Deyan Sudjic’s formulation is decidedly tangible, he has chosen to place attention on the physical qualities integral to buildings. “Architecture,” according to Sudjic, “is too important to be reduced to a ‘private religion’, where architects just talk to architects”. Now it is critical to make it enter the overall cultural dialogue, he added, and on the subject of identifying in what direction architecture is heading, the Biennale, with its twenty years of experience, has a lot to say.
In the ample spaces that make up the Arsenale (Corderie and Artiglierie), following an exhibition route designed by architect John Pawson, the sense of history of the surroundings will be interwoven with what is about to come (in other words, what will be built in the next five years): large scale buildings – some of which are already under construction – designed by both famous architects as well as younger designers (currently 110 projects but the number may increase).
Next organises the projects in ten sections divided by building type – museums, tower blocks, workplaces, neighbourhoods and dwellings, public and religious buildings, transport, leisure, commercial spaces, educational buildings, urban planning – and will present a special section entitled “La città delle torri” (“the city of towers”), with schemes put forward for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in New York. So to a number of examples of the work selected for Next: the section dedicated to tower blocks will show the project by Renzo Piano for the headquarters of the New York Times”, the conical form of the Swiss Re Tower by Norman Foster in London and the Agbar tower designed by Jean Nouvel in Barcelona. In the section dedicated to museums will be Herzog and de Meuron’s project for the De Young Museum in San Francisco, Rem Koolhaas’s project for the rebuilding of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the transparent museum by Kazuo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa in Toledo. The section dedicated to workplaces will feature the project by Zaha Hadid for the new BMW factory in Lipsia whilst the designs for the Magazzino Prada in Tokyo by Herzog and de Meuron and for the new shopping centre by Future Systems entirely clad in aluminium will be presented in the section dedicated to commercial spaces.
The section dealing with educational places will include new libraries in China, the US and Holland, and a students residence designed by Steven Holl at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and one by Dixon & Jones in Belfast. The section on housing will contain a scale reconstruction of the Great Wall Commune: a complex of low cost buildings made by twelve architects from China with the contribution of architects Shigeru Ban and Gary Chang, who for many years have been examining problems concerning housing in depressed urban areas.
Large scale models will be shown, continued Sudjic, real pieces of buildings, harking back to the 1980 edition, when Paolo Portoghesi transformed the route along the Corderie into a street. In particular in the special sections of Next such as that designed in collaboration with Alessi and dedicated to “the city of towers” and the other which contains ideas for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in New York.
The first brings together the schemes of ten architects (including Zaha Hadid, Chipperfield and Future Systems) for hundred storey high blocks, reproduced at a scale of 1/100. The national points of view (around 50 the nations which will participate in the Biennale) regarding the themes of Next will be presented in the pavilions of the Giardini di Castello. At Next Italy major projects will be on show which are to be realised in Italy by international architects (Chipperfield, Decq, Isozaki) and by Italian architects (Fuksas, Garofalo, Tagliabue).
8.9.2002-3.11.2002
8. International Architecture Exhibition – NEXT
Giardini di Castello – Arsenale, Venice
Vernissage:
6 September from 10 a.m. to 8 a.m.;
7 September from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Official opening:
Arsenale, 7 September 5 p.m.
La Biennale di Venezia - Settore Architettura
San Marco 1364, Ca’ Giustinian, Venice
T +39-041-5218846; F +39-041-2411407
E-mail: dae@labiennale.com
http://www.labiennale.org
