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

Round up of the student shows on Blueprint Magazine

This year the Blueprint team and a panel of 14 critics (one of them me) traveled to student degree shows around the country. After viewing hundreds of presentations from a diverse range of disciplines, we have compiled our findings, bringing you some of this year’s best work from the designers and architects of the future. Be sure to check it out here.

Dessislava Lyutakova, Dip Arch, Architectural Association

Amy Hiley, The Green Living City Wall, Bartlett School of Architecture

Janinder Bhatti, Dip Arch, Bartlett School of Architecture 

Ned Scott, The War Rooms, St. James’s Park, Bartlett School of Architecture

Erika Renedo Illarregi, Empathology, MA Industrial Design, Central Saint Martins

Clarissa Wenborn, The Urban Weave, University of Nottingham

Joseph Popper, MA Design Interactions, Royal College of Art

Sanna Rautio, The New Elizabethans, Westminster University

Bartlett Summer Show 2012

 

The Bartlett Summer Show kicked off last Friday at the Slade School of Art in London. Featuring a cacophony of work, from first year to diploma, the week-long exhibition showcases the best of the architecture department at UCL (I may be a little biased, as I did go there myself...). Nevertheless, it is always a feast for the eyes, and in my opinion- since also going round the other London schools this week- one of the best in the country. From intricate hand-drawings and layered card models to rapidly moving zoetropes and inhuman computer renders, the Bartlett students have once again put on a fantastic show, both in the exhibition design (which they put together over an intensive week of framing, painting and welding) and the work within it.  

Unit 11: Super Urban Mega Listic

Emma Flynn, Unit 11, Trash Can Utopias

Janinder Bhatti, Unit 11, Sacrifical Flooding

Janinder Bhatti, Unit 11, Sacrifical Flooding

Martin Tang, Unit 10

Ned Scott, Unit 10

William Fisher, Unit 22

Unit 9, tutored by Max Dewdney and Chee-Kit Lai of Mobile Studio

Sarah Edwards, Unit 9

Sarah Edwards, Unit 9

Harriet Middleton-Baker, Unit 1

Unit 5 showspace

Steven Holl Daeyang Gallery and House Watercolours

I often think that Steven Holl's watercolours are somewhat overlooked in favour of glossy photos in architectural publications. So with that in mind, here are some atmospheric watercolours of recently completed Daeyang Gallery and House, situated in the Kangbuk area at the base of the hilly mountains in Seoul, Korea. The three copper-coloured pavilions of the building are arranged around a pool, with separate programmatic spaces rising above and below the plane of the water's surface. 

Images: Steven Holl Architects via