Central Business District (CBD) of Hong Kong can no longer keep up with the demand of the increasing numbers of multi-national companies setting foot in the city. The government have set the wheels in motion to facilitate the transformation of Kowloon East into an attractive alternative CBD of Hong Kong.

Following this transformation, the exhibition sets out the official, large-scale proposals for South East Kowloon, and also the smaller, unofficial urban guerilla activities started by the local residents. These are all spread out in the former naval warehouse on spray-painted green scaffolding that holds intricate models and projects videos from local citizens and Hong Kong architects.

Outside the exhibition space, in the forecourt, is a piece by HK Farm/ HK Honey, two organisations of aspiring farmers, beekeepers and artists. You are immediately welcomed into an aromatic enclave of local plants grown in movable wooden planters, representing the work HK Farm do in terms of rooftop farming and urban agriculture in the city.

Inside, a remarkable model, ‘Imaginary Kai Tak’, stands within the green scaffolding in all its Bartlett glory. It is by CAVE, a young Hong Kong-based architectural practice established in 2011 by three graduates from the Bartlett, and depicts a speculative future Kai Tak city. Here, among the glass test tubes, candy pink wind turbines and bubble-like clouds are six narratives that developed into six device systems. The young architects really seem to have let their imagination run wild, with an ‘Octopus Motor Cotton Mill’, with no sign of cotton being made, and a ‘Kowloon Dock Shipyard’, again, with no sound of boats being repaired. I don’t particularly understand its subtle nuances, but this is the kind of imagination that could sustain the aim of making Hong Kong more diverse and less commercial. Another beautiful model came from the Oval Partnership, titled ‘The Shared Sky’, a bamboo structure that occupies the air zone above existing tower blocks which is free to all residents of Hong Kong.

The exhibition, in essence, is all about looking at the cracks and hidden crevices, above, below and between the buildings of the city. Without these semi-legal, unofficial and unplanned approaches, a city can become sterile and boring. As the curators say, these proposals, “with a little water, might flower into a rich meadow”.

Images my own

My Top Ten at the Venice Biennale 2012

For those yet to venture to the Venice Architecture Biennale this year, here's a list of my top ten things not to miss (in no particular order).

1. Pasticcio by Caruso St John room, Central Pavilion, Giardini

Pasticcio draws together a group of seven contemporary European architects outside of the mainstream, whose practice is unusually engaged with the language and the history of architecture, both recent and ancient. I like how the work, old and new, John Soane to Caruso St John, fit in with eachother, establishing a common ground with an architecture before modernism. 

2. Villa Rotunda Redux by FAT Architecture, Arsenale

FAT's installation, the Museum of Copying, explores the idea of the copy in architecture as an important, positive and often surreal phenomenon. The museum centres around FAT's own installation, The Villa Rotunda Redux, a 5m high re-make of Palladio's Villa Rotunda. There is also a photocopy machine so visitors can make their own Book of Copies, from a library of volumes prepared by invited architects each of whom have assembled photocopies relating to a thematic building typology. Accompanying this is Ines Weizman's 'Repeat Yourself', an interesting timeline of the legal disputes surrounding the ownership of Adolf Loos' archive and work.

3. Light Houses, Nordic Pavilion

This year, Sweden, Norway and Finland celebrated 50 years of the Sverre Fehn-designed Nordic Pavilion, which was inaugurated in 1962 with the original concept of bringing the Nordic Light to Venice. The exhibition, playing on this theme, is titled Light Houses and shows the work of thirty-two young architects born after the year of 1962­- eleven from Finland and Sweden, and ten from Norway- who have presented thirty-two small conceptual ‘houses’. Each participant’s installation responds to the spatial and atmospheric qualities of the Pavilion, while also being reflective of the architect’s own design principles. The result is simple, highly tactile and very Scandinavian.

4. Possible Greenland, Danish Pavilion

A comprehensive look at the future of Greenland, suggesting not just the problems, but some possible solutions, including a new airport designed by Bjarke Ingels. 

5. Japanese Pavilion

The Japanese Pavilion, curated by Toyo Ito, recently won the Golden Lion Award for Best Pavilion. The exhibition presents alternative housing concepts for the homes that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Image: Dezeen

6. Inter Cities/ Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future

Opposite the entrance of the Arsenale, is a collateral exhibition which is just as worthy of attention. Titled Inter Cities/ Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future, the space shows twelve proposals, both real and speculative, for South East Kowloon in Hong Kong. Inside, a remarkable model, ‘Imaginary Kai Tak’, stands within the green scaffolding in all its Bartlett glory. It is by CAVE, a young Hong Kong-based architectural practice established in 2011 by three graduates from the Bartlett, and depicts a speculative future Kai Tak city. Here, among the glass test tubes, candy pink wind turbines and bubble-like clouds are six narratives that developed into six device systems.   

7. Gort Scott sketches, Arsenale

This was one of my favourite pieces in the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale this year. The sketches by Fiona Scott of Gort Scott are beautiful for their subtle nuances and expressive penwork, you could practically spend hours discovering the unseen world behind the front facades of London's high streets.

8. O'Donnell and Tuomey, Arsenale

Irish architects, O'Donnell and Tuomey, have created 'Vessel', a stacked timber construction which is a material response to the ubiquitous brick walls of the Arsenale. 

9. Aldo Rossi exhibition 

In an exhibition space designed and installed by Renzo Piano, on the southern most tip of the Dorsoduro, and adjacent to former boating warehouses, is a small but perfectly formed exhibition on Milanese architect Aldo Rossi. For the duration of the Biennale, the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova is showcasing sixteen theatre projects by the architect, from the early seventies to the late nineties. Among the highlights is the Teatro de Mondo from 1979, complete with an almost life-size blue and yellow construction of the theatre.

10. Formations, Australian Pavilion

This year's australian pavilion, titled 'Formations: New Practices in Australian Architecture' was curated by Anthony Burke, Gerard Reinmuth and TOKO Concept Design. Six young architectural practices which regularly test the accepted perspectives of the profession are showcasing what it takes to become an architect. Look out for the foosball tables. 

Images my own unless otherwise specified

Beautiful sketches from Gort Scott at the Venice Biennale

This was one of my favourite pieces in the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale this year. The sketches are beautiful for their subtle nuances and expressive penwork, you could practically spend hours discovering the unseen world behind the front facades of London's high streets. This piece is especially worthy of note because of the recent debate surrounding a renewed recognition of the importance of our high streets, with Boris's recent campaign High Street 2012 and last year's riots.  Here is what the architects, Gort Scott said about it;

"We never inhabit all of the city at the same time, and when we think generally about a place like London we choose how we conceptualise it. In this exhibit, two contrasting understandings of London are presented, one concerned with the skyline and London's status as world city, the other with the infinitesimal detail of the street.
The Shard, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, is the tallest building in Europe and is promoted as evidence of a visionary, future-facing city. Robert McKillop's film observes its striking effect in the sky from across London. Fiona Scott of Gort Scott Architects, in contrast, depicts the high street at the foot of the shard in meticulous detail through perspective sketches, cherishing the fine urban grain that is inevitably absent from large commercial developments."

Images my own

13th Venice Architecture Biennale 2012- Aldo Rossi Exhibition

For the past week I have been in Venice for the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, working for the British Council on the British Pavilion, Venice Takeaway, and doing a few posts for Building Design. Hence the lack of attention to this blog, but I do have plenty of blog posts to be catching up with, sharing with you my favourite bits from the Arsenale and Giardini over the next few days.

Below is a blog post I did for BD on an Aldo Rossi exhibition. You can see the post here on the Venice Blog on bdonline, or if you are a subscriber you can look at this week's Digital Edition of the magazine here.

Aldo Rossi, Image: Anni Settanta

In an exhibition space designed and installed by Renzo Piano, on the southern most tip of the Dorsoduro, and adjacent to former boating warehouses, is a small but perfectly formed exhibition on Milanese architect Aldo Rossi. For the duration of the Biennale, the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova is showcasing sixteen theatre projects by the architect, from the early seventies to the late nineties. Enter a grey wooden door, and you are enveloped by a similarly grey wooden landscape, associated with the maritime constructions of its neighbours, and neatly sloping up to the back of the hulled out warehouse.

Intersected by giant 1:5 Rossi models, the exhibition space is a theatrical stage set in itself. Among the highlights is the Teatro de Mondo from 1979, complete with an almost life-size blue and yellow construction of the theatre. Rossi said of the lighthouse-like form, inspired by the architecture of Venice and the black wood of the gondolas, ‘Its structure could only be wood…it is the house of light for those observing and being observed’. It is just a shame that the visitor to the exhibition could not step into the model themselves, to peer in and out of the Wendy house styled windows.  

Perhaps most illuminating about Aldo Rossi’s fantastic vision for theatres is the competition project for the Teatro Paganini in Parma from 1964. Rossi describes the problem of conceiving a monument, ‘I have always thought of architecture as a monument, of its indifference to secondary functions. In the great eras of theatre…the theatre was there forever as a monument. Greek theatre was part of the urban fabric, it contained the city. I have designed cylinders and columns, lines and angles, and have raised a triangular conduit above the city and various porticos. In this way, I have sought to create an urban architecture, to give a public character to the theatre’.

The Teatro Domestico, built for the ‘Domestic project’ exhibition, at the Triennale de Milano of 1986 is accompanied by tea and coffee pots produced on a giant scale as stage props by Alessi. These were designed for the wooden structure of a home, a stage set cut into a sectional model to show the domestic ornaments ridiculously out of proportion to their surroundings. A turquoise horse stands proudly on a podium next to the Alessi coffee pots, taken from Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, which inaugurated the summer season of 1986 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The last theatre project comes from the competition entry of 1997 for the Gran Teatro la Fenice in Venice, which Rossi did not live to see finished.  

Alongside these objects are over 120 drawings and sketches, from carefully laid-out blueprints, to rough sketches, and perhaps best of all, fantastical and atmospheric watercolours. In this way the visitor experiences the typical way Rossi worked, from a narrative to a built object. If you have time to venture out of the hub of the Giardini and Arsenale, this exhibition should be the first thing on your list. The setting is ideal, set along a waters edge that is as dramatic and colourful as Rossi’s expressive visions. Outside the gallery there was even a golden crane used for lifting boats into the water, decorated with carnival patterns and traditional Venetian red stripes, a sleepy Venetian sailor taking a siesta underneath it. Now that couldn’t really happen anywhere else.

All images my own except otherwise specified.