In a press conference full of journalists and institutions’ representatives, Paolo Baratta, President of La Biennale di Venezia, and Rem Koolhas, the appointed Director for the 2014 Architecture Biennial, presented the programme and structure of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, entitled Fundamentals.
“With Rem Koolhaas, our aim is to create an exceptional, research-centred Architecture Biennale,” Paolo Baratta affirmed. “It will be significantly innovative as Rem has conceived a project that involves the entire Biennale, which fully exploits its potential”.
Rem Koolhaas states that “Fundamentals consists of three interlocking exhibitions –Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014, Elements of Architecture and Monditalia – that together illuminate the past, present and future of our discipline. After several architecture Biennales dedicated to the celebration of the contemporary, Fundamentals will look at histories, attempt to reconstruct how architecture finds itself in its current situation, and speculate on its future.
“Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 is an invitation to the national pavilions to show, each in their own way, the process of the erasure of national characteristics in architecture in favor of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language and a single repertoire of typologies – a more complex process than we typically recognize, involving significant encounters between cultures, technical inventions, and hidden ways of remaining ‘national’.
Elements of Architecture, in the Central Pavilion, will pay close attention to the fundamentals of our buildings, used by any architect, anywhere, anytime: the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the roof, the door, the window, the façade, the balcony, the corridor, the fireplace, the toilet, the stair, the escalator, the elevator, the ramp…
Monditalia dedicates the Arsenale to a single theme – Italy – with exhibitions, events, and theatrical productions engaging architecture, politics, economics, religion, technology, industry. The other festivals of la Biennale di Venezia – film, dance, theatre, and music – will be mobilised to contribute to a comprehensive portrait of the host country”.
Alongside the main exhibition, 65 National Participations will be exhibiting in the historic pavilions of the Giardini, the Arsenale, and the city of Venice. Among these, 11 countries will be participating in the Exhibition for the first time: Azerbaijan, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, New Zealand, and Turkey.
This year the ‘Meetings on Architecture’, organised by la Biennale, will be enriched by the Weekend Specials programme, conceived as an essential part of the section Monditalia: conferences, workshops, performances and debates will run during the six months of the Exhibition.
The 14th International Architecture Exhibition will be open to the public from June 7 through November 23, 2014, in the Giardini and the Arsenale. The preview will be held on June 5 and 6 and the inauguration and awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, June 7, at the Giardini, with the conferral of the official awards assigned by the international Jury.
- Open:
Saturday, 07 June 2014 - Close:
Sunday, 23 November 2014 - Address:
Giardini, Arsenale and other venues in town - Mail:
aav@labiennale.org - Phone:
+39 041 5218711 - Web:
Architecture Biennale - Photo credits:
Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
