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Arsenale

Arsenale: How will we live together?

This year, due to the Covid emergency, the Biennale of Architecture was postponed to May 2021 and will run until November 2021.

I had the privilege to visit the exhibition in the early days of its opening. It’s a stunning experience, including 112 participants from 46 countries coming from all over the world.

The whole exhibition is organised into five scales, three at the Arsenale and two in the central pavilion at the Giardini venue.

The Arsenale displays the first three scales, distributed as follows:

•Among Diverse Beings: Designing for new bodies & Living with Other Beings

•As New Household: Catering to new demographics, Inhabiting new tectonics, Living apart together

•As Emerging Communities: Appealing to civicness, Re-equipping society, Coming together in Venice, Co-Habitats

At the Giardini venue, you will embrace the other two scales: Across Borders and As One Planet.

In addition to these two shows, there are several installations scattered throughout the city of Venice, and also five related installations at Forte Marghera Park centred on a slightly different theme: How will we play together?

Significantly the curator of this Biennale is Hashim Sarkis, Chair at MIT. The Biennale Architettura displays multiple responses to the initial opening question that unfolds myriads of implications.

In his intense preface, Sarkis states that the question was asked because “we are not happy with the answers that are coming out of politics today.”

Architecture thus can offer alternative practices on how space is conceived. We need a new spatial contract. It has to be universal and inclusive.

Here’s some pictures to introduce you to this challenging journey!

Arsenale, urban mottos

Amended Service, 2021, Sandro Bisa’ Associati, Kathryn Moll, Nicholas de Monchaux
Chileans and Mapuche, Building places to get to know each other, Alejandro Aravena, Victor Oddo’, Gonzalo Arteaga, Diego Torres, Juan Cerda
Displaced Empire: Al Azraq Refugee Camp, Jordan, 2016-2019

Giuseppe Penone, Ideas of Stone, Elm, 2008

Moon Village Earth Rise, 2020, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with European space agency
Interwoven, 2021, Leonmarcial Arquitectos
Material culture: Rethinking the physical substrate for living together, 2021 – Achim Menges, Jan Knippers, ICD, University of Stuttgart
Refuge for Resurgence, 2020, Superflux
Azra Aksamija, tessellation of the unfolded safety vests, together with the arrangement of coveralls, references to the Islamic architecture features of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Silk Road Works, 2020

How will we live together?

What are you waiting for?

TO BE Continued…

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    Walking and talking #2: From Piazza San Marco to the Arsenale

    This is an ideal walk if you enjoy the sun and want to admire the cityscape. Leave the piazza behind you and cross the bridge parallel to the bridge of sighs which used to link Palazzo Ducale to the ancient prison – Giacomo Casanova managed to escape from the Piombi prison thanks to a rope and a boat – and stroll along the fondamenta of Riva degli Schiavoni.

    On your left-hand side a succession of hotels, the Danieli Excelsior, location of a famous James Bond scene (From Russia with love, Casino Royale), the equestrian sculpture in bronze by Ettore Ferrari dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II just in front of Hotel Londra Palace, a few meters ahead the small palace where the writer Henry James lived, a bridge on rio dei Greci and its leaning bell-tower, and the Chiesa of Santa Maria della Pietà, known to be the site that hosted Antonio Vivaldi’s school of music.

    For those interested in the life and works of the red priest, it is worth a visit San Giovanni in Bragora in campo Bandiera e Moro, the church where he was baptised.

    Back to the fondamenta after crossing a wide bridge, on your left-hand side the Arsenale. The word derives from the Arabic darsina’a meaning “house of industry”, where the ships saw the light of day, and where Venetians built their fleets.

    The ancient corderie (where ropes were made) were re-furbished as the site of one of the two locations of the Venice Biennale, the other one is in the island of Sant’Elena, Giardini. A green oasis in the lagoon.

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    What are you waiting for?

    For more info please contact me here: cbvenicebyvenice@gmail.com

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