Published together with a photograhic essay in the online journal Vitruvius (www.vitruvius.com.br), this text-only version presents some personal impressions on the last Venice Architecture Biennial. Vazio S/A represented Brazil with Topographical Amnesias I.
Carlos M Teixeira
It all looks like a hangover from Bilbao. Instead of Frank Ghery having concluded a chapter in the history of architecture with his Guggenheim Museum, he apparently opened up another: the chapter that wants to be written by the legion of architects in Ghery’s wake or the architects sucked up by the thin air of ideas that permeate this mega showing.
The 9th International Architectural Biennale of Venice is an unequaled visual extravaganza; it is almost a voyage to the bottom of the sea essentially made up of models of organic forms spread out over the five hundred meter length of the Corderie, in an old Venice shipyard known as Arsenale. As critic Richard Ingersol has remarked, references to the fluidity of sea creatures, such as the jellyfish, manta rays, lobsters and other crustaceans are everywhere, as if the island had been hit by a tidal wave, whose remains (or devastation?) are maquettes in the mollusk-like forms of the exhibition. Against the renaissance space defined by the rigid rhythm of the colonnades of the Corderie, white, curved, amorphous “gondolas” created by the Assimptote digital agency in New York define the elegant support of all of the models. Curvilinear formalism that ignores conventional notions of building are the dominant tone, and much space is given to architecture as a result of the accidental shapes created — or “morphed” — in CAD. Thenceforth, of course, the name Metamorph.
The exhibition begins provocatively with a segment called Transformazioni presenting radical interventions in historical buildings. After these anti-historical transformations, which are relatively few, comes the next and larger segment called Topografia. At the initial point, some projects by international architects, such as Zaha Hadid, Arata Isozaki, and Richard Rodgers. All of them are quite similar in terms of design or its representation, which shows that, in this anti-tectonic psychodelia, the well-known names seem to have fallen into a formalistic temptation of paradoxically anonymous results, condemned to repeat almost identical forms. The highlight [of this segment] does not end up with the more spectacular part of the showing. Rather, it is in those unilluminated corners where are the projects incongruent with the segment title. The most sincere projects are extremely concentrated in Spain, which appear with Enric Miralles, Torres & Lapeña, Carlos Ferrater, Mansilla & Tuñón, Vicente Guallart, and Alejandro Zaera. From Portugal, a pleasant orthogonal surprise: a tilted cobblestone by Eduardo Souto de Moura. Presented with many spotlights, Vito Acconci, the conceptual artist from the ‘60s, shows that he has adhered to the organic style and reveals little of his critical side. In the opposite direction of art-architecture is Peter Eisenman, who explicitly refers to the land artists of the ‘70s in his mega Santiago de Compostela Cultural Center, the largest model in the Biennial. This reinforces that Spain is the stage of the best contemporary architecture in the world, whether it be through local architects or foreigners. (And if we remember Bilbao, it is explicit that the Euros of the European Union have really transformed Spain into the Mecca of American and European architects.)
Superfici Segment: more draped buildings, however slightly less than in Topografia. Concave and convex flows continue, and so many curves end up leaving a certain impression of lack of gravity and depth. (Eladio Dieste, placed in a side room in the Italian pavilion, could very well be here to insert a little reality in the virtual surfaces…) Two more Acconcis, who went to Basileia directly from beneath the viaducts of São Paulo (Arte Cidade of the Eastern Zone of SP, 2002) to project a “topological” garage, and later went on to Austria, where he projected an open-air theater as an amoeba floating in the middle of a river. The simplicity and shyness of the Mobius house model of UN Studio stands out, an excellent project that was overshadowed here by the opulence of the neighboring models (and which is curiously one of the few examples of exposed built works – constructions are fewer and fewer at this Biennial…). Greg Lynn Form also in the gondolas with more unbuilt shapes; but the simplicity of his houses in Venice, California seems to indicated that the theoretician of blobs is facing an about face toward pragmatism. On the other extreme, Campos Baeza, a 90º minimalist, presents his Mercedes Benz Museum: another example, among others, of straight line (ex-)architects who have curved themselves to the new fashion. (However, it is true that, even when they become international, the Spanish always maintain their identities.) Diller & Scofidio and Renzo Piano, in principal not so fashion-prone, also mimic the metamorphic surfaces of the gondolas…
Atmosfera: The installation “The Weather Project” of Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, which happened in the Tate Modern in London, catapulted the interest in what could be called atmospheric art and launched the theme in the major international cultural circuit. At the Biennial, Atmosfera is the least formalistic segment of the exhibition. Some dated and absolutely inoffensive vanguards permeate these gondolas, such as “living architecture” (or better stated, imagine an insect by David Cronemberg as living space…) by Marcos Novak. In spite of this, this is a section of subtler and more serious architects. Good projects by Kauyo Sejima, MRVDV, Ábalos & Herreros, Sanaksenaho Architects and PTW Architects show the extreme flexibility of the concept of atmosphere according to the curator. On the other hand, veterans Jean Nouvel and Toyo Ito, abusing nocturnal renderings, also demonstrate certain autonomy in their projects.
There are also other counterpoints to what is easily associated to organic esthetics, which is clear in The Nature of the Artifice and in Harrowing the City, two intervals between the models made up of photographic essays. It is here that we can perceive some insinuations about the relationship between architecture and nature, a little discussed topic by the metamorphic architects. Landscapes predominate and overshadow all that is constructed: architecture, only out of focus. In the Nature of the Artifice, German Andreas Gursky presents his images in great style. In one of them, there a lift is only a small point lost in the landscape of the cloud-covered mountain. The photographer seems to criticize the many constructions presented and the absence of a more serious discussion about ecology and the city. Other photographers presented more landscapes (never with architecture): topographies transformed, mines, clouds in black and white, road banks, micro and macro geographies.
This absence of architecture is substituted by a critical representation of the city, the theme of the other photographic exhibition Harrowing the City. All of the photographers make efforts to translate dissatisfaction with conventional architectural representation models, predominantly perspective and iconographic. They are photographs submitted to random chance that try to express a subjective view of cities in poorly cared for, accidental and non-programmed compositions: the very antithesis of the increasingly rational, spotless, CAD representation used by architects.
Returning to architectural projects, Iper-Progetti is a segment whose title goes without explaining (but where is Koolhaas?) and the super exhibition Sale Concerti, where the only project from Brazil is located ii – makes the elitism of the curator apparent.
The Biennial catalogue is an object by itself and has several texts that seek to conceptually tie together the hundreds of projects in the exhibition. The intention of curator Kurt Forster, an art historian with extensive experience, was to assemble a Biennial “of the professors”: “After Fuksas’ artists Biennial in 2000 and Sudjic’s journalists Biennial in 2002, now it is the turn of the professors” iii . Besides Frank Ghery, his circle of friends and architect intellectuals includes Peter Eisenman, who projected his house, House Eleven-A, not built); with whom he founded the academic magazine Oppositions in the ‘70s, and whom he awarded the Gold Lion for his collective works in this Biennial. The excessive attention to the academicism of Eisenmaniv and references to other arts are also symptoms of the search from some theoretical weight for all those gravitation-less buildings. Several essays confirm this intention: Structural Intuitions and Metamorphic Thinking in Art, Architecture and Science (M. Kemp); Morphing the Sublime (Hani Hashid); Picturesque Metamorphosis (Iñaki Ábalos); Metamorphosis (Marina Wainer); etc. However, in spite of the three volumes totalling almost 800 pages of catalogue, there is no doubt that the intellectual effort of the curator is not able to justify the architecture of the title with sufficient conviction. In addition, even with a few acid, lucid essays, in the end, Metamorph is a clear complement to the style, leaving little space to less esthetical approaches.
(Evidently, Forster himself is aware of his inclinations: “The Biennial is routinely accused of being biased, in cahoots with commercial, media interests, overshadowing common buildings and disregarding this or that global necessity.” And, unceremoniously, he concludes: “Sheltering and impressing continue to be basis propositions in human constructions….there is certainly much fad in present-day architecture, but what is there to say about the old debt to pomp or its notorious obedience to power?”v).
This elitism is compensated in the national garden pavilions, or I Giardini, where Brazil presents its selection of six architects. For the first time in the history of its participation in the Biennial, the Brazil pavilion show Brazilian architects and/or a program of intervention that are little known abroad. Curators Pedro Cury and Jacopo Crivelli opted for an eclectic vision that mixes several generations, styles and approaches to projects. This translates into an important opening in the direction of promoting other sides of contemporary Brazilian architecture. vii
Spain, which is always present and important at the international showing, did not adhere to the Metamorph theme. Instead, its pavilion showed an historical exhibition of modernistic architects. However, its design is so conventional and antiquated, it disappoints more than it surprises. Japan presents a fantastic reproduction of the electricity in the streets of Akihabara borough in Tokyo, mixing scale and space with typically consumed Japanese articles. Germany refused to present large projects and presents the architecture of its outskirts in the showing “Epicenters in the Periphery”, an enormous collage attached to a panel that superimposes the buildings of 37 young architects against an anonymous suburban background. In terms of exhibition design, of the relationship between design and content, this is definitely the best pavilion in the Biennial. Chile confirmed the talent of its younger architects and Croatia, in a risky, original decision, bet on an enormous glass car (projected a few weeks before the Biennial’s inauguration by recently graduated architects). Other countries, such as Israel and France, left some things in the air. However, the Gold Lion of pavilions went to Belgium, in a demonstration of pos-colonial remorse, presents the anthropological study about the city of Kinshasa, capital city of the ex-Belgian colony.
Whether it is a symptom of the frivolity and insecurity of the curator or a simple coincidence, the fact is that the prize to Belgium is a “secret passage” to the far away Ca’ Pesaro, one of the palaces that make up the stunning architectural showcase that is the Grand Canale in Venice. Far away from the Arsenale and from I Giardini, on the island’s other extremity, is at the Ca’ Pesaro — the venue for the Biennial’s complementary exhibitions — where the other great hiatus of the showing is: the “Lino Bo Bardi: the Freedom of Architecture” exposition. The display is simple and nicely assembled, but its distant location says much about the enormous distance that separates the freedom of Lina from the other freedom of the Corderie architects.