The University of Technology Sydney has announced that the new UTS Central hub by FJMT has opened to the public in Australia. As the final building in the 10-year campus redevelopment program, the project was made to embody the university's strategy and approach to education while redefining the southern gateway to the city's CBD. UTS Central was designed to set a new standard for contemporary education in Sydney.
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.
_credit_Andy_Roberts_hr.jpg?1566321772 "UTS Central. Image Courtesy of Andy Roberts")
_credit_Shane_Lo_0056.jpg?1566321828 "UTS Central. Image Courtesy of Andy Roberts")
_credit_Andy_Roberts_hr.jpg?1566321855 "UTS Central. Image Courtesy of Andy Roberts")
