"Death in Venice" to Showcase Architecture's Relationship with Mortality

This year’s Venice Architecture Biennale focuses on the fundamentals of architecture, and the theme of "absorbing modernity." Official exhibitions will highlight the basics of modern building, but one exhibition (unaffiliated with the official biennale) will take a unique approach to the term. Architects Alison Killing and Ania Molenda will devote their installation to the most fundamental quality of all: death.

Titled Death in Venice, this presentation will focus on how architecture has facilitated the act of dying during the past 100 years. All of the funding for the exhibition materials has been provided by the Fund for Creative Industries NL, but to transport the show to Venice, Killing and Molenda have started a Kickstarter campaign.

An operating theater, another common space of occupancy for the dying. Image Courtesy of The Wellcome Library

Death in Venice seeks to explore the change in how architecture has dealt with death and the act of dying over the course of the century, as well as why these changes have occurred.  The architects state, “The development of architecture related to death and dying has been, over the past decades, as vivid and significant as the development of other modern ideas that shaped the contemporary city. Nevertheless, it is rarely foregrounded in the architectural history of the 20th century. We decided to bring this topic to the discussion of fundamentals and modernity because death is fundamental and its changing place in modern society is worth significantly more attention from architects and urban designers.”

The exhibition will be shown during June 11-14, at the Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice.

Once again, be sure to visit the Kickstarter page to learn more and support the Death in Venice, and check out the exhibition trailer below!

About this author
Cite: Connor Walker. ""Death in Venice" to Showcase Architecture's Relationship with Mortality" 27 Apr 2014. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/500631/venice-biennale-2014-death-in-venice-to-showcase-architecture-s-relationship-with-mortality> ISSN 0719-8884

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