The Long Arrivederci
The Venice biennale will just not end! It opened in the warmth of September with mobs of well-known architects in attendance and officially closed on a cold November Sunday with scores of Italian schoolchildren roaming the pavilion grounds. I locked the doors of the U.S. Pavilion, put models and drawings into shipping containers (the show will be reprised at Parsons School of Design in February), and floated our Kartell-donated furniture down the Grand Canal on a barge—just in time for the highest floods in La Serenissima’s post–global warming history. Read More
And the raves continue:
- Arma dei Carabinieri
Thanks to Kristen Richards and ARCHNEWSNOW, she is able to let us know over here at A/N that yes all the hard work, cat fights, long hours, egos might have paid off for the US Pavilion crew. As the reviews come in we will keep them coming. We promise not to put lipstick on a pig about the truth and will post yay’s and nay’s.
The American pavilion – with the best exhibition it has hosted in years, from which celebrity architects are notably absent – showcases 16 projects from all over the country that illustrate how this absence of the state has fostered a roll-up-your-sleeves, do-it-yourself culture, which is proving fruitful and productive in local architecture.
Visions of architecture, practical and inspired, International Herald Tribune
Guardian Review by Jonathan Glancey
Greg Lynn
Nude hippies, big blobs, stunning dog pounds – is the 2008 architecture biennale too wacky for its own good?
…The second part of the biennale, held in the national pavilions dotted through the city’s giardini a few minutes’ walk from the Arsenale, begins to offer some real, adult answers to the question of how we can make warm and lovable buildings for people of all classes, creeds and incomes. The US pavilion takes the theme the most seriously, with displays of radical designs for $20,000 homes executed in some of America’s poorest states by such commendable US practices as the Rural Studio. These designs come as a welcome reality check. Read More
Hugh Pearman on the Venice pavilions (video)
See what RIBA’s Hugh Pearman has to say on the BD web-site
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=725&storycode=3122494&c=2
US Pavilion
Entrance to US Pavilion
In case you want to see the web-site for the US Pavilion…check it out.
http://positioningpractice.us
Acqua Alta
One sturdy soul ignores the pouring rain to check out an installation in the Giardini.
Baby, you’re a star!
Curator Aaron Betsky poses for his 5,748th portrait at the inauguration of the US Pavilion
Eve of Biennale
It only took a few hours—and espressos—to catch the jitters going around Venice the day before press opening. Since I was in tow with the Commissioner of the US Pavilion, our own Bill Menking, and crew it was a privileged view, but no less insane as architect elves, ie support staff, scurried around town trying to find that last minute acetate binder, glue gun, 6-color color printer etc etc. The big guns don’t arrive til later today or even tomorrow if they were not invited to Zaha Hadid’s Read More
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