Considering this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, there's
one point pretty much everyone agrees on: the theme, and the
title (the origin of which the director, Sir David Chipperfield,
credits to the reliably acute Richard Sennett) are brilliant:
there's little disputing that in the realm of "common ground"
lies the cipher to unlocking some of the most important issues
and critical debates of our times. It encompasses everything
from architecture's current crisis of identity to the struggle
to prop up, then occupy, Wall Street; from the rise of network
culture to the city's unbridled privatisation at the hands of
developer-driven neo-liberal urban policies. It acknowledges
in one fell swoop the realms of theory and history, and pays
homage to the pressing need, as the President of Fondazione La
Biennale, Paolo Baratta, writes in the catalogue, to "mend the
fracture between architecture and civil society".
This, it turns out, is one of the challenges of organising an
exhibition about common ground: everyone has their own
idea of what it means, and because everyone has a stake in it,
disappointment is almost guaranteed. Paradoxically, if you
want to make an exhibition that's going to make everyone
happy, common ground is the last topic you should pick. But
Chipperfield must have known this, and deserves credit for
having stuck to his guns. He also deserves credit for having
done what he promised to do from the very beginning: an
exhibition about architecture (read "buildings"), a strategy
that among other things allowed him and his team to neatly
sidestep the trap of doing an exhibition about architects, and
the thorny issue of how to deal with the rampant personality
cult among contemporary practitioners.
Given the topic, I was hoping for an exhibition that stepped on
a few more toes, or that ventured further into the battleground
that is public space in the city today, or illustrated the growing
significance of peer production and the emergence of a
new digital commons, or a greater presence of the younger
generation, which is unquestionably more active in using
architecture as an instrument of grass-roots social engagement.
These aren't topics that always sit squarely within the realm
of architecture, but it would be disingenuous to say that they
have nothing to do with it; and then again, some of the most
"architectural" works exhibited don't have a clear relevance
to the theme. Also, Common Ground is a title that suggests
inclusivity and anti-elitism, but considering that the Venice
Biennale is visited by close to 200,000 people — many of whom
are not architects — it doesn't present itself as a particularly
inclusive exhibition: many of the works that are most likely to
appeal to a broad public, such as the 1:1 scale reproduction of a
house by Anupama Kundoo erected in the Arsenale by a team
of Indian craftsmen flown over for the purpose, are also the
least convincing.
This is the thing about common ground: as a shared space and
a point of encounter, it is unfair to expect it to be a platform
for a specific position (aesthetic, social, political). Its value lies
in a point of disciplinary encounter that has something for
everyone. The best works in the exhibition are very good, and
are also the most provocative: FAT's Museum of Copying is a
brilliant collective indictment of the false myth of originality
in the act of architectural creation, and one needs to spend
time in the installation, which also includes contributions and
research by Ines Weizman, San Rocco and a "research cluster"
at the Architectural Association, so as not to miss the many
layers of historical reference that stack up in support of the
group's thesis. OMA's celebration of a little-remembered yet
relatively recent era in which the dream of young architects
was to become civil servants — a concept that must seem mindboggling
to our contemporaries — compellingly documents
how quickly and dramatically the productive frameworks of
architecture shift and evolve. What is interesting about this
research, led by the director of AMO, Reinier de Graaf, is not
so much that it highlights how the generative apparatus that
produces cities and buildings transforms — it's how quickly
we come to take for granted that it's always been the way it is
today.
It was also interesting to see a collaborative project, Ruta
del Peregrino, featuring nine different participating studios
from several continents, including Ai Weiwei, Tatiana Bilbao,
Christ & Gantenbein and Derek Dellekamp, effectively credited
as a "participant" in itself. The installation was particularly
well designed, and a clever way to confirm that borderless
collaborative networks are a productive mechanism that plays
an increasingly significant role in architecture today.
Lots of new national pavilions joined the fray this year
including Kosovo, Turkey, Peru, Angola and Kuwait, and the
conceptual strength of the theme seems to have energised the
curatorial teams of the national pavilions more than usual — a
bonus, considering they are not always eager to embrace the
Biennale's topic. This generated an unusually strong dialogue
and resonance between the pavilions around the city. In the
design of the exhibition itself there are some nice touches like
the pleasantly understated graphic identity (by John Morgan
Studio), a sampling of the technique used to stencil the street
names of Venice onto walls. The result is the sense that the
exhibition spaces form a public space interwoven with the rest
of the city.
By picking a topic of such critical relevance to this particular
moment, Chipperfield upped the stakes that much more. He
could have undoubtedly opted for an easier subject, which
would have at least made one camp happy. But the impression
one is left with is that this exhibition isn't meant to entirely
please anyone in particular, which could be seen as a weakness
but is also its greatest strength. Common ground, like
quicksand, is treacherous territory. Going anywhere near it is
dangerous business. This exhibition elegantly floats over it, and
for that alone Sir David deserves a lot of credit. Joseph Grima (@joseph_grima)
The quicksands of Common Ground
As a shared space and a point of encounter, it is unfair to expect "Common Ground" to be a platform for a specific position (aesthetic, social, political). Its value lies in a point of disciplinary encounter that has something for everyone.
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- Joseph Grima
- 18 October 2012
- Milan