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Venice: The Latest Architecture and News

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: U.S. Pavilion at 17th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale

The U.S. Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts Design Program announce that the call for applications has been posted for the U.S. presentation at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition held in Venice, Italy, from May 23 to November 29, 2020. The Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition is the premier showcase for revolutionary ideas in contemporary architecture and design through national venues.

This call for applications is specifically for the exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion. The award amount is $325,000 (including $125,000 for pavilion management), with potential additional funding pending availability from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Denise Scott Brown's Photography from the 1950s and 60s Unveiled in New York and London Galleries

An exhibition has opened at New York’s Carriage Trade Gallery celebrating the photography of Denise Scott Brown, highlighting the significance of pop art in the American vernacular. The project was initiated by Scott Brown, and first exhibited in Venice in 2016, with the latest events in London and New York initiated by PLANE-SITE.

The exhibition, titled “Photographs 1956-1966” is co-curated by Andres Ramirez, with 10 photographs selected, curated, and featured for limited sale. As well as being on display at the Carriage Trade Gallery, a concurrent exhibition is taking place in the Window Galleries at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London.

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Rethinking the Future of Air Travel: Students and Fentress Architects Collaborate in Venice Biennale Exhibition

Deemed to be the homogenized "spaces of circulation, consumption, and communication", airports around the world appear to be almost indistinguishable in their dissolution of identity. Despite technological changes in air travel, the typology of the airport has remained consistently ordinary.

In the European Cultural Center’s biennial exhibition, students from North Carolina State University’s College of Design worked alongside Curtis Fentress, Ana-Maria Drughi, and Joshua Stephens of Fentress Architects to propose innovative concepts for reshaping air travel. PLANE—SITE’s latest film from their series of short videos of the Time-Space-Existence exhibition showcases this design collaboration.

Marghera City of Making: International Design Competition Exhibition

The invited design competition aims to explore visions and urban schemes envisaging the re-articulation of manufacturing areas in the territory in-between Mestre and Marghera industrial area. In a condition of radical transformation of labor and productive activities, among the ones that are suitable for Marghera areas, some relevant processes seem to be more feasible and innovative. They consist of the increase of the level of digital content within enterprises, the profound innovation in the manufacturing sector, the inclusion within circular economy processes, the ever-increasing sharing of services and equipment that become places for urban sociality.

AD Classics: Venice Hospital / Le Corbusier

This article was originally published on August 15, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Le Corbusier made an indelible mark on Modernist architecture when he declared “une maison est une machine-à-habiter” (“a house is a machine for living”). His belief that architecture should be as efficient as machinery resulted in such proposals such as the Plan Voisin, a proposal to transform the Second Empire boulevards of Paris into a series of cruciform skyscrapers rising from a grid of freeways and open parks.[1] Not all of Le Corbusier’s concepts, however, were geared toward such radical urban transformation. His 1965 proposal for a hospital in Venice, Italy, was notable in its attempt at seeking aesthetic harmony with its unique surroundings: an attempt not to eradicate history, but to translate it.

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AD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn

This article was originally published on March 30, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Three were originally invited to draw up plans for a ‘Nordic’ pavilion: the Finnish partnership Reima and Raili Pietilä, Sverre Fehn from Norway, and the Swede, Klas Anshelm. Following the selection of Fehn’s proposal in 1959, Gotthard Johansson wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet of the project’s “stunning simplicity [...], without too many architectural overtones”[1] – a proposal for a space able to unite a triumvirate of nations under one (exceptional) roof.

AD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn - Pavilion, FacadeAD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn - Pavilion, HandrailAD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn - Pavilion, FacadeAD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn - Pavilion, Facade, Column, Beam, ArchAD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn - More Images+ 25

ISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture

ISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture - Extension, Facade, Arch, ArcadeISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture - Extension, Garden, Facade, ArchISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture - Extension, Garden, Facade, ArchISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture - Extension, Arch, ArcadeISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture - More Images+ 17

  • Architects: Center for Information Technology and Architecture: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Martin Tamke, Yuliya Sinke Baranovskaya, Vasiliki Fragkia, Rune Noël Meedom Meldgaard Bjørnson-Langen, Sebastian Gatz
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  79
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2018
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Alurays, Dyneema yarn DSM, Glass Fiber rods
  • Professionals: str.ucture, Alurays

Architectural Intervention: Transforming Venice’s Historic Structures to Fit Contemporary Needs

The history of Venice’s architecture, as seen today, is a semblance of styles centuries old. A destination rich in culture, many of Venice’s existing buildings, from homes alongside the thin interior canals to the grand domed churches of Palladio, have remained stagnant in their overall design and layout since the 16th century. Once a hub of Byzantine and European trade, the city now thrives on a steady stream of tourism and a foundational group of local residents.

The structures that make up the city’s compact matrix, once integral to its function as a commercial empire, have come to take on new functions through architectural intervention; notably, architects such as Carlo Scarpa, OMA, and Tadao Ando have had a large hand in this process.

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China's Mega Industrial Regeneration Project has Lessons for the World

Across the world, developed cities are rebelling against heavy industry. While some reasons vary depending on local circumstances, a common global drive towards clean energy, and the shifting of developed economies towards financial services, automation, and the gig economy, is leaving a common trace within urban centers. From Beijing to Detroit, vast wastelands of steel and concrete will stand as empty relics to the age of steel and coal.

The question of what to do with these wastelands, with defunct furnaces, railways, chimneys, and lakes, may be one of the major urban questions facing generations of architects to come. What can be done when the impracticality of industrial complexes, and the precious land they needlessly occupy, collides with the embodied energy, memories, and histories which few would wish to lose?

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Shaping the City: A Forum for Sustainable Cities and Communities

The European Cultural Centre for the Exhibition “Time-Space-Existence” in context of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale is organizing its first conference under the title of: “ Shaping the City : A Forum for Sustainable Cities and Communities”. It includes all participating architectural schools and universities from across the globe in TSE 2018 along with other international institutions and architecture studios.

Loggia d`Ombra / In Praise of Shadows

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  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  50
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2018
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Källemo, Martinsons

Chapel for San Giorgio Maggiore / Andrew Berman Architect

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Venice, Italy

Look Inside the Vatican Venice Biennale Chapels in New Video from Spirit of Space

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Norman Foster. Image Courtesy of Foster + Partners

Vatican City participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale for the first time this year, inviting the public to explore a sequence of unique chapels designed by renowned architects including Norman Foster and Eduardo Souto de Moura. Located in the woods that cover the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the chapels offer interpretations of Gunnar Asplund’s 1920 chapel at Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm, a seminal example of modernist memorial architecture set in a similarly natural wooded context.

A new video produced by Spirit of Space offers a brief virtual tour of the structures that make up the Holy See’s pavilion, lingering on each just long enough to show different views and angles. As members of the public circulate through the chapels in each shot, the scenes give an impression of how each chapel guides circulation.

ReCasting / Alison Brooks Architects

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  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  30
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2018
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Garnica Plywood

8 Treasured Historic Architecture Sites That Have Hosted Huge Rock Concerts

Thanks to their loud, brash, and nocturnal nature, rock concerts are often held in dark bars and nightclubs designed to withstand the abuse of rowdy fans and guitar-smashing rockers. But as musicians earn a following, they eventually graduate from beer-soaked basements to prestigious theaters, outdoor amphitheaters, arenas, and stadiums. For performers and music fans alike, playing or attending a show in a space like Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, Madison Square Garden or Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater can be a momentous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that ties together the sublime power that great music and architecture can both evoke. As rare as these opportunities are, an exclusive group of iconic musicians have managed to reach an even higher level of prestige by organizing one-off performances amid humanity’s most treasured historical sites—from the Acropolis and ancient Mayan cities to the Colosseum and the Eiffel Tower.

While these special concerts have given fans the chance to experience music history firsthand, many have also been mired in scandal as local officials and residents have raised concerns about potential damage to the sites or inappropriate commercial misuse of treasured cultural landmarks. Despite these legitimate and often justified concerns, these nine iconic sites have hosted some of the most ambitious concerts in the history of popular music:

oxymoron / Sauerbruch Hutton

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  • Architects: Sauerbruch Hutton
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  20
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2018
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Kvadrat Soft Cells, iGuzzini, Axis, Axis Lighting, Pollmeier

This Concept Uses a Pre-Fabricated Timber System to Enable Modern, Self-Built Homes

Solutions from the past can often provide practical answers for the problems of the future; as the London-based design and research firm, Space Popular demonstrate with their "Timber Hearth" concept. It is a building system that uses prefabrication to help DIY home-builders construct their own dwellings without needing to rely on professional or specialized labor. Presented as part of the ongoing 2018 Venice Biennale exhibition “Plots Prints Projections,” the concept takes inspiration from the ancient "hearth" tradition to explain how a system designed around a factory-built core can create new opportunities for the future of home construction.

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"Vardiya (the Shift)": The Turkish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale

As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage, we present the completed Turkish Pavilion. To read the initial proposal, refer to our previously published posts, "Turkey's Entry to the 2018 Venice Biennale to Offer Space for Creative Encounter" and “Turkish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale to Host a Series of Student Workshops

Kerem Piker of the firm Kerem Piker Mimarlık curated this year’s Pavilion of Turkey entitled Vardiya (the Shift), together with associate curators Cansu Cürgen, Yelta Köm, Nizam Onur Sönmez, Yağız Söylev and Erdem Tüzün. Coordinated by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and installed at Sale d’Armi, Arsenale, the pavilion functions as a space for gathering, conversation and sharing ideas, with a series of video installations projected on draped fabric screens as well as a lecture and meeting space designed to host the 122 architecture students invited from around the world to participate in workshops, discussions and keynote lectures in the space.

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