Reporting from the front

Open to the public from Saturday May 28th to Sunday November 27th 2016, at the Giardini and the Arsenale, the 15th International Architecture Exhibition directed by Alejandro Aravena is titled “Reporting from the Front”. The Exhibition will be laid out in a unitary exhibition sequence from the Central Pavilion (Giardini) to the Arsenale, and will include 88 participants from 37 different countries. 50 of them will be participating for the first time, and 33 architects are under the age of 40.

It will include the 62 National Participations in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the historic city centre of Venice. Five countries will be participating for the first time: Philippines, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Seychelles and Yemen. The Italian Pavilion will be curated this year by Simone Sfriso, curatorial team Massimo Lepore, Simone Sfriso, Raul Pantaleo TAMassociati.

“In his trip to South America – related Alejandro Aravena – Bruce Chatwin encountered an old lady walking the desert carrying an aluminium ladder on her shoulder. It was German archaeologist Maria Reiche studying the Nazca lines. Standing on the ground, the stones did not make any sense; they were just random gravel. But from the height of the stair those stones became a bird, a jaguar, a tree or a flower.” Aravena thus expressed his hope that the Biennale Architettura 2016 might “offer a new point of view like the one Maria Reiche has on the ladder. Given the complexity and variety of challenges that architecture has to respond to, Reporting from the Front will be about listening to those that were able to gain some perspective and consequently are in the position to share some knowledge and experiences with those of us standing on the ground.”

“We believe – explained Aravena – that the advancement of architecture is not a goal in itself but a way to improve people’s quality of life. Given that life ranges from very basic physical needs to the most intangible dimensions of the human condition, consequently, improving the quality of the built environment is an endeavour that has to tackle many fronts: from guaranteeing very concrete, down-to-earth living standards to interpreting and fulfilling human desires, from respecting the single individual to taking care of the common good, from efficiently hosting daily activities to expanding the frontiers of civilization.”
The curator’s proposal is therefore twofold: “on the one hand we would like to widen the range of issues to which architecture is expected to respond, adding explicitly to the cultural and artistic dimensions that already belong to our scope, those that are on the social, political, economical and environmental end of the spectrum. On the other hand, we would like to highlight the fact that architecture is called to respond to more than one dimension at a time, integrating a variety of fields instead of choosing one or another.”

“Reporting from the Front will be about sharing with a broader audience, the work of people who are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural disasters, housing shortage, migration, informality, crime, traffic, waste, pollution and the participation of communities. And simultaneously it will be about presenting examples where different dimensions are synthesized, integrating the pragmatic with the existential, pertinence and boldness, creativity and common sense.” “It is not easy – concluded Aravena – to achieve such a level of expansion and synthesis; they are battles that need to be fought. The always menacing scarcity of means, the ruthless constraints, the lack of time and urgencies of all kinds are a constant threat that explain why we so often fall short in delivering quality. The forces that shape the built environment are not necessarily amicable either: the greed and impatience of capital or the single mindedness and conservatism of the bureaucracy tend to produce banal, mediocre and dull built environments. These are the frontlines from which we would like different practitioners to report, sharing success stories and exemplary cases where architecture did, is and will make a difference.”

The 15th International Architecture Exhibition will feature three Special Projects, the first promoted by La Biennale, the other two the result of agreements stipulated with other institutions, organized and realised by La Biennale itself. The exhibition curated by architect Stefano Recalcati, titled “Reporting from Marghera and Other Waterfronts,” to be shown in the exhibition venues of Forte Marghera (Mestre, Venezia), will analyse significant projects for the urban regeneration of industrial ports, helping to fuel the debate on the conversion of production in Porto Marghera. The collaboration agreement with the Victoria and Albert Museum of London takes its first step in the Applied Arts Pavilion at the Sale d’Armi in the Arsenale, with the exhibition entitled “A World of Fragile Parts,” curated by Brendan Cormier. Finally, in view of the United Nations – Habitat III world conference, to be held in Quito, Ecuador, during the month of October 2016, and as part of the Urban Age programme, organized jointly by the London School of Economics and the Alfred Herrhausen Society, La Biennale will present, also in the Sale d’Armi, a pavilion dedicated to the themes of urbanisation – “Report from Cities: Conflicts of an Urban Age” – with particular attention to the relationship between public spaces and private spaces, curated by Ricky Burdett.

28 May – 27 November 2016
Reporting from the Front
15. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura
Giardini e Arsenale di Venezia