This video reveals the first statement by director David Chipperfield and president Paolo Baratta regarding the 13th International Venice Biennale. With “Common Ground” as the underlying theme, Chipperfield encourages participants not to promote themselves, as if in a theater, but rather promote a dialogue that will begin the “chemical process” that will ultimately lead to finding connections between “things, people and influences”. Chipperfield highlights that the Venice Biennale is about “what is not private, but what is common.”

The architecture exhibition will open to the public August 29th, 2012.

Courtesy of David Chipperfield Architects

Today, the President of the Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, and the 13th International Architecture Exhibition Director, David Chipperfield, met at Ca’Giustinian with the representatives of the 41 countries participating in the exhibition, including representatives of Kosovo, Kuwait and Peru for the first time. David Chipperfield announced the theme of this year’s Biennale is to be Common Ground. Continue reading for more information.

David Chipperfield states, “I want this Biennale to celebrate a vital, interconnected architectural culture, and pose questions about the intellectual and physical territories that it shares. In the methods of selection of participants, my Biennale will encourage the collaboration and dialogue that I believe is at the heart of architecture, and the title will also serve as a metaphor for architecture’s field of activity.”

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© Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects

London-based architect David Chipperfield has been officially named as the new curator for the Venice Biennale 2012, the world’s largest architecture exhibition. More information after the break. read more »

Courtesy of 5468796 Architecture + Jae-Sung Chon

‘Migrating Landscapes’ has been selected to represent Canada at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. The project will examine how Canadians express their diverse cultural memories in the way they live and build. ‘Migrating Landscapes’ will be presented by 5468796 Architecture Inc. and Jae-Sung Chon, both of Winnipeg, who joined together to create a new entity: Migrating Landscapes Organizer (MLO). More project description after the break. read more »

© Daniele Domenicali

Architect: GruppoFonArchitetti
Location: Venice, Italy
Customer: EstCapital Group
Building firm construction: Impresa Costruzioni Maltauro
Building area: 4,919 sqm
Year of completion: 2010
Photograph: Daniele Domenicali 

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 British architect, David Chipperfield, will curate the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. Chipperfield will have only eight months to decide on a theme and prepare to curate the world’s largest architecture exhibition. He will become the first British architect to curate the event.

The newly appointed dean of architecture at the RCA, Alex de Rijke stated, “Someone of his intellectual calibre will rise to the challenge,” he said. “He’s not going to use it as an opportunity to promote his own architecture. He is going to frame an issue, treat it as research and ask people to contribute.”

Via bdonline

© Pietro Savorelli

Architects: C+S Associati / Carlo Cappai, Maria Alessandra Segantini
Location: Venice, Italy
Client: Magistrato alle Acque di Venezia tramite il suo concessionario Consorzio Venezia
General Design, Structures and Installations: Thetis S.p.A.
Site Supervision: Giovanni Zarotti, Thetis S.p.A.
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Pietro Savorelli

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© Anna Blau

Architect: MACK Architect(s)
Location: Venice, California, USA
Project Team: Mark Mack, Carlos Florez
Structural: Parker Resnick
Title 24: South Bay Energy
Methane Investigation: Methane Specialists
Project Year: 2007
Project Area: 4,900 sqf
Photographs: Anna Blau

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Venice CITYVISION First Prize - Alberto Bottero, Simona Della Rocca, and Valeria Bruni. Courtesy of Venice CITYVISION Competition

Bottega di Archiettura Metropolitana aka BAM! recently won a Bjarke Ingalls-judged urban design competition for proposing to deal with the Venice, Italy’s rising water problem… with giant concrete bowl islands!

BAM!'s floating island scheme, courtesy of Venice CITYVISION Competition

Sure, the scheme neither addresses how the existing city should retrofit itself nor does it work out some key technical concerns–how does one move from one bowl to another? what happens when the bowls fill with water?–but with renderings so incredibly beautiful why besmirch oneself with such trivialities?

Read more at FastCo. Design

© ORCH_chemollo

The Olivetti Showroom by Carlo Scarpa has recently come full circle. In the late 1950s Adriano Olivetti commissioned Scarpa to design a display space for his Olivetti products. The resulting Olivetti Showroom was a beautiful space used for decades by Olivetti before changing owners. In April of 2011 Scarpa’s Olivetti Showroom re-emerged once again as the display space for Olivetti products. Though this time Scarpa’s design of the space is what is truly on display.  More after the break.

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Photo by Tambako the Jaguar - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/

Venice is commonly regarded as one of the wonders of the world, attracting over 17 million tourists each year. However, the city of Venice faces ongoing problems that threaten its ability to stay above water. The city’s flooding issues are notorious around the world. Every year water surges through its legendary labyrinth of streets wreaking havoc on architectural gems such as the Palazzo San Marco. With its architecture under threat, and dwindling population as many young people flock to the mainland, it is appropriate to think of Venice as a dying relic. read more »

© David Fenster / MOS

Architect: MOS Architects
Location: Venice Biennale Venice, Italy
Project Year: 2010
Photos: David Fenster, MOS Architects read more »

Courtesy of Venice CITYVISION Competition

The CITYVISION competition is an international ideas competition, which challenges architects, engineers, designers, students and creative individuals to develop visionary urban proposals with the intention of stimulating and supporting the contemporary city.  Through innovative ideas and methodologies, which can improve the connection between the historical, present and future city, CITYVISION aims to foster a critical evolution of architectural historiography. The host city for this round of entries was Venice, Italy.  Browse through the winning entries after the break. read more »

© Deasey Penner Photography

The Palms Residence is located on a narrow, urban lot in Venice, California. The home looks inward, incorporating covered decks and a small courtyard space, giving the structure a sense of privacy despite its location on an infill lot.

Architect: Marmol Radziner Prefab
Location: Venice, California, USA
Project Area: 2,800 sqf
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Deasey Penner Photography

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© Joe Fletcher Photography

The Vienna Way residence, designed for a young family, is located on a large, extensively landscaped lot in Venice, CA. Floor to ceiling glazing and outdoor living spaces fully integrate the home within the California native landscape.

Architect: Marmol Radziner
Location: Venice, California, USA
Interior Designer, Landscape Architect, General Contractor: Marmol Radziner
Structural Engineer: C.W. Howe and Partners Inc.
Project Area: 4,554 sqf
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Joe Fletcher Photography

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© OMA

Coinciding with the start of the Venice Biennale, OMA and Prada open an exhibition surveying recent collaborative works. The exhibition appears at Ca’ Corner della Regina, a former palazzo, alongside highlights from the Prada Fondazione collection. More images and information after the break. read more »

© Erhard Pfeiffer

Ehrlich Architects’ objective for this eco-friendly residence in Venice, California was to: design a high-performance home that dissolves the barriers between indoors and outdoors; utilize raw, honest materials appropriate to the bohemian grittiness of the surrounding community; and have the smallest carbon footprint in balance with lifestyle.  This project received a 2009 AIA National Housing Award.

Project description and images after the break.

Architect: Ehrlich Architects
Location: Venice, California, USA
Photographs: Erhard Pfeiffer, Julius Shulman & Juergen Nogai, and Grey Crawford

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City Vision announce the ideas competition about the city of Venice “Venice City Vision Competition”. Venice City Vision Competition is the second edition of the international competition series promoted by City Vision Mag. The purpose of Venice’s competition was to give the opportunity to architects, designers and students to activate their creativity to stimulate the contemporary potential of the city and besides wanting to enhance the historic texture of the city, sees on the aquatic identity of the lagoon a fundamental starting point to create new visions about a possible development of this component.

The imagination of the participants, the use of parametric software and eco technology will be the main driver of Venice’s visions and the proposals will shown how to create new digital landscape for a city so connected to classicism and tradition.

The Venice ideas will be judged by an international jury which will have as president Bjarke Ingels, founder of the Danish office BIG and Neri Oxman, Elena Manferdini, Maria Ludovica Tramontin and Bostjan Vuga, all of whom are distinguished by the large experimentation willingness in their work.

For complete information, visit the competition’s official website.

© Sharon Risedorph

The building is divided vertically down the middle to create a pair of three-story condominiums that use many of the eco strategies and materials that have become Sander Architects signatures. Playful architectural details include double-height translucent walls, exposed steel structure, cutouts in interior walls, and plywood railings and ceiling finishes.  More about this project following the break.

Architects: Sander Architects, LLC
Location: Venice, California, USA
Client: Marc and Heather Venegas
Contractor: Icaza Construction and Bugsy Everett
Photographs: Courtesy of Sander Architects

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© Maciej Landsberg

The installation of Emergency Exit, the Polish Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, by artist Agnieszka Kurant and architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska, seeks to go beyond the logic of urban reality through the creation of ‘urban portable holes’: in-between spaces, places of uncertainty and doubt, of time-space discontinuity, such as abandoned or unfinished buildings, sites of catastrophe or accidents, illegal markets, rooftops and tunnels. The title refers ironically to the health and safety regulations in buildings and urban space that seek to plan, control risk and eliminate the accidental and unexpected. More images and architect’s description after the break. read more »