Manifesta: The Latest Architecture and News

In 2020, the French city of Marseille is set to host Manifesta 13, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art. In preparation for the event, MVRDV has collaborated with thinktank The Why Factory (directed by MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas) in unveiling “The Grand Puzzle,” a 1200-page interdisciplinary pre-biennial research study of the urban potential for Marseille.

MVRDV produced the study through deep analyses of the city, such as interviews and spatial data, culminating in suggestions for possible urban interventions. As part of this engagement, the firm worked with The Why Factory, founded as “the think tank on the future city” at Technical University Delft, who collaborated with local architecture and design schools on the study. Having received overwhelmingly positive feedback, the work will now be “contextualized, analyzed, and refined as it becomes a tool for Marseillais to imagine possible futures for their city.” In addition, the study will serve as a point of inspiration for artistic and cultural interventions both before and during the Manifesta biennial.

Manifesta 12 creative mediator OMA has revealed the Palermo Atlas, an interdisciplinary urban study of Palermo that will inform the organization of 12th edition of Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, that will be held next year in the Italian city. Led by OMA partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, the project outlines a blueprint for Palermo “to plan its future and as a research framework to ensure that Manifesta 12 achieves a long-term impact for the city and its citizens.”

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A photo posted by Manifesta Biennial (@manifestabiennial) on Nov 23, 2016 at 8:05am PST

OMA, led by partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, have been chosen as the "Creative Mediators" for the 12th edition of Manifesta, which will be held in Palermo in 2018. The practice will assemble an interdisciplinary team to investigate the role of governance in the Italian city, and address how contemporary urban centers are affected by tourism, gentrification, migration and climate change. They will also work "with specialists from the fields of contemporary art, sociology, music, cinema and architecture" to develop a series of "interactive, interdisciplinary, performative and artistic interventions."

On June 11th, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, also known as Manifesta, began its 100-day stint in this edition's host city, Zurich, Switzerland. The festival's center-piece is a timber raft floating on Lake Zurich, known as the Pavilion of Reflections. The temporary structure was designed and realized by Studio Tom Emerson and a team of thirty students from ETH Zurich. Constructed primarily of timber, Christian Jankowski, curator of Manifesta 11, describes the exhibit “as a floating multi-functional platform with a giant LED screen, a stand for spectators, a swimming pool and a bar.”

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Manifesta—a nomadic, European biennial of contemporary art which "responds to the new social, cultural and political reality that developed in the aftermath of the Cold War"—emerged in the 1990s. For the eleventh incarnation of the event, which will take place in Zurich during the summer of 2016, Studio Tom Emerson have developed designs for a floating island which "will constitute a new temporary landmark in the city." Located on Lake Zurich and hosting an open-air cinema and integrated swimming pool, the Pavillon of Reflections will act as the central node for the 100-day festival. Designed and realised by a team of thirty students from ETH Zurich, the pavilion aims to offer a space for dialogue and reflection on the specific artworks created for the biennial.