The Venice Biennale of Architecture

A work collaboratively created by architectural schools around the world exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale. It was estimated to have taken 40,000 hours to complete (source).

Spatial arrangements and architectural design can not be ignored in any large-scale event. Yet, it took the Venice Biennale around a century after its initiation in 1893 to devote an independent section to architectural works. This happened when the Biennale was - for the first time - set up by an architect, Paolo Portoghesi.

Since then, there has been a great deal of discussion around the purpose and directions of Venice Biennale of Architecture. The architectural historian and critic and one of the contributors to the architectural exhibition of the latest Biennal, Léa-Catherine Szacka, brought up this topic last Thursday at the School of Architecture of KTH.

The central theme of the lecture was the role of architectural exhibitions. It is still not clear neither to the organizers nor to the attendants if such venues primarily target architects or public as their audience, if they are supposed to embrace and communicate representations of existing architecture or envision and inspire future works in metaphorical and abstract forms, or whether they are just simply a place for meeting and networking with great names in the career as special guests. Even those who seem to agree on representation of architectural works as the main function of architectural exhibitions, have divided opinions on whether it is the final product that should be exhibited or the process of conceptalization, development and realization of architectural works.

Since its inception in 1980, the Venice Biennale of Architecture has had its all sorts of twists and turns. In 2006, for instance, the exhibition directed by Richard Burdett turned its back to all the elaborate, the spectacular and the glorious and sharpened its focus on cities and experimental aspects of urban design.

This year's directors, Rem Koolhaas and The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) decided to dedicate the entire exhibition to collaborative research on architecture. Also, an effort was made to redefine the relation between the serving and served spaces by mixing the two together. Restaurants, performance halls and dance floors were integrated with galleries and pavilions and a broader variety of artistic works was provided to bring people from different social classes together.

All other events at the Venice Biennale are fairly clear about their mission for accommodating works of contemporary art. The encompassing structures and pavilions also vividly feature articulated designs themselves and strive to communicate own messages to visitors. While the identity of the works exhibited at the event for architecture is still alternating original installations conceived and realized independently and second-hand narratives of reputed architectural works.