People Meet in architecture - by Ambra Rebecchi

The first chapter of this artistic long and fertile novel was conceived long time ago, in 1980, when the famous master coming from the eternal city Paolo Portoghesi inaugurated the International Exhibition of Architecture of Venice in the evocative space of the Roperies of the Arsenal. Ever since such event underwent a lot of different transformations according to the demand imposed by the collectivity:from the reflections on the Postmodern to the glorification of the pessimism of the last years,  passing through the projects of resort and celebration of the urban fabric through the aesthetic revolutions of the contemporary greater exponents. 2010 is the year of the meditation: can what Le Corbusier defined “the wise, strict and magnificent game of the volumes in the light” be used a means through which to express the innumerable points of view forming the jungle in continuos and unrestrainable evolution called “contemporary society”? According to the artistic director  Kazuyo Sejima ( the first woman appointed to such a task and winner of the important prize Pritzker together with Ryue Nishizawa) the answer is affirmative and fully well-documented in the big rooms of the Arsenal and the Gardens of the lagoon city.
For the Japanese architect the 12th International Exhibition of Architecture “allows to take conscience of the various ideas given off by different contexts to the people and reflects the present that encapsulates potentiality for the future”, at the purpose to allow everyone to create his/her own inner relationship with  architecture. Walking through the rooms which are used for the exhibition you have the possibility of coming into contact with a multiplicity of developments and artistic volumetries: from the internal granitic rock inside which you can find refuge (the recall to the dramatic earthquake of Chile is clear) to the touching  3D visual document by the teacher of  cinematography  Wim Wenders, from the “cloud ” of the installation”Cloudscapes”(in which the visitors are invited to use the flight of stairs which develops in the space to find out the produced transformations of atmospheric changes) to the interviews led by Hans Ulrich Obrist with all the participants to the artistic event, up to the project of the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House (masterpiece of contours and continuos lines which is being built in Taiwan) and to the realization of the cinema prefabricated of Berger & Berger born from the fusion of the auditorium and the museum gallery. The Italian Pavillon is identified as the search and the experimentation through the triple subdivision of the roles (Laboratory amnesia Italia/ in the present/ Italia 1990-2010/ Italia 2050) aiming at the analysis of the word “Italy ”. More than the single National pavillons that compose the geometry of the Gardens (to remember the Brazilian and Australian ones) it is the Palace of the Exhibitions to have the greatest  wealth of ideas and solutions, sometimes to the limits of the ordinary, taken to fulfilment for a better future with the most original means: from the installation building “home Fray Foam” which is  created to reproduce the fragmentary spaces which a house is built in, to the reproduction of the Iberian project for the Palacio del Cerezo en Flor, passing through Caruso St.John + Thomas Demand swiss project, the model mounted on the wall with annexed a huge map printed on paper of the Korean project of the “City Saemangeum Island”, up to the fourfold presentation of public projects in act to work of  Christian Kerez (always concerned with the use of open structures) and to the models of weak urbanization  by Andrea Branzi with the title of “For a new paper in Athens”, which are placed inside little reliquaries lined  covered with  mirrors (at the purpose to make visible at 100 % the problems and the contradictions of the contemporary metropolitan world). An extraordinary chance, for the experts  and the simple lovers of art, to enter a universal and at the same time private dimension with the architectural matter.

“12th International Show of Architecture – People Meet in architecture”

  29th august – 21st november 2010

  Arsenale/Giardini della Biennale – Venezia

by Ambra Rebecchi