Essay Where's the Architecture?
PHOTOS BY GIORGIO ZUCCHIATTI. COURTESY VENICE BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE.
by Igor Siddiqui
T
he 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture, titled “Fundamentals,” was curated by the Dutch superstar architect Rem Koolhaas. The international exhibition’s two main venues — the Giardini with its 30 pavilions and the nearly 350-yard-long Arsenale building — contain Koolhaas’s tripartite curatorial scheme. In the Central Pavilion at the Giardini is the main exhibition, “Elements of Architecture,” while the surrounding nation pavilions examine the curator’s theme “Absorbing Modernity: 1914–2014.” Meanwhile, in the Arsenale the highlight is “Monditalia,” a focused sampling of Italy conducted through a series of invited research projects. “Elements of Architecture” underscores the biennale’s explicit orientation toward research. The exhibition scrutinizes 15 building elements — including wall, floor, ceiling, staircase, elevator, and toilet — isolated as fragments according to their individual origins, histories, and mostrecent transformations. Such a curatorial strategy expands upon Koolhaas’s lifelong fascination with the impact of generic products on architecture (in his seminal 1978 book, “Delirious New York,” for example, he examined the influence of elevators, escalators, and air conditioning on the development of the skyscraper), but also echoes the insights of 20th-century critics like Sigfried Giedion and Reyner Banham. Each element occupies a single room, a capsule filled with archival artifacts, prototypes, full-scale mock-ups, videos, illustrations, and an abundance of text. As thorough and compelling as the exhibited material is — crowd favorites seem to be the energygenerating disco floor, the historical collection of
Top The history of door handles is presented in the “Elements of Architecture” exhibit. Right Preservationist Charles Brooking’s collection of 17th–19thcentury English windows is also featured.
9/10 2014
Texas Architect 33