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Otherothers: The Latest Architecture and News

Finding "The Front" in Venice: These Maps Reframe the Biennale Along Socio-Economic Lines

This article, by David Neustein and Grace Mortlock of Otherothers, explores a key paradox of the 2016 Venice Biennale: the disconnect between the geography of the topics on show and the geography of the Venice Biennale itself. With maps created by their students at the University of Technology, Sydney, they suggest new ways to explore the Biennale with Aravena's theme in mind.

In announcing his theme for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, “Reporting From the Front,” Biennale director Alejandro Aravena declared that “architecture is about looking at reality” and that “any effort to tackle relevant issues has to overcome the increasing complexity of the world.” Aravena has envisioned a sweeping exhibition of architecture’s “frontiers” and “margins,” as if he were a general surveying the global battlefield from above.

The greatest impediment to this admirable ambition is the architecture of the Venice Biennale itself. Marooned on its tourist island, the Biennale is an idealized world-in-miniature, free of the realities, confusions and conflicts of the world-at-large. The environment is timeless, picturesque, serene: hardly representative of the world’s “increasing complexity.” Within the Biennale gardens (Giardini), former Colonial powers occupy prominent permanent pavilions while other countries, including those of present-day significance, are consigned to the periphery, relegated to temporary off-site spaces, or else absent altogether.

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Otherothers' "Offset House" Reveals the Architecture Hidden in Suburban Homes

In the classic film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and friends manage to obtain a visit with the great and powerful wizard, who appears to them as an enormous, grotesque head, surrounded by smoke and flames, with a booming voice and a hostile demeanor. But when Toto pulls back the curtain, the wizard’s true nature is revealed, and it is only then that he is able to help the gang get the help for which they journeyed many miles down the yellow brick road. In architecture today, suburban houses share many of the characteristics of the wizard’s illusion: large, stand-offish and intimidating. But what if there is a more benevolent architecture hidden behind the smoke and flames? This is the thesis of Australian firm Otherothers' Offset House, on display now at the Chicago Architecture Biennale.

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