The Biennale is divided into two main areas.
The Giardini: A beautiful parkland surrounding with pavilions scattered between the trees and gardens
The Arsenale: A largely disused naval dockyard, comprising of a series of large disused warehouses
To break the biennale visit up, we visited each site on a different day, spending around 6 hours in each. There was just so much to see and so little time!
The Biennale theme was “People meet in Architecture” and explored different ways people and architects perceive architecture / space and what is most important to them. There was a wide ranging scope and variety of entries. Some from artworks, model displays, traditional vernacular ideas of architecture and a select few dealt with the idea of sustainability and its role in Architecture today. For the purpose of this Blog, I hope to focus more on the sustainability issues, to present the ideas of some to many.
Netherlands:
As you walk into the Netherlands Exhibition, the first thing you notice, is a vastly vacant room. The walls are painted white and the floor is a bare light coloured polished concrete. Lone standing Fire Extinguishers give the space an equally sterile feel. It isn’t untill you look up and notice thousands of blue foam squares suspended on the ceiling that you realise there is more to this exhibition. A large sign on the door reads:
“THIS BUILDING HAS BEEN VACANT FOR MORE THAN 39 YEARS”
This exhibition space is in use for 3.5 months each year. The pavilion was built in 1954 and has been vacant for 39 years
Like all the biennale exhibition buildings in the Giardini, they are predominantly unnocupied.
The Submission:
A clear perspex display outlines the intention of the Exhibition:
Vacant NL, Where architecture meets ideas:
“This installation is a call for the intelligent reuse of inspiring, vacant buidings in promoting creative enterprise. It utilizes enourmous potential of temporary unoccupied buildings from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in the Netherlands. We propose temporary use as a strategy and uses vacancy for innovation within the creative knowledge economy.
The complex challenges that our society faces today call for innovation: for a culture centred on design skills and cooperation between scientists and creative pioneers.
Vancant NL will enable and support new connections between different professional fields. This submission shows that architecture can contribute to pinpointing and solving the complex challenges facing the worlds at the moment. Starting nationally, aiming globally” (Netherlands exhibition – 2010)
From here, you are guided up a set of stairs where you transition from a completely empty space with seemingly floating blue blocks, to a fully suspended city of buildings. The impact of this is tremendous. There is a huge array of building types to be seen, arranged in a mock city above an empty space. Buildings including, office towers, warehouses, barns and windmills stretch from wall to wall.
It does get you thinking immediately about the amount of un-used vacant space not only in one city, but around the world. Why do these buildings lay empty, dormant? Instead of building new buildings from new materials which use vast amounts of energy, why can we not further use and adapt what we already have?
This exhibition set an overtone for what would is the rest of the biennale for me. It was a turning point in my thought process. There are so many aspects to sustainability, many of which are untouched. Sustainable architecture can not exist in a “throw away society”. We must re-use and recycle what buildings we already have. This exhibition reveals the enormous quantity and diversity of temporarily avaliable property around the world and questions the range of possibilities for use they offer.
The idea of temporary re-use has the ability to create life, to re-activate cities. To house the homeless? To regenerate.“This exhibition aims to inspire designers, property developers, and policy-makers to come up with architecture that is not just functional and aesthetically pleasing, but which also sets a positive change in motion” (Reitveld Landscape)
RE-USING INDIVIDUAL VACANT BUILDINGS CAN MAKE A GLOBAL DIFFERENCE.
For more information visit:
Danish Exhibition:
The exhibition raises a number of urban design and masterplanning questions and presents the answers reached in Copenhagen. It provides an insight into the huge changes that have taken place in Copenhagen in the past ten years – from the massive urban development programme at Ørestad to new cultural landmarks and green urban spaces in the old working-class areas.
At the same time, the exhibition looks to the future, asking the question: How can we build on the experience of these past ten years and continue to create the right settings for growth and welfare in the future?
Ten years into the 21st century, it is clear that humans and the environment share the common destiny of cities. Only by creating sensible and sustainable urban communities can we ensure the welfare of the planet and its people.
But what is a sustainable urban community? What kind of challenges, questions and parameters are changing the development paradigm for urban communities, old and new?
The Danish exhibition is divided into two sections, an intereactive “Questions” area where people are invited to put forward Questions of urban revitalisation, sustainability and development. The second of which is a movie theatre , which represents the “answers” where a 3D movie is on continuous loop.
The Movie below is a must watch. It outlines a Vision for Copenhagen drawing on its history and promoting the concept of the “thinking city,” posing urban questions and presenting the answers reached in Copenhagen. It uses Copenhagen as a ”living Lab” of sustainable urban development.
The exhibition raises a number of urban design and masterplanning questions and presents the answers reached in Copenhagen. It provides an insight into the huge changes that have taken place in Copenhagen in the past ten years – from the massive urban development programme at Ørestad to new cultural landmarks and green urban spaces in the old working-class areas.
At the same time, the exhibition looks to the future, asking the question: How can we build on the experience of these past ten years and continue to create the right settings for growth and welfare in the future?
(For more Photo's from the Danish Architecture Centre - Flicker website visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31434789@N03/sets/72157624170012761/)
But what is a sustainable urban community? What kind of challenges, questions and parameters are changing the development paradigm for urban communities, old and new?
The Danish exhibition is divided into two sections, an intereactive “Questions” area where people are invited to put forward Questions of urban revitalisation, sustainability and development. The second of which is a movie theatre , which represents the “answers” where a 3D movie is on continuous loop.
The Movie below is a must watch. It outlines a Vision for Copenhagen drawing on its history and promoting the concept of the “thinking city,” posing urban questions and presenting the answers reached in Copenhagen. It uses Copenhagen as a ”living Lab” of sustainable urban development.
Full Credit Goes to The Danish Exhibition and its exhibitors. For more information Visit:
The Exhibition has answers to questions including:
How can we stimulate the use of bicycles as alternatives to cars?
How can we reclaim the waterfront of former industrial ports in creating new urban areas?
How can we create urban space that encourages physical activity in a compact city?
How can we promote social inclusion through urban planning?
How can we use architecture to add value to public space?
How can we accomodate local needs when revitalizing a city district?
How do we use a strategy of temporary interventions to create a new city within the city?
How do we transform a former industrial port into a dense and dynamic waterfront district?
How do we create a completely new city district on the edge of nature?
How do we tie two countries together in one metropolitan loop?
How many masterpieces does a city need?
For me, this Exhibition crystalises that whilst each individual building must have its own sustainability agenda, buildings form a city which must act harmoniously in order to function. Sustainability has many aspects, each aspect must work together to form a whole.
INDIVIDUAL BUILDINGS WORKING TOGETHER TO MAKE A GLOBAL DIFFERENCE
Opensimsim:
Opensimsim is the manifestation of the idea of knowledge sharing. It is based on the fact that around 98% of all built works in the world are not completed by Architects and that sustainable design is to complex to be done by a small design team. It believes that the design process must have more knowledge rich foundations, by including more skilled designers from Architecs, Enginners to Manufacturers and Scientists in the design process
Opensimsim is a realisation that we are in transition from a corporate-owned consumer world to a community-driven system of participation, where people enjoy contributing their knowledge and time to the greater public for free. Could urbanism and architecture also benefit from this idea?
At the biennale, 15 open source designs by international design studios of what is called an "intelligent living pod". Each pod was avaliable by interacting with a computer monitor and design card placed in front. Once you pick up the design card, the computer monitor displays a 3D model of the design rotating with the users movements. I have attached some photo's of me investigating the 3d model space. You are then prompted to leave comments on the design. The idea being, that from around 150,000 visitors to the biennale would be able to contribute to the world-wide knowledge base - the idea of Open sourcing - or Opensimsim.This method of model exploritory is new for me. The technology enables the user to fully experience the model space from all angles through hand and eye co-ordination. This technology could be implemented to further explore intimate details of design, long before a physical prototype is developed.
INDIVIDUALS SHARING KNOWLEDGE AND WORKING TOGETHER CAN MAKE A GLOBAL DIFFERENCE.
For more information, Visit: http://opensimsim.net/
The Mississippi Delta: Constructing with water
(Part of the american pavillion exhibition)
Constructing with water deals with the Global issue of raised sea levels due to climate change.The need for new approaches to protect coastal communities from flooding, storm surge damage, and land loss is becoming more critical as sea levels rise. Experience shows that traditional hard infrastructural storm barrier solutions such as sea walls and levees must be reconsidered, especially as recent storms show increased reach and intensity. The mississippi river drains the primary water shed of North America, ending in a land-building delta at the gulf of mexico. Over time, the Mississippi has shifted its course, requiring flood levee interventions to ensure low lying developments on wetlands and coastal basins is prevented. The Mississippi Delta has been examined to make the case for an adaptive soft infrastructure, which integrates engineering, ecological, urban, and landscape design approaches in order to restore and improve nature while protecting and enhancing culture.
Their designs include visualizations of new paradigms for building communities, changing infrastructure to support more sustainable and resilient living and three-dimensional maps of the coast with new land-building capacity.
The Visualisations are world class, with the ideas interesting and thought provoking.
The full Video is Avaliable from the AIA Website here: http://www.architecture.com.au/nowandwhen/
Here is a link to Interviews from the Vernissage with architects Ross Donaldson (Woods Bagot), Stefan Mee (John Wardle Architects) and Ian McDougall (Ashton Raggatt McDougall) about the Now + When: Australian Urbanism exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010
Had such a great time on Day 1. Next Blog will be a little more light on. Lots of interesting investigations on space, Art and Architecture!
The Mississippi Delta: Constructing with water
(Part of the american pavillion exhibition)
Constructing with water deals with the Global issue of raised sea levels due to climate change.The need for new approaches to protect coastal communities from flooding, storm surge damage, and land loss is becoming more critical as sea levels rise. Experience shows that traditional hard infrastructural storm barrier solutions such as sea walls and levees must be reconsidered, especially as recent storms show increased reach and intensity. The mississippi river drains the primary water shed of North America, ending in a land-building delta at the gulf of mexico. Over time, the Mississippi has shifted its course, requiring flood levee interventions to ensure low lying developments on wetlands and coastal basins is prevented. The Mississippi Delta has been examined to make the case for an adaptive soft infrastructure, which integrates engineering, ecological, urban, and landscape design approaches in order to restore and improve nature while protecting and enhancing culture.
In its conceptual approach, the design team proposed opening up the river in five spots and creating diversions or basins that would fill with sediment and eventually rebuild central wetlands, taking into account what that would mean not only for the landscape but for the inhabitants who currently live there. The design fully utilises the rivers ability to carry and deposit rich sediment to re-claim land that will, over time be lost due to climate change.
Their designs include visualizations of new paradigms for building communities, changing infrastructure to support more sustainable and resilient living and three-dimensional maps of the coast with new land-building capacity.
We as designers need to ensure that we adapt and respond to the ever changing environment. We need to be aware that climate change is real, and that adpative and creative solutions for low lying areas are required to ensure thier survival.
GRAND SCALE PROBLEMS REQUIRE GRAND SCALE SOLUTIONS.
Australian Exhibition: Now and When.
The Australian Pavillion was predominantly an expression of ideas through digital medium - specifically 3D Stereosonic animations.
The Pavillion is divided into two parts:
The NOW component by photographer John Gollings was a collection of 3D aerial images of Cities and urban sprawl of Melbourne, Sydney and Surfers paradise. This was then contrasted by the arid and industrial component of Australia with mining pits in Kalgoorlie and Newman.
The WHEN component features a nine minute montage of design ideas and conceptions from 17 Australian architectural groups of possible future urban environments, based on the year 2100 - including floating cities, submerged cities, and new desert spaces.
The Visualisations are world class, with the ideas interesting and thought provoking.
The full Video is Avaliable from the AIA Website here: http://www.architecture.com.au/nowandwhen/
Here is a link to Interviews from the Vernissage with architects Ross Donaldson (Woods Bagot), Stefan Mee (John Wardle Architects) and Ian McDougall (Ashton Raggatt McDougall) about the Now + When: Australian Urbanism exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010
Had such a great time on Day 1. Next Blog will be a little more light on. Lots of interesting investigations on space, Art and Architecture!
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