Continuing our coverage of Kazuyo Sejima’s exciting 2010 Venice Biennale, the International Jury of the exhibition has recently awarded a Golden Lion for the best project of the ‘People Meet in Architecture’ Exhibit to Junya Ishigami+ Associates, a Golden Lion for the best National Participation to the Kingdom of Bahrain, and a Silver Lion for a promising young participant to OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen + Bas Princen. We’ve featured Ishigami + Associates’ work previously on AD, and his Venice exhibit explores similar ideas about transparency and structure evident in his elegantly simplistic Kanagawa Institute of Technology.
More about the project, including a video from Domus about Ishigami’s project and beliefs.
For this spatial experiment, the carbon fiber physical model seeks to blur the boundaries between space and structure. The building, which is planned for some place in Europe, explores a new dimension of transparency as viewers can perceive the void, and understand the inherent lightness and weightlessness that balances the actual physical structure. The jury noted that the installation “pushed the limits of materiality, visibility, tectonics, thinness, and ultimately of architecture itself.”
On the opening day of the press preview, the delicate installation collapsed, and although the team tried to rebuild it, the structure was eventually reduced to just the pillars for the final presentation. However, the jury admired the installation’s strong, ‘unique, and uncompromising vision’, awarding it the Golden Lion.
As seen on designboom. Video from Domus Biennale coverage.
