A Abitare

01
July 2014
14th Architecture Biennale

Themed itineraries through the pavilions
Art and exhibitions in the city
Books not to be missed
01
July 2014

Editorial di Silvia Botti
Instant is part

of the editorial
system of
Reportage In the Labyrinth
of Modernity
text by Luca Molinari

photo by Filippo Romano
Editor in chief
Silvia Botti
Map The Biennale and Venezia
32

curated by Roberto Ricci
Scientific Editor

Luca Molinari

Elements Primary characters
36
Art director
curated by Chiara Maranzana
Eugenio Schinelli

Design
Fabio Grazioli

Central office

Chiara Maranzana
Managing editor
Absorbing Modernity / 1 In Search of a Continuity
60
text by Alessandro Benetti
/ 2 Concentrated Modernity
70
text by Simona Galateo
/ 3 After Colonialism
78
/ 4 The Future Has Begun
86
Monica Guala
text by Simona Galateo
Editorial secretary
Abitare is back. And one step at a time it is revealing its multimedia system.
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Correspondents
text by Alessandro Benetti
Sara Banti
Alessandro Benetti

Italian Pavilion Continual Metamorphoses
Rossella Ferorelli

text by Luca Molinari
Simona Galateo

Luca Galofaro
Emilia Giorgi Monditalia / 1 Research on the Frontier
Roberto Ricci
text by Rossella Ferorelli
Filippo Romano
/ 2 Photographic Investigations
Translations text by Emilia Giorgi

Shanti Evans
David Lowry
/ 3 The Many Paths
of the Sacred
96
110
116
122
text by Emilia Giorgi
Advertising manager

Andrea Schiavon
/ 4 The Remains of the Boom

130
Cover:

/ 5 The Tradition of the Avant-garde 138
Belgian Pavilion
photo Filippo
Romano
Press Review curated by Chiara Maranzana
Booklist text by Luca Galofaro
Awards The Lions of Architecture
SpA
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Fuori Biennale Between Art and Architecture

text by Sara Banti
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152
158
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Ed i t o r i a l
What you are browsing through is the first free digital edition
of Abitare. It is not the digital version of the magazine.
Rather it is a service that the technology allows us to offer you.
We have called it Instant, as it lets us do what our nature
as a monthly publication prevents us from doing: participating
in events while they are still underway. And in fact the first issue
is devoted to the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture,
that will remain open until 23 November.
We reported to you on the Biennale live on the web and through
the social networks in the days of its opening at the beginning
of June. Now we are offering you some reflections and some
itineraries that, we hope, will help you choose what to visit,
enrich your understanding and deepen your judgement.
Abitare Instant Biennale is supported by a microsite devoted
entirely to the exhibition in Venice (biennale.abitare.it), which
will give all the basic information. It is an account of what is
going on at the Arsenale, in the Giardini and in the city.
It is a concentration of the most interesting productions, lines
of research and reactions to a complex event that places Italy
at the heart of the international scene and continues to stir debate.
Silvia Botti
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Reportage
In the Labyrinth
of Modernity
The 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture
is an account of a world undergoing profound
metamorphosis, a workshop to be explored
without necessarily finding answers
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R e p o r ta g e | I n t h e L a b y r i n t h o f M o d e r n i t y
TExt by Luca Molinari

photo by filippo romano
Every two years the Venice Biennale

of Architecture issues a challenge to the
critics, the culture of the discipline and
a public arriving from all over the world
by bringing architecture to the centre
of attention for a few months and
proposing a possible key to understanding
it and looking to its future.
This year the gauntlet thrown down
by the custodians of the Golden Lion
has been an ambitious and risky one:
entrusting the direction of the exhibition
to Rem Koolhaas, the man who many
consider the most influential architect
and intellectual of the last part of the
20th century, and betting on a different
formula from that of previous years.
The choice made by the Dutch architect
has been radical: not to focus on
architects but on architecture and its
meaning, imposing three very binding
thematic and conceptual frameworks
on the two large central pavilions, usually
curated by the director, and on the many
national pavilions that have always
constituted the other fundamental part
of the exhibition.
After many years of exhibitions in which
architecture appeared to be an emanation
of the person who had conceived it,
affirming the centrality of a star system in
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which Koolhaas himself played a leading

role, an attempt has been made to change
tack, focusing attention on the primary
characteristics of a world undergoing
profound metamorphosis and shifting the
emphasis from the exhibition as a picture
of the state of the art to the event as
an unsettled workshop in which to wander
without necessarily finding responses.
Fundamentals is the central theme, and
springs from the need to go back to the
basics of architecture, to its primary
and symbolic elements in order to look
at what this universal discipline, sapped
by years of crisis in its structure and its
meaning, actually is and what it could
become. And starting from this central
hub, Koolhaas has structured three, large
thematic containers: Elements
of Architecture at the Central Pavilion
in the Giardini, Monditalia in the Corderie
of the Arsenale and Absorbing Modernity:
1914-2014 as a guideline for the national
pavilions.
Elements of Architecture is an exhibition
crammed with often absorbing ideas
capable of stimulating visitors curiosity
and prompting the questions needed
to look at the 14 primary elements
of architecture identified by Koolhaas.
The exhibition that, room after room,
interweaves stories of windows and

balconies, walls, faades, floors, ceilings,
sanitary fixtures, doors, stairs, ramps
and escalators, corridors, lifts and roofs
speaks to us of the complexity of every
element, of the obsessions that have
often left their mark on the works of
many great architects and of the endless
artisan and industrial experiments
that have driven the evolution of each
of these materials in human history.
Monditalia is instead a highly
experimental attempt to bring together
all the arts with which the Biennale
is concerned (except art itself).
This is the first time that the artistic
director of the Architecture Biennale has
dedicated the whole of one of the most
representative places in the exhibition
to the host country, regarded as
a unique and paradoxical laboratory
of the contemporary condition.
At the entrance visitors are greeted
simultaneously by the illuminations
of Santa Rosalia and some details
of Lorenzettis frescoes of Good
Government. Then a strictly cadenced
sequence of 41 micro-installations
entrusted to young researchers alternates
with the images of 82 films devoted
to Italy, dance sessions and, above all,
schizophrenic slivers of a country unable

to find an acceptable normality between
ancient and modern ruins, psychedelic
fragments, memories of the Radicals,
sighs of a faded economic boom,
traditional and novel spaces of religiosity,
Alpine sublime and contemporary
ephemera.
Absorbing Modernity is undoubtedly
the most successful part of Fundamentals
because the decision to ask countries
to reflect on the difficult relationship
between modernity and context
throughout the last century has resulted
in the construction of a grand history
in fragments of our recent architecture,
bringing to light stories never told before
and interesting authors in stimulating
presentations that allow us all to make
a unique journey through the history
of the architecture of the long 20th century.
The last century is not brought to
a definitive close with this important
section of the exhibition, as its curator
may have hoped, but we are certainly
offered an involuntary, extremely
powerful image of what we are and of the
many contradictions in which we are
immersed, as we wait to find the invisible
thread that will at last lead us out
of the labyrinth of modernity.
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The Biennale and Venice

curated by Roberto Ricci
Ferrovia
EVENTS/EXHIBITIONS
Piazzale Roma
Rialto
Arsenale
Ca Giustinian
Accademia
Zattere
Isola di S. Giorgio
Giardini
Isola della Giudecca
Isola di S. Servolo
PARTECIPATING COUNTRIES
Armenia
ca Zenobio, Collegio
Armeno Moorat Raphael
Dorsoduro 2596 [4]
Cipro
palazzo Malipiero
S. Marco 3198 [6]
Costa dAvorio
chiesa S. Francesco della Vigna
Castello 2786 [3]
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Kenya
isola di S. Servolo [9]
Lussemburgo
ca del Duca, S. Marco 3052 [7]
Montenegro
palazzo Malipiero
S. Marco 3079 [6]
Nuova Zelanda
palazzo Pisani, Cannaregio 6104
(calle delle Erbe, S. Marina) [2]
Paraguay
liceo artistico statale
M. Guggenheim
Dorsoduro 2613 [5]
Romania
palazzo Correr, Cannaregio 2214
(Campo S. Fosca) [1]
Ucraina
riva dei Sette Martiri
Castello [8]
Arsenale, Castello 2126/a (campo

della Tana): Happiness forecourt
= Largo da felicidade;
Fundamentally Hong Kong?
Delta Four 19842044 [18]
Arsenale Nord, spazio Thetis:
Air fundamental: collision
between inflatable
and architecture [12]
Arsenale Nord, Tesa 100: Across
Chinese Cities Beijing [11]
Caasi, palazzo S. Maria Nova
Cannaregio 6024 (campiello
S. Maria Nova): Young Architects
in Africa [5]
Ca Foscari esposizioni
Dorsoduro 3246: Mikhail
Roginsky beyond the red door [7]
Cantieri navali, Castello 40
(fondamenta Quintavalle):
Grafting architecture.
Catalonia at Venice [20]
Conservatorio B. Marcello
S. Marco 2810
(Campo S. Stefano): Planta [15]
Ex chiesa di S. Lorenzo
Castello 5069
(campo S. Lorenzo): Masegni [10]
Fondazione Cini, Isola
di San Giorgio Maggiore [26]:
Glass Tea House Mondrian
Fondazione di Venezia,
Dorsoduro 3488/u (Rio Novo):
M9 / Transforming the city [6]
Fondazione Guggenheim
Dorsoduro, 701-704 [22]:
Solo per i tuoi occhi
(fino al 31 agosto); Azimut/h
(dal 20 settembre)
Fondazione Prada, Calle Corner
2215, 30135 [3]: Art or Sound
Istituto S. Maria della Piet
Castello 3701: The space that
remains: Yao Jui-Chungs ruins
series; Moskva: urban space [17]
Officina delle Zattere, Dorsoduro

919 (fondamenta delle Zattere):
Lifting the curtain [21]
Palazzetto Tito, Dorsoduro 2826
[23]: Modern Times
Palazzo Bembo, S. Marco 4793
(riva del Carbon):
Time Space Existence [9]
Palazzo delle Prigioni,
Castello 4209 (S. Marco):
Township of domestic parts:
made in Taiwan [16]
Palazzo Fortuny
San Marco, 3780 [8]
Palazzo Franchetti
S. Marco, 2847 [14]:
Genius Loci Spirit of Place
Palazzo Grassi, Campo
San Samuele, 3231 [13]:
Resonance; Lillusione della luce
Palazzo Michiel dal Brus
Cannaregio 4391/a (Strada
Nova): Made in Europe [4]
Palazzo Mora, Cannaregio 3659
(Strada Nova): Time Space
Existence [1]
Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi
Dorsoduro 810 (campo
S. Agnese ): Gotthard
landscape the unexpected view;
Once upon a time in
Liechtenstein; Salon Suisse:
the next 100 years scenarios
for an alpine city state; Z club. on
money, space,
postindustrialization, and [25]
Palazzo Zen, Cannaregio 4924
(Gesuiti): Adaptation [2]
Punta della Dogana,
Dorsoduro [24]: Prima Materia
Zuecca project space
complesso delle Zitelle
Giudecca 32
(fondamenta delle Zitelle):
The Yenikapi project [27]
32 | 33
Giardini
The Biennale and Venice
Isola di S. Servolo
ARSENALE
GIARDINI
Fundamentals
Elements of Architecture
Central Pavilion [16]
Absorbing Modernity
1914-2014
Monditalia
Corderie [15]
Arsenale
Albania [10]
Argentina [11]
Bahrain [12]
Cile [12]
Cina [14]
Costa Rica [10]
Croazia [12]
Emirati Arabi Uniti [11]
Estonia [12]
Indonesia [12]
Iran [10]
Irlanda [12]
Italia [13]
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Kosovo [12]
Kuwait [12]
Lettonia [12]
Macedonia [10]
Malesia [12]
Marocco [12]
Messico [11]
Mozambico [12]
Per [10]
Portogallo [12]
Repubblica Dominicana [12]
Slovenia [12]
Sudafrica [10]
Thailandia [12]
Turchia [10]
Giardini
Australia [22]
Austria [17]
Belgio [30]
Brasile [20]
Canada [44]
Corea [42]
Danimarca [34]
Egitto [19]
Finlandia [27]
Francia [37]
Germania [43]
Giappone [40]
Gran Bretagna [41]
Grecia [25]
Israele [29]
Olanda [26]
Padiglione Venezia [21]
Paesi Nordici [35]
Polonia [23]
Rep. Ceca e Slovacchia [36]
Romania [24]
Russia [39]
Serbia [18]
Spagna [33]
Stati Uniti dAmerica [31]
Svizzera [38]
Ungheria [28]
Uruguay [32]
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[16]
Elements of architecture
Primary characters
The exhibition curated by Rem Koolhaas is a sinuous route

through the most basic entities of architecture,
the fundamentals of construction. It tells stories of windows,
balconies, walls, floors, doors, stairs and corridors. It reveals
their complexity, the experiments to which they have been
subjected over the course of human history and even
the obsessions they have generated in many architects
Rem Koolhaas. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
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photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
Elem ents o f architec tu r e | Pr i mary char ac ters
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Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters
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Photo by photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
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photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
Absorbing
Modernity/1
In Search
of a Continuity
A look at the last 100 years of history going
beyond differences of time and politics:
an approach that characterizes the research
of countries which differ greatly from one
another, from Croatia to Paraguay, from Bahrain
to Brazil, from Austria to the United States
Bahrain [12]
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A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 1 . I n S e a r c h o f a C o n t i n u i t y
TExT BY Alessandro Benetti
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a renunciation of quality and that finds

in the design of offices its preferred field
of action on the global scale.
The Brazilian pavilion responds to
the hegemonic convictions of the USA
by laying claim to the absolute centrality
of the motherland in the worldwide
architectural debate, now as in the past.
Modernity as Tradition cancels out
the dichotomy (temporal and cultural)
between the two spheres and proposes,
not without a touch of boasting, the
image of an always modern nation
that would certainly have deserved more
courageous choices of presentation.
Staying on the South American continent,
Peru emphasizes the importance of Lima
as a proving ground for the highly topical
theme of the reconciliation between
formal (modern) and informal (local)
residential architecture, while Paraguay
offers with humility its own original
contribution to world modernity: the
aptitude for the optimization of human
and material resources proper to
a peripheral and far from affluent nation.
Denmark and Thailand propose more
contradictory visions and look to tradition
as a source of inspiration for the
reactivation of virtuous processes
Ireland [12]
The arbitrary limits of Koolhaass century

frame a hundred years of turbulent
history, marked by upheavals so frequent
and contradictory as to bring into
question the existence of any form
of continuity within the period. And yet it
is precisely the aspiration to trace
continuous dynamics in the process
of reconciliation between modernity
and the local identity that the reflections
of many of the participants in Absorbing
Modernity: 1914-2014 have in common.
Infra-ireann, for example, focuses on
the construction of infrastructure on Irish
territory as the vehicle of a modern
used to construct a sense of national
identity after independence from Britain.
It is amazing, from this viewpoint, that
the recent invasion of the country by the
multinationals of digital communication
should be seen as the outcome of a linear
process, and not as an alarming signal
of a new form of colonization.
In the dialectic between importers and
exporters of modernity, it goes without
saying that the United States belongs
to the second category. OfficeUS puts
on display the daily life of a big American
architectural firm, location of a production
that has no fear of quantity leading to
USA [31]
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Brazil [20]
Paraguay [5]
Peru [10]
of modernisation, running out of steam

today: the natural element and the
spiritual sphere are the key elements
of the two approaches.
Still greater anxieties emerge from two
countries that were once part
of Yugoslavia: while Serbia turns its back
on history and takes architecture into
the autonomous and abstract realm
of drawing, Kosovo, which has never
absorbed modernity, represents itself
through a kaleidoscope of images without
hierarchy, remains of a national identity
that the 20th century has literally blown to
smithereens.
Frequent, finally, is the recourse to the
expedient of the archive of designs, as
guarantee of a thematic coherence that
does not always reach satisfactory levels:
in the case of Croatia and Uruguay there
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is a feeling that this might have been

an alibi for research that has not attained
a sufficient level of synthesis; Bahrain
and the United Arab Emirates have united
their forces in a commendable attempt
to track down and preserve the most
significant episodes of ill-treated Arab
modernism, as a cultural climate that held
sway in the countries of the Near East
throughout the century. Austria, finally,
has had the merit of choosing a clear
and well-defined theme (the space of the
political debate, in its permanent as well
as evolutionary dimension), of producing
a rich taxonomy of it and of translating it
into a presentation of great scenic effect
with three-dimensional reproductions
of government buildings that define
a surprising rustication on the inside
walls of Hoffmanns pavilion.
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Thailand [12]
Photo by Photo by Relja Ivanic
photo by Relja Ivanic
Denmark [34]
Serbia [18]
Kosovo [12]
photo by Jorge Gambini e Martn Craciun
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photo by Andreas Balon
Croatia [12]
United Arab Emirates [11]
Uruguay [32]
Austria [17]
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Photo by Christiane Burklein (Livegreen)
Absorbing
Modernity/2
Concentrated
Modernity
Great Britain, Japan, Chile, the Netherlands,
France and the other countries that have chosen
to look back at the events of the period between
the 1950s and the 1970s in order to make their
own contribution to contemporary architecture
Chile [12]
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A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 2 . C o n c e n t r at e d M o d e r n i t y
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on the society of the day and on

contemporary society. The British Pavilion
was curated by the London-based
FAT studio, together with Crimson
Architectural Historians, which has put
together a colourful, pop-inspired
exhibition entitled Clockwork Jerusalem.
The contents prompt a reflection on how,
starting from a combination of interests
and disciplinary crossovers, the
development of British modernism forged
a new vision of society and on how all this
still influences modern consciousness
and contemporary panoramas. The French
pavilion curated by Jean Louis-Cohen
turns its attention to modernity and its
contradictions, in terms of innovation
on the one hand and of side effects on
the other. Starting from sequences from
Jacques Tatis film Mon Oncle, which is
a good example of the contradictory
elements which the exhibition sets out to
present, one wonders if the development
of the modern, in all the various facets
of technological, social and economic
innovation, was a promise or a threat.
A different approach was taken
by Germany, the Netherlands and Chile,
which each focused on a specific design
project as a manifesto and a starting
point for a reflection on the contemporary
Great Britain [41]

France [37]
The individual countries taking part

in the Biennale reacted in different
and sometimes even contrasting ways
to Rem Koolhaass invitation: for all it was
an opportunity to examine their particular
contribution to contemporary
architecture over a period of history.
A sort of fil rouge, a unifying strand
running through the exhibition, is the way
both Old World countries and some
overseas nations have focused
in particular on the period between
the 1950s and the 1970s for their critical
analysis, and have traced the problems,
the features, the strengths and
weaknesses of the Modern Movement
back to the happenings of those decades.
It is no coincidence that this is the critical
approach adopted by Great Britain,
France, Germany and the Netherlands:
the profound changes of those years
marked a turning point in the history
of the architecture of those countries,
leaving behind an indelible mark
and a lasting legacy still to be explained
and understood.
Great Britain and France, for example,
devote their investigations to the
consequences of the technological,
industrial, scientific and social
development of the Modern Movement
photo by Cristiano Corte
TExT by SIMONA GALATEO
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photo by Bas Princen

Germany [43]
Belgium [30]
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The Netherlands [26]
world. Germany asks questions on the

subject of representation and the idea
of architecture as a political and social
medium, by reconstructing part
of the Kanzlerbungalow, the chancellors
reception space in Bonn before
the German capital moved back to Berlin,
searching for points of comparison,
dialogue, interaction and new, virtual
meeting places. The Netherlands goes
even further presenting Jaap Bakemas
Open Society project a utopian vision
of the generative power of architecture
in giving form and content to an open,
democratic, egalitarian and inclusive
society as a possible model for the
contemporary world to accompany
development and the emancipation
of society and at the same time to allow
individuals to lead a fulfilling life,

with plenty of special websites to open
the debate. The Chile pavilion brings
to Venice the first concrete panel (which
once bore Salvador Allendes signature)
produced in the first prefabrication plant
of 1972, and fills the space with original
items from the living-room of a certain
Seora Gutierrez, a resident of one
of the first prefabricated concrete
housing blocks, completing the exhibition
with 28 models of building systems used
in the world between 1931 and 1981.
The Belgium pavilion has gone
in a different direction, as have the
Switzerland, Japan and Scandinavian
pavilions. The Belgians offer a glimpse
of domestic landscapes, taking the theme
of interior design as a fundamental
74 | 75

component of architectural theory. It thus

investigates the lived-in spaces within
the constructed environment, and the
way their occupants modified, adapted
and personalised them, in an almost
ethereal space immersed in white,
and closely related to previous editions,
with fragments of furnishings, panels
with plenty of printed images but little
in the way of text. Switzerland, under
the guidance of Hans Ulrich Obrist,
chooses to develop the concept of its own
research for the whole duration
of the exhibition, through meetings,
conversations and lectures, with Italian
and international guests, offering the
public a vision of two important historical
archives, those of Cedric Price and
of Lucius Burckhardt, explained to visitors
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by young guides. The elaborate

installation inside the Japan pavilion
includes a collection of materials,
archives, drawings, work books
and videos, for visitors to consult, works
by those architects who in the 1970s
were taking their first independent
and innovative steps towards modernity,
giving substance and form to experimental
research that would have an influence
on later decades.
The Scandinavian countries, meanwhile,
have chosen to look at the legacy
of their architecture in African countries,
presenting an extensive panorama
of idioms, encounters, transformations,
crossovers and the work of little-known
architects in the diverse landscapes
of Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia.
Japan [40]
Switzerland [38]
Nordic Pavilion [35]

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Absorbing
Modernity/3
After
Colonialism
The complex reflections on the modern

of countries that have experienced foreign rule
in the past or more recent separations behind
the Iron Curtain, from Czech Republic to Iran, from
Romania to Mozambique, from Cyprus to China
Cyprus [6]
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A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 3 . Aft e r C o l o n i a l i s m
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of which carefully highlight alongside

the architectural developments
what has happened in their respective
countries national histories.
Czechoslovakia has lived through many
turbulent periods in the last hundred
years: Nazi occupation, socialism,
Communist oppression, the Velvet
Revolution and the breaking up
of the country into two separate states.
The exhibition 2x100 mil. m2 offers
an interesting interpretation and takes
social housing as the unifying theme
underlying historical events over the time
frame in question and takes the visitor
on a journey that starts in the home
of a 20th-century blue-collar worker,
examines the collective homes
of the Communist period, then progresses
to the detached houses after the fall
of Soviet power, indicating residential
building work on a huge black map.
Similarly, the Iran pavilion looks back
at events in its history by focusing
on three key periods in the 20th century
on a long white wall, a narrative sequence
that illustrates the architecture
of the revolution, presented alongside
the buildings that went up under the
various Shahs, in an attempt to see in
their differences the existence of a desire
Cyprus [6]
Romania [24]
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photo by Alex Conu
A varied group of pavilions approach

Koolhaass chosen theme of one hundred
years of architecture by regarding
modernity in relation to the politic
and historical events that took place
in that period. Some explore
the contrasting legacies of forms
of colonialism, others look at civil wars
and the succession of regimes that have
seized power over the decades.
The Cyprus pavilion, for example, offers
an elaborate and colourful testimony
(through a series of collages created
using images and other fragments)
of the way it has been invaded, conquered
and colonised down the ages, highlighting
not always in a perfectly clear way
the legacy that each invading force left
behind. Romania, on the other hand,
commissioned Mihai Sima to curate
the Site under Construction exhibition,
which retraces the way in which the
country pursued an urban policy based
on intensive industrial development,
presenting the construction of inner-city
industrial plants as a symbol of acquired
modernity that left a huge urban problem
to resolve after their demise.
Several different approaches were taken
by Czech Republic and Slovakia (together
at Giardini), Iran and Mozambique, all
Text by SIMONA GALATEO
Mozambique [12]
Czech Republic and Slovakia [36]

Iran [10]
#01
for experimentation that never bore fruit

in contemporary production.
The Mozambique pavilion offers its
reflection on modernity in an exhibition
entitled Architecture Between Two Worlds,
with two extensive sections: the first gives
an account of the country as it is today,
in terms of landscape, infrastructure
and social, economic and urban aspects,
in a geographical and cultural context;
the second brings together and compares
examples of significant works
of architecture from the hundred-year
period with works of architecture in
Mozambique, as the basis from which
other forms of local architecture have
developed throughout the country.
Another interesting exhibition among
the other events being held elsewhere

in Venice fits in logically with the national
analyses in the Giardini pavilions.
Across the Chinese Cities Beijing,
curated by Michele Brunello
and Beatrice Leanza, examines how
the Chinese capitals Dashilar district
has managed to survive the process
of demolition and upward development
that has affected the rest of Beijing.
The sober, fluid exhibition presents
in chronological sequence models of the
roads that encloses the district, together
with a set of themed rooms that offer an
account of local practices of conservation
and productive development, concluding
with a vision of how urban development
might continue in the future.
82 | 83
Across the Chinese Cities Beijing [11]

being held in the spaces
of Arsenale Nord, can be reached
with a special vaporetto service.
#01
84 | 85
Photo by Photo By Andrea Avezz Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
Absorbing
Modernity/4
The Future
Has Begun
Modernity is seen as a process that is by now
complete and leaves room for new visions
in the pavilions of Korea, winner of the Golden
Lion at this Biennale, and countries like Morocco,
Turkey, Canada, Spain or Kuwait
#01
Russia [39]
86 | 87
Photo by Photo By Kyungsub Shin
A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 4 . T h e F u t u r e H a s B e g u n
Text by Alessandro Benetti
#01
smiling hostesses. Through a schizophrenic

mix of original materials and intentionally
cheap reproductions, the curators shout
to the world their scathing criticism
of the impoverishment of the cultural
debate in the country that was the cradle
of the most visionary of the 20th-century
avant-gardes.
More cryptic but equally effective are the
choices made in Potential Monuments of
Unrealised Futures, Albanias contribution
to the 2014 Biennale. The paintings
of Edi Hila refined and aestheticizing
reinterpretations of banal examples
of architectural superfetations and
Adrian Pacis video which documents
the transformation of a block of stone
into a column on a voyage across the
oceans speak of a modernity that has
invaded the country only to turn its back
on it. On the other hand, it is precisely
the omnipresent incomplete modern
that carries the future potentials of a
nation happy to be faced with a possible
new beginning.
Synthesis of the contents and elegance
in the mise-en-scne are the best
qualities of the Israeli pavilion too:
the reflection on a century of settlement
of the territory, which has determined
the current urburban (a neologism
rich in spatial and cultural meanings)
condition, is rendered sublime in the
Korea [42]
Photo by Photo By Andrea AvezzCourtesy la Biennale di Venezia
The Koreans of Minsuk Cho, curator

of the pavilion that won the Golden Lion,
look to the future above and beyond
their ideological polarization. In the small
pavilion overflowing with pictures,
drawings and data, the socialist North
and the capitalist South flaunt their own
specific characteristics, convinced
of the absolute extraneousness of the
other half of the apple, but discover
themselves, with surprise, to be far more
alike than they expected.
Perhaps this new awareness can inspire
the contemporary construction
of the Korean nation, which passes
first of all through the reappropriation
of the Demilitarized Zone that cuts
the peninsula in half.
Like the Korean, many pavilions take
advantage of the research theme
proposed by Koolhaas to turn their backs
on the modernity of the last century,
considered a process now concluded. Its
logic, aesthetics and ambitions become a
term of comparison for the development
of new visions and processes projected
towards the next hundred years.
The settling of accounts with the recent
past has not always been done peacefully.
Fair Enough, at the Russian pavilion, sells
off the symbols of the socialist utopia
at a very lively architecture fair, full
of stands with evocative names and
Albania [10]
88 | 89
Photo by Photo By Andrea AvezzCourtesy la Biennale di Venezia
Photo by Image courtesy of Latreille Delage Photography 2014
A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 4 .T h e F u t u r e H a s B e g u n
Morocco [12]
#01
Israel [29]
Canada [44]
rhythmic ballet of pantographs on the

sand, a very welcome poetic jolt at
a Biennale that is sometimes too prosaic.
Canada and Morocco look at the
potentialities of their more peripheral
regions where the climate is more extreme,
the Nunavut and the Western Sahara
respectively: in places where modernity
has surrendered to the forces of nature,
the architecture of the future may find
its most effective design responses.
Among the nations of the Iberian
peninsula, Spain and Catalonia underline
the importance of the themes
of the Interior and Grafting as terrain
of confrontation and material overlap
between modern pre-existences and
contemporary design, while Portugal
aspires to take the debate over housing

to the highest levels of disciplinary
reflection, delivering it from the excessive
power of market dynamics.
Hungary and Turkey stress the centrality
of the human being as constructor,
user and producer of the imagery that
accompanies architectural practice:
in particular, the Eurasian nation
investigates the role of immaterial
memory as key to the understanding
of the relationship between modern
and contemporary.
Curious, finally, is the response of Kuwait
to Koolhaass call: Acquiring Modernity
is the slightly out-of-sync perspective
of a nation that is only now constructing
its own modernity.
90 | 91
Portugal [12]
Spain [33]
A bs o r b i n g M o d e r n i t y | 4 . T h e F u t u r e H a s B e g u n
#01
Turkey [10]
Kuwait [12]
92 | 93
Italian Pavilion
Continual Metamorphoses
[13]
photo by Cino Zucchi
It is an anomalous idea of modernity, the Italian

one, recounted by the curator Cino Zucchi
through graftings, i.e. actions that allow
the incorporation of earlier states
and the generation of new configurations
#01
96 | 97
I ta l i a n Pav i l i o n | C o n t i n u a l M e ta m o r p h o s e s
Innesti/Grafting is the title and underlying

theme chosen by Cino Zucchi, curator
of the Italian pavilion at this years
Architecture Biennale and one of the best
contemporary architects in Italy, in order
to satisfy Rem Koolhaass request to
reinterpret modernity over the last 100
years through a national point of view.
For Zucchi the basic proposition is that
Italian architecture from the First World
War to the present day exhibits an
anomalous modernity, represented
by its capacity to interpret and incorporate
earlier contexts through constant change.
This has not involved merely formal
adaptations of the new with respect to
what is already there, but grafts capable
#01
of shaping the conditions of the context

into a new configuration. This was an
attitude once viewed by some as nostalgic
or a compromise, but which is today
admired in Europe and the rest of the
world as the most original contribution
of the Italian culture of design.
And the question of grafting in design is
tackled in the first place by the Milanese
architect through a high quality form of
journey that accompanies you physically
through the different sections on show
and offers some interesting innovations
in the entrance and in the spaces of the
gardens at the back, with a large and
contemporary version of the Ear of
Dionysius that invites you in and a long
TExT by Luca Molinari
98 | 99
photo by Marina Caneve
Cino Zucchi devotes

the first part of the pavilion
to Milan, which he considers
the most original and extensive
workshop for Italian-style
modernity in the 20th century.
#01
100 | 101
The second part of the pavilion

presents over 90 works
set in historical contexts,
traditional landscapes, outlying
metropolitan areas.
#01
102 | 103
Pad i g l i o n e I ta l i a
strip of metal that becomes a sinuous

seat/roof in the outdoor area at the end
of the exhibition.
Inside Zucchi has sought to respond to
the familiar limitations and potentialities
of this space (the biggest national pavilion
at the Biennale) by splitting it up into
a series of thematic areas that aim
to enter into dialogue with one another
but that, when seen as a whole,
are treated as stories with a clear
independence of narration and language.
The first part of the pavilion is devoted
to Milan, which Zucchi considers the
largest and most original experimental
laboratory for Italian-style modernity
of the last century.
If the entrance space is taken up by a
difficult attempt to look at the Expo from
the perspective of the post-2015 future,
most of the rest of the space is organized
into a proper exhibition with sections that
analyse the most significant experiences
of Milanese modernity, starting out from
the activity of the Fabbrica del Duomo,
the institution responsible for the
maintenance, preservation and
restoration of the cathedral, and passing
through Filaretes Ospedale Maggiore
and the Foro Buonaparte, but lingering
above all on the golden age of the period
following the Second World War and the
Left to right: Carmelo Baglivo,

Display space on Piazza Navona, 2013,
digital photomontage; Luca Galofaro,
Stazione Spaziale Ritorni 01, 2013,
digital photomontage; Cherubino
Gambardella, Supernapoli. Napoli
with new structures grafted on, 2014,
mixed technique and collage on paper;
Agostino Osio, Milano Liberty, 2014,
collage; Beniamino Servino, Squat
tower with Nervi citation, 2014,
digital photomontage.
#01
104 | 105
Behind the second room

of the Italian Pavilion, a wall
of images curated by Studio
Azzurro brings together
hundreds of videos published
on social networks.
second generation of Italian modern

architects, which is given a fresh visual
interpretation.
The second part of the pavilion pays
greater attention to the current situation
in Italy, with an increase in the number
of voices and their potential, and a sense
of necessary inconsistencies, which are
regarded as the true richness of Italian
architectural culture in todays world
and seen by the curator as a kind of
landscape in which one can move freely
around. Over 90 designs of buildings are
grafted onto historical contexts,
traditional landscapes and metropolitan
suburbs to map out the state of Italian
architecture and as one of the more
traditional ways of interpreting it.
A contrast with this landscape of actual
#01
constructions is provided by a great wall

of architectural drawings curated with
clarity and sensitivity by Emilia Giorgi,
who focuses on one of the most lively
and complex areas of research and
discussion in terms of the current
architectural scene through original
drawings by Baglivo, Servino, Gambardella
and Galofaro, which are used to create
a powerful picture gallery.
Behind the drawings is another wall
of images curated by Studio Azzurro,
which brings together hundreds of video
testimonies collected through social
networks and which tries to show the real,
inhabited and most problematic landscapes
in the country and which can be followed
through a small and delicate presentation
designed by Matilde Cassani.
106 | 107
Monditalia/1
Research
on the Frontier
[15]
Limits, edges, thresholds, barriers, margins

and enclosures: the theme of the boundary
in a world undergoing constant geopolitical
realignment and in a country that finds itself
in a unique geographical position,
that of gateway between North and South
Italian Limes
#01
110 | 111
M ON D ITA LI A | 1 . R e s e a r c h o n t h e F r o n t i e r
Text by Rossella Ferorelli
Italian Limes
#01
One of the most interesting subjects

of contemporary research in the areas
that make up the vast fields that we call
architecture today is that of the
boundary. Limits, edges, thresholds,
archipelagos, barriers, margins and
enclosures: these are the names that
a growing body of literature has chosen
to apply, in recent years, to a series
of multiscalar spatial phenomena, united
by the role of impediment to movement
that architecture plays in them.
It may be because the changes underway
in the geopolitical order are
unprecedented, and it may also be that
the pure architectural form is no longer
a relevant paradigm, but it is evident that
an attention to themes of a geographical
and global nature is common to a broad
swathe of the international research
carried out by young designers. And so
it has been given a prominent place
in Monditalia, whose ambition is to
constitute a representative sample
of this transnational network devoted
to investigation.
The installation that has focused most
clearly on the theme is Italian Limes,
curated by Folder, whose interesting
perspective treats the borders of Italy
as a territorial system made up in equal
measure of regulatory instruments and
spatial questions. Starting out from
a 2009 provision of the government that,
owing to the melting of the Alpine
glaciers, recognizes the mutability
of the northern Italian border, Folder

and its collaborators have built a machine
connected to a series of GPS tracking
units they have placed on the Similaun
glacier. Thus the installation
in the Corderie is a device consisting
of a mechanical arm, controlled by
an Arduino board, that draws the Italian
boundary on the basis of signals received
in real time via satellite from the sensors
on the glacier, continually producing maps
that visitors can take away with them.
The story of the evolution of that border
in the north is entrusted to a threedimensional model onto which a series
of graphic images is projected.
The project has been assigned a special
mention by the jury of the Biennale.
In an almost complementary manner,
Pietro Pagliaro and Giacomo Cantoni
propose Post-Frontier, a project that looks
at Italy as the southern frontier of Europe
and, at the same time, a territory in
constant and contradictory relationship
with the Mediterranean, itself an area of
conflict and of negotiation over freedom
and rights. Exclusion, confinement and
surveillance are the paradigms around
which the architecture gels, generating
frontier-buildings which give concrete
form to all the regulatory and biopolitical
ambiguities that govern the movements
of large numbers of human beings
at a global level. Pagliaro and Cantonis
device is a plaster model that constructs
an impossible place, one with an absurd
112 | 113
M ON D ITA LI A | 1 . R e s e a r c h o n t h e F r o n t i e r
Post-Frontier
concentration of buildings and spaces

that are in reality scattered all around
the Mediterranean. What they have
in common is their role as symbolic poles
of this southern frontier. The installation
also includes an acoustic side, recorded
in airports and places of exchange,
a collection of photographs and a videodialogue with Frontex, the agency
for management of the borders
of the European Union.
The AUC, Cdric Libert and Thomas
Raynauds 152 Mediterranea also looks
at the Mediterranean. Here the theme of
#01
the boundary is tackled through a study

carried out into the insular condition.
In fact there are 152 Italian islands, whose
distinctive and ambiguous features are
described with the aim of depicting
the hybrid and disturbing condition that
characterizes them. It is no coincidence
that the installation is located in an outof-the-way place, the Gaggiandre of the
Arsenale, and presents a table with a long
collection of documents in the form
of drawings and pictures, along
with a video interview on the island
of the Ottagono Alberoni in the lagoon.
152 Mediterranea
114 | 115
Monditalia/2
Photographic
Investigations
[15]
The documentary spirit of this exhibition on Italy

has received a special contribution from images,
narrations suspended between past and present,
between monumentality and everyday life,
between landscape and humanity
Alpi
#01
116 | 117
M ON D ITA LI A | 2 . P h o t o g r a p h i c I n v e s t i g at i o n s
A Minor History within the Memories of a National Heritage
The Third Island
#01
Beginning in the deep South and ending

in the Alps, a multifocal and wide-ranging
journey that passes through the
architecture, cities and landscapes
of the peninsula and takes shape inside
Monditalia. If the intent was to provide
a theoretical key to the interpretation
of Italy in a documentary style, then the
approach taken by the photographers
to drawing up this complex and varied
map has proved fundamental.
The starting point is The Third Island,
the name that was given to Calabria,
as its curator Antonio Ottomanelli recalls,
because the configuration of the land
made the region so difficult to reach.
At the centre of his photographic

investigation lies the unending
construction of the Salerno-Reggio
Calabria highway, a project that is
sculpting the territory and on which work
continues despite having been started all
the way back in 1964. Next comes Stefano
Grazianis installation A Minor History
within the Memories of a National
Heritage, an imaginary journey
around the peninsula made through
the photographic reproduction
and consequent reinterpretation of 24
images selected from the archives
of the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo
e la Documentazione in Rome. Alongside
118 | 119
M ON D ITA LI A | 2 . P h o t o g r a p h i c I n v e s t i g at i o n s
The Room of Peace (Siena)
this personal collection of visions that

have contributed to forging the sense
of national unity, the photographer has
placed two symbolic pictures of an Ape
Car and a basket of oranges to evoke
the normality of the life that goes
on around the monuments.
Bas Princen proposes instead The Room
of Peace (Siena), a new narrative woven
out of the celebrated allegorical frescoes
painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti for the
Sala dei Nove of Sienas Palazzo Pubblico
in the 14th century. Lorenzettis
#01
Nightswimming
representation of the city and the

surrounding countryside under conditions
of bad government (tyranny) and good
government (the recently installed
democracy) is reinterpreted by Princen
in such a way as to establish
a relationship with the architectural
space that houses them and with
the contemporary fabric of the city.
With Nightswimming Giovanna Silva has
chosen to portray Italy from a singular
angle, that of the extraordinary vitality
and recent decline of the discotheques
which from the 1960s until just a decade

ago were theatres for experimentation in
architecture and many other forms of art.
She does so by combining a piece
of photographic research that has never
previously been shown and a series
of interviews with the protagonists of this
long period of creativity, from Pietro
Derossi (Strum Group) and Andrea Branzi
to Patty Pravo, with historic images
from the 1960s and 1970s.
Finally, we come to the Alps, with Armin
Linkes film of the same name, the fruit
of research conducted for almost

a decade with the architect
and anthropologist Piero Zanini. One
of the largest and most complex natural
ecosystems in Europe, and at the same
time the most anthropized mountain
range on the planet, the Alps become an
open-air laboratory in which to probe the
social, economic and political relations of
the present. At the centre of the research,
the use that human beings make of the
Alps and the imagery that has always
been linked with these landscapes.
120 | 121
Monditalia/3
The Many Paths
of the Sacred
photo by Filippo Romano
[15]
An exploration of the different forms

of rituality that are still to be found in Italy
and are at the centre of powerful social
and cultural hybridizations
#01
122 | 123
M ON D ITA LI A | 3 . T h e M a n y Pat h s o f t h e S a c r e d
Countryside Worship
Thousands of white light bulbs and

Swarovski crystals outline an ephemeral
structure that evokes the arches
of Venetian Renaissance palaces to mark
the entrance to Monditalia. An enormous
illumination, handcrafted by one of the
most important workshops in Puglia
(Fratelli Parisi of Salento), that symbolizes
the journey around a country in which
numerous and diverse forms of rituality
between the sacred and the profane
still play a fundamental role, although
one contaminated by contemporary
experiences that construct wholly
unprecedented landscapes.
#01
The Felliniesque enchantment suggested

by the illuminations finds an immediate
counterpart inside the exhibition in
Matilde Cassanis installation Countryside
Worship. Two large lenticular prints create
an optical illusion to display different
images of the same place. Looking at the
photographs from a certain angle we see
a typical and completely empty Italian
landscape; changing position the space
is suddenly filled with colour and people
celebrating Vaisakhi, the harvest festival
of the Sikhs. This happens every year
in some small villages of the Po Valley,
where the Sikh community is well
integrated and even helps to make one

of Italys most famous products,
Parmesan cheese.
The installation Business of People
by the photographer Ramak Fazel looks
at the almost religious dedication to work.
The space, which is reminiscent of
a church, symbolically divides up the time
of the working day with a series
of kneelers. At the centre of the research
the pictures and the private and everyday
stories of Italian workers, giving rise
to a multiple and anything but obvious
portrait of the Peninsula.
The theme of the sacred returns
in the research conducted by Marco

Sammicheli, Andrea DallAsta and Giuliano
Zanchi. Designing the Sacred sets out to
study the manner in which architects,
designers and artists are capable
of renewing with more or less effective
results liturgical imagery in the light
of progressive social changes, influencing
the evolution of the Church
as an institution that looks to the future.
Sammicheli is the protagonist of an
another investigation of the sacred in the
interesting research he carried out with
AMO studio and Giampiero Mariottini for
Assisi Laboratory. The result offers much
124 | 125
Business of People
#01
126 | 127
Urbs Oblivionalis
Designing the Sacred
#01
food for thought about the way that

a small Italian town with just 28 thousand
inhabitants is able to cope every year
with an influx of six million tourists, many
of them pilgrims. The interviews with four
people working in the town show how it,
rather than being frozen in the image
of an ancient past, is in reality a workshop
in continual movement. An efficient
machine for tourism that aims to get an
extraordinary heritage to hold a dialogue
with the needs of a contemporary identity.
Italy can become a global point of
reference according to Elena Pirazzoli and
Roberto Zancan too. Their proposal Urbs
Oblivionalis is a study of the effects
on architecture and the urban fabric of
the repeated acts of terrorism carried out
in the 1970s and 1980s. In what way

can the country offer a response in terms
of design to the attacks that afflict
contemporary cities all over the world?
Two imposing circular elements construct
an ideal room in which to consider
a question of extreme topicality. The two
outer sides house highly symbolic images.
On the one hand the PAC in Milan,
the centre dedicated to contemporary art
that was damaged by a bomb in 1993.
On the other, in a provocative manner, the
threat made by the Mafia boss Giovanni
Brusca in very bad Italian: Ma se un
giorno vi svegliaste and non trovereste pi
la Torre di Pisa? (But if you were to wake
up one day and the Leaning Tower of Pisa
werent there anymore?).
128 | 129
Monditalia/4
The Remains
of the Boom
[15]
The rhetoric of the economic miracle has at last

been set aside, the necessary critical distance
has been attained. Now it is possible to look
at the phenomena of those sensational years
of Italian modernization with the required maturity
The Remnants of a Miracle

#01
130 | 131
M ON D ITA LI A | 4 . T h e R e m a i n s o f t h e B o o m
Although Absorbing Modernity

is the theme reserved, at the Biennale,
for the national pavilions, speaking
of Italy in the terms suggested
by Koolhaas i.e. through a combination
of research and journalistic investigation
that also makes use of particular
anecdotes to explore questions of general
interest easily leads to a situation where
we have to face up to events that belong
to the countrys more or less recent past.
And so within the framework of Monditalia
we find a small seam of projects that are
able to present a picture of the Italy
of the modern era (i.e. that
of the economic boom) free from idyllic
overtones, showing that a critical distance
from that modernity, however powerful,
has been achieved and that the process
of mourning over this crisis has led
to a long-awaited maturity.
In this set of works we can include
#01
The Remnants of the Miracle, curated

by Luka Skansi and the result of a project
structured as a journey through
important fruits of research in planning
and engineering in the 1950s and 1960s:
fruits which have met a sad fate and
therefore now lie in an abandoned state.
Certainly not a new theme, that of the
oblivion which follows the discarding
of works of architecture, even the good
ones (so that even the young people
of de Gayardon Bureau are proposing
a version concentrating on the places
of entertainment of Milano Marittima
in their installation entitled Dancing
around Ghosts), but Skansis work must
be given credit for not succumbing
to the fascination of the ruin. Thus it has
succeeded in producing an unvarnished
account of a simple fact: that objects
of great value were realized in those
years, that some of them have been
The Remnants of a Miracle
132 | 133
Z! Zingonia, Mon Amour
#01
134 | 135
Dancing around Ghosts
forgotten and that there therefore exists

a precious architectural heritage
which we still have time to salvage.
The installation is perhaps even frugal,
but the photos and videos of which
it is made up show how buildings of the
calibre of Gellner and Zorzis Mountain
Holiday Home at Borca di Cadore, Nervis
Tobacco Factory in Mantua or Gori
and Saviolis Flower Market in Pescia
deserve to be preserved.
Also very interesting from the documentary
point of view is Z! Zingonia, Mon Amour,
#01
curated by Argot ou la Maison Mobile

and Marco Biraghi. Through wide-ranging
and thorough historiographic research,
the installation sets out to reconstruct
the rise and fall of the dream of Renzo
Zingone an entrepreneur whose visions
lay somewhere between Olivettis
enlightened patronage and a Berlusconian
populism before its time and his most
grandiose creation, Zingonia, a project
for a town with 50 thousand inhabitants
near Bergamo. Realized in the space
of a few years from 1965 onwards,
Zingonia was essentially a failure: divided

administratively among five municipalities
and prey to the economic and political
instability of the First Republic, it rapidly
became depopulated and subject to social
decay. Notwithstanding the plan for it
to be a self-sufficient town (with an
integrated manufacturing district created
from scratch) and not a satellite, Zingonia
represents the breakdown of modernist
positivism and provides evidence
of the need for it to give way to the age of
complexity. The installation tells this story,
intertwining the factors that influence

the destiny of a town with that of a nation
and conveying the nature of that
unpredictability. It does so by succeeding
in grasping the naivety of the major
operations launched in a country that was
laboriously attempting to equip itself
with an aggressive modernity, in order to
quickly make up for the agonies of the
war. The respectful way in which this story
is told is perhaps the hoped-for sign
of a maturity, one in which Italy has at last
learned to look back without regrets.
136 | 137
Monditalia/5
The Tradition
of the Avant-garde
[15]
The spirit of the generation of the Italian

Radicals, the only one to have questioned
the standard methods of teaching architecture
and experimented with alternatives, permeates
many parts of the exhibition at the Corderie
and defines its educational character
Space Electronic
#01
138 | 139
M ON D ITA LI A | 5 . T h e T r a d i t i o n o f t h e Ava n t- g a r d e
Space Electronic
At Koolhaass Biennale, the part played by

research is unmatched in the entire history
of the Venetian event. It is a record that no
one was better suited to set than a man
who, in his own studio, has a doppelgnger
devoted entirely to cross-sectoral
investigation, of great cultural breadth.
The total lack of reserve towards research
is what has made OMA a great factory
for the production of architectural talent
and, at the same time, a machine able
to reproduce by means of infinite
parthenogenesis, generating hosts
of heirs and epigones. But, concentrating
as it had to on the Italian phenomenon,
it was inevitable that a substantial part
#01
of the exhibition would be taken up with

education and give a great deal of space
to the generation of the Radicals, the only
one to have experimented with any
degree of constancy with possible
alternatives to the standard methods
of architectural training.
Radical Pedagogies is the name of the
imposing installation curated by Beatriz
Colomina and numerous collaborators.
A wall that assembles material produced
in over three years of academic studies
carried out at Princeton University,
all focused on the development
of unconventional methods of training
by Italian architects, their success and
Radical Pedagogies
140 | 141
photo by Giorgio Zucchiatti. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
#01
142 | 143
Superstudio. The Secret Life of the Continuous Monument
their international dissemination. Through

atlases and timelines tracing these moves,
a collection of texts related to the most
important experiences between 1940
and 1980 placed at the disposal of the
public and an interesting experiment
in augmented reality conducted by dprbarcelona, the installation is an
exhaustive and significant one, almost the
exploded diagram of a thematic library.
But Monditalia has found room
for the Radicals and their legacy in other
installations too. Space Electronic, curated
#01
by Catherine Rossi, is an interesting

account of one of the few projects realized
by a collective of the Italian avant-garde
(although not a very well-known one).
In 1969 the Gruppo 9999 designed
a discotheque in Florence, with the same
name as the installation, that throughout
the 1970s functioned as a stage
for multimedia experimentation involving
architecture, music and theatre,
establishing itself as one of the symbolic
locations of the movement. There is space
too for total revival. Gabriele Mastrigli has
in fact curated the re-enactment

of an installation created by Superstudio
for Venice Art Biennale in 1978,
juxtaposing an original video
of a performance they put on in the same
years with a book-interview brought out,
instead, for this years exhibition.
The spirit of the Radicals pervades the
whole exhibition, peppering other works
not expressly focused on the subject
with their legacy. This celebration has long
been awaited in Italy, where the heritage
of the Radicals has been slow in finding
space in the official channels used for

the cultural dissemination and discussion
of architecture. Perhaps it was necessary
for an intellectual perspective from
outside to make its importance clear,
expressing in a concrete form within the
framework of as powerful an operation
as only a Biennale can be. But now
that this face of modernity is also ready
to be absorbed, it will be necessary
to ensure that its extremism does not
yield to the dizzy temptation of becoming
a new tradition.
144 | 145
Press Review
Chi si attendeva una mostra [Elements] rivolta al futuro,

costretto a volgere le spalle allindietro per fissare il recente
passato. Chi si aspettava la girandola dei linguaggi,
si trovato sotto al naso il grado zero della scrittura
architettonica: quegli elementi primari [...] che gli esteti
considerano come il lato oscuro dellarte di costruire
Fulvio Irace, Domenica del Sole 24 Ore, 8.6.2014
Questa volta tutte fuori le archicelebrit,

tranne lui, Rem Koolhaas
Natalia Aspesi, la Repubblica, 5.6.2014
I think its
very important
to have lived
in the time of Rem,
like to have lived
in the time
of Corbusier
Peter Eisenman interviewed by Dezeen Magazine, 9.6.2014
Belgium: John Pawson does Ikea

Korea: Megastructural utopianism
Germany: Strenght through joy
Britain: Electric-pastoral-psyco-brutalism
Austria: Parliament as ornament
Iran: Persian heroism
Poland: Mausoleum of modernity
Antarctica: Technofrostscape
Nutshells by Oliver Wainwright, theguardian.com, 10.6.2014
The show [Elements] deliberately lacks much commentary

on the cumulative significance of these architectural elements
in contemporary design, making the selected objects,
as well as the exhibition design, feel somewhat arbitrary.
But thats not necessarily a bad thing
William Hanley, archrecord.construction.com, 5.6.2014
Aprs avoir pass limmense porche lumineaux

o clignote Monditalia, la visite est beaucoup moins ludique.
Trop lire. Trop de vidos. Si bien que, assoiff demotion,
on finit par sextasier devant la tour en tabourets
de bois du pavilion du Kosovo
Batrice de Rochebout, Le Figaro, 7.6.2014
148 | 149
P r e ss R e v i e w
Cual George Orwell, Koolhaas previene

que la casa inteligente capaz de registrar
todos los datos y movimientos de sus habitantes
se ha enmascado como un eufemismo
para un potencial agente de inteligencia
Visitors to Elements will be presented not with the usual array

of the latest, show-off iconic buildings, but the bits and pieces,
the elements of buidings that, drawn from around the world
and across the centuries, aim to demonstrate ways in which
we have come to live increasingly in Calvinos Trude
Vanessa Graell, elmundo.es, 5.6.2014
Jonathan Glancey, telegraph.co.uk, 10.6.2014
Of course the digital revolution is upon architecture

and its elements just like every other discipline and the idea
of my waste product or my hot flashes being controlled
by some Orwelliam sensor system feels, well,
somehow almost pornographic. Im not sure I like
my privacy invaded by body sensors any more
than my credit card bouncing all over the web
Patricia Zohn, huffingtonpost.com, 4.6.2014
Die diesjhrige Architekturbiennale ist keine

Leistungsschau, sondern ein ffentlich zugngliches
Labor. Wenig Architekten. Viel Architektur. Endlich!
Ute Woltron, diepresse.com, 13.6.2014
Il richiamo di questa Biennale appare quello

di non abbandonarsi al piacere per la magnificenza
delle rovine e, tantomeno, alle rovine frutto
di una corruzione che affonda anche la pietra.
Bens, invertendo il noto passo di Eliot,
puntellare su queste rovine italiane (la gloriosa antichit)
i nuovi frammenti di architettura
Elementos de arquitectura [es] un riguroso recorrido

que sirve en sus enciclopdicos contenidos no solamente
para profesionales, sino para el hombre contemporano
en general. Se trata de un ilustrado viaje a la gnesis
y desarrollo de cosas con las que convivimos
Roger Salas, El Pais 6.6.2014
The portrait of Italy that Monditalia paints is certainly

not rose-tinted: it also includes surveys of the residences
of Mafia members in Milan and the sites of terrorist activity
in Bologna [...] Describing two possible visions
of collective lifes one ideal, one nightmarish they establish
a dichotomy that runs through Monditalias portrait
of this most marvellous and troubled of nations
Ellis Woodman, architectsjournal.co.uk, 9.6.2014
This year s Italian Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia

is well worth a visit. [] Its a relief to see again
an exhibition worthy of its special place and occasion
even if some serious curatorial issues remain
Davide Tommaso Ferrando, zeroundicipiu.it, 18.6.2014
Pierluigi Panza, Corriere della Sera, 7.6.2014
Ringraziamo Koolhaas per averci indicato

come non deve essere larchitettura del futuro
e gli rendiamo grazie, come si rende grazie
ai capi di abbigliamento passati di moda
Come ha potuto questa mente prodigiosa creare la pi noiosa

delle biennali? Inutile girarci attorno, un classico caso di hubris.
Koolhaas, che odia la condizione dellarchitetto sempre
in bilico tra onnipotenza e impotenza, ha scelto la prima,
e la seconda si vendicata
Valerio Paolo Mosco, doppiozero.com, 17.6.2014
Lucia Tozzi, Alfadomenica, 29.6.2014
#01
150 | 151
Booklist
text by Luca Galofaro
Chilean Pavilion
Monolith
Hatje Cantz 2014
An exhibition of architecture like
the Venice Biennale is an
opportunity to start up debates
again and to exchange more
or less coherent and interesting
views. It is a starting point.
Usually the comments die down
just a few days after the
opening, ending with an I like
it or not, and with a collection
of more or less new picture
cards to take home. This time,
however, it is different.
The debates that have taken
place have exceeded all
expectations. We have begun
to talk about architecture again.
We are doing this by following
another track, that of books,
which this time are the
protagonists of many interesting
stories. We should not forget
that a book stays with us longer
than an exhibition. We are able
to visit it again and again,
looking for its meaning.
Here is my list, more or less
in order of preference.
#01
While every exhibition at this Biennale

is a reflection on the theme of Absorbing
Modernity, the book on this one
in particular goes beyond, in a coherent
way, what is in the exhibition itself
and begins to tell more complicated
stories; stories that become a perfect
metaphor for the way the history
of architecture merges with the political
history of a country, with that of its
inhabitants, who have turned even a
simple prefabricated concrete panel into
a symbol. Thus the fine volume published
by Hatje Cantz overcomes any dispersion
of energies around this Biennale through
the telling of a simple tale.
The story is that of the first panel
produced by the KPD plant, donated
by the Soviet Union in 1971 to support
President Salvador Allende in his attempt
to lead the country towards socialism.
From the moment the first panel was cast
and signed by the president, it has been
the subject of a number of political and
ideological controversies. Allende signed
the wet concrete and for this reason
alone the panel was turned back-to-front,
plastered and transformed into an altar
for devotees of the Virgin Mary on
Pinochets ascent to power. The panel was
then abandoned in the yard of the factory,
where it remained for many years, only

to be brought today to Venice
to symbolize this story of modernity.
The book contains the voices of workers
at the factory and people who live in the
houses, photos of the interiors of those
houses and articles from newspapers.
And it does not forget to pay attention
to the individual components that have
been combined to give rise to all the
buildings constructed with this technique.
Korean Pavilion
Crows Eye View: The Korean

Peninsula
Archilife 2014
At the end of the Second World War,
the Korean peninsula was divided in two.
Today it is still one of the few nations split
between worlds that are completely
different from one another in spite
of their common origins. The Cold War
produced a fracture in a country with
thousands of years of history that has
developed over the last 80 years
in two opposite ideological, political
and economic directions. The trauma
of that war, in addition to simplifying this
contrast, has also consigned the whole
cultural tradition of this nations past
to an uncertain future. This situation
threatens to shatter a culture rich
in complexity forever, and it is precisely
the attempt to present a picture of this
complexity that is described in the book

edited by Hyungmin Pai and Minsuk Cho.
The title Crows Eye View is taken from
a collection of poems written by
an architect-poet influenced by the Dada
movement. The poem, published in 1934,
is the symbol of a fragmentation in terms
of the vision of this poet, who aspires
to be a modern architect: a vain
aspiration for someone trained under
Japanese colonial rule and who cannot
reconstruct his past with clarity. In this
subtle account, we meet a divided country
that is courageously seeking to re-forge
its unity through architecture. Images and
texts construct a dense sense of narration
that explores through different
sources the possibilities of a unitary
reconstruction of the Korean peninsula.
This is an invaluable book for anyone who
wishes to know more about this history.
La vita segreta
del monumento continuo
Edited by Gabriele Mastrigli
Artists book
Here, three members of Superstudio
tell their stories in La vita segreta del
monumento continuo (The Secret Life
of a Continuous Monument).
The book is in a sense a continuation
of the work on the Superstudio archives
carried out in collaboration with Stefano
Graziani and presented on San Roccos
152 | 153
Booklist
great table at the last Biennale. It is also

the last duty of three architects who
through their secret life together, as well
as through their individual contributions,
have pursued a very personal idea
of architecture, giving rise to the work
of Superstudio. The most important new
aspect here is that this book is dedicated
to three individuals, Adolfo Natalini,
Cristiano Toraldo di Francia
and Piero Frassinelli, and to the different
perspectives they bring to telling
the same story, their story, the story of a
project they have always shared, despite
the diversity of their approaches, and
their unquestioned love of architecture.
Belgian Pavilion
Interiors. Notes and Figures

Interiors. Notes and Figures assembles
and organizes the landscape of domestic
spaces through photographs, diagrams
and descriptive texts that underline
the processes of accumulation and
modification in the various rooms
of the house. This is a demonstration
of how the objects produced by modernity
are capable of consuming and absorbing
themselves.
The immobility of furniture, or rather
the stratification of the household objects
that occupy the spaces of our daily lives,
is the main subject of this book, which is
a long series of photographs,
and a catalogue of typical spaces.
This piece anthropological research starts
with an analysis of the thousands
of photographs that the team of curators
of the exhibition, Sbastien Martinez
Barat, Bernard Dubois, Sara Levy and
Judith Wielander, gathered in five months
of investigation of Belgian territory. This
#01
is a work of stratigraphic interpretation

around how interiors of houses show us
what it means to have a home today,
or rather how objects accumulate
in domestic settings that represent
the habits, aspirations and personalities
of their respective inhabitants.
in the Middle East, which is presented

as a dense and also homogeneous
phenomenon.
Slovenian Pavilion
First Space Architect:

nik
Herman Potoc
Noordung
As the colophon of the magazine states:

Do You Read Me? suggests that role of
design is not just to construct certitudes,
to clarify, but also to enable more
nuanced realitiesto coexist.
British Pavilion
A Clockwork Jerusalem
Italian Pavilion
Innesti/Grafting
Marsilio 2014
Here we have not just one book but three
which aim to describe what Italian
architecture is in the mind of the curator
of this pavilion Cino Zucchi, and also
attempt to look at it from a completely
new point of view. Works from different
periods are re-examined in original ways
to reveal their capacity to unite
interpretation and innovation, existing
material and future form. Over three
volumes, with a long essay by the curator
around the theme of the exhibition,
accompanied by a lavish set of
illustrations, this catalogue also contains
around twenty short, illustrated texts
(postcards) by foreign architects
of international standing centred
on the theme of modernity in Italy.
Kingdom of Bahrain Pavilion
Fundamentalists
and Other Arab Modernisms
George Arbid (ed.) 2014
The book gives the space of this
installation its shape: 40,000 copies
of the catalogue line a wooden circular
space with a table at the centre that
suggests to visitors that they stop to read
what can be considered as the only book
on the history of modern architecture
A small book that explores a very

interesting theme (for me at least):
architecture in the absence of gravity
and looks at it through the work of the
Slovenian architect Herman Potocnik
Noordung, who is a pioneer of
architecture in outer space. Speaking
of fundamentals, in fact, we should never
forget how the whole of our life is
influenced by gravity. With his 1928 book
The Problem of Space Travel The Rocket
Motor, Potocnik offered a first vision
of an architecture that would permit
the survival of human beings
in an extreme situation like that
of space, in the absence of gravity.
Do You Read Me?
Harvard Design Magazine, n. 38
The Biennale is also a good occasion
for the presentation of new magazines.
An example of this is Do You Read Me?
which marks a new direction for this
Harvard University magazine, which has
changed its format slightly, getting bigger,
and at the same time it invites its readers
to look at its themes through the lenses
of different disciplines. This issue,
concentrates on the theme
of understanding or the lack of it,
and the question of legibility or illegibility,
terms of the ambiguities contained
within contemporary architectural thinking.
The book A Clockwork Jerusalem is

something more than a mere catalogue.
Rather, it tells a story in which a new
and interesting reading of the history of
modernity in Great Britain is hidden away.
While the exhibition guides us through
images, which move between reality and
its interpretation, the books coherent text
by Sam Jacob and Wouter Vanstiphout is
able to show us how questions about the
past can shape the future of architecture.
Canadian Pavilion
Arctic Adaptation
The ability to adapt to changing climatic
conditions is the metaphor through which
a contrast is made between the rapid
colonization of the Arctic and the longterm view of the Inuit people, who have
lived there for millennia. This is a strange
book, in which this contrast between
different realities and times shows us how
modernity is in fact nothing but a fleeting
moment of adaptation and resistance.
Luca Galofaro, one of the

founders of the IaN+ studio,
is the author of The Booklist,
a blog devoted to books,
a journey through the words
and stories that describe art,
architecture and beyond.
154 | 155
Awards
The Lions
of Architecture
photo by Italo Rondinella. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia
They have been won by Korea and Chile.

Special mentions have gone
to Canada, France and Russia
#01
158 | 159
P
rem
a z i o n i | I L e o n i d e l la r c h i t e tt u r a
Awa
rids
1 The international jury has awarded the Golden Lion

for Best National Participation to Crows Eye View:
The Korean Peninsula, the Korean exhibition curated
by Minsuk Cho with Hyungmin Pai, Changmo Ahn
and Jihoi Lee.
2 The Silver Lion went to Chile for Monolith

Controversies, curated by Pedro Alonso and Hugo
Palmarola.
3 The Silver Lion for the Best Research Project
in the Monditalia section went to Sales Oddity. Milan 2
and the Politics of Direct-to-home TV Urbanism
by Andrs Jaque/Office for Political Innovation.
#01
4 The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

was awarded to Phyllis Lambert.
The jury also decided to assign three special
mentions, to Canada (Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut
at 15), France (Modernity: Promise or Menace?)
and Russia (Fair Enough: Russias Past Our Present)
and three special mentions to research projects
in the Monditalia section: Radical Pedagogies:
Action-Reaction-Interaction (Beatriz Colomina,
Britt Eversole, Ignacio G. Galn, Evangelos Kotsioris,
Anna-Maria Meister, Federica Vannucchi, Amuntegui
Valds Architects, Smog.tv), Intermundia (Ana Dana
Bero) and Italian Limes (Folder).
160 | 161
Fuori Biennale
Experiences between
Art and Architecture
Between Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, an interesting
journey through the city in search of the exhibitions
and installations that accompany this years Biennale
Text by Sara Banti
The Venice Biennale of Architecture

is already in itself a good excuse
for an outing on the lagoon. In addition,
the event this year is accompanied
by an extensive calendar of dance
performances and concerts put
on by the Biennale itself, which we advise
you to consult before fixing the date
of your visit (www.labiennale.org). And
then there are the exhibitions in the city.
Always numerous and interesting,
they are particularly so between
the summer and autumn of 2014.
We propose to you an itinerary that starts
from Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal
(www.palazzograssi.it). Here there are two
exhibitions, both open until 31 December.
Resonance is a magnificent retrospective
of the work of the American
photographer Irving Penn (1917-2009),
the most complete ever to be staged
in Italy: in addition to the photos he took
in Morocco and New Guinea in the 1960s
and 1970s and portraits of famous
personalities (Picasso, Truman Capote,
Duchamp, Marlene Dietrich), it presents
#01
less well-known works like the series from

the 1950s devoted to the small trades
(the rag picker, the chimney sweep) and
the evocative though gloomier still lifes of
the 1970s and 1980s, with compositions
of cigarette butts, skulls and bones. The
other exhibition is devoted instead to the
role of light in contemporary art, and is
entitled The Illusion of Light. Here the
fascination is already strong from the
foyer on the ground floor, taken over
completely by the spatial installation of
the Californian artist Doug Wheeler, who
by playing with white backdrops and an
artificial mist succeeds in turning light
into matter.
The effect is that of the cancellation
of space-time, a suspension that closely
resembles a mirage. From there, climbing
the grand staircase of the palazzo,
the route then winds through the rooms,
proposing around twenty large works
on the theme: from the one created
by Vidya Gastaldon with coloured woollen
yarn to Dan Flavins monument to Tatlin,
from Julio Le Parc to Gilbert & George.
Irving Penn, Resonance [13]
1) Black and White Vogue Cover (Jean Patchett), New York, 1950 Cond Nast Publications. 2) Deep-Sea Diver (C), New York, 1951 Cond Nast Publications. 3) Cuzco Children, 1948
Cond Nast Publications. 4) Lion (Front View), Prague, 1986 The Irving Penn Foundation. 5) Poppy: Showgirl, London, 1968 Cond Nast Publications. 6)Truman Capote, New York, 1965
Cond Nast Publications.
162 | 163
F u o r i B i e n n a l e | E x p e r i e n c e s b e tw e e n a r t a n d a r c h i t e c t u r e
Hiroshi Sugimoto,
Modern Times [23]
The Illusion of Light [13]
1) Latifa Echakhch, Fantme (Jasmin), 2012 / A chaque stencil une rvolution, 2007. Courtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris. 2) Robert Whitman, Untitled (Light Bulb), 1994-1995. 3)
Vidya Gastaldon, Escalator (Rainbow Rain), 2007. Courtesy the artist and Art : Concept, Paris. 4) Julio Le Parc, Continuel Lumire Cylindre, 1962-2012. Courtesy the artist and Bugada &
Cargnel, Paris Julio Le Parc by SIAE 2014. 5) Dan Flavin, Monument for V. Tatlin, 1964 2014 Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York/
London. Photos: ORCH orsenigo_chemollo Palazzo Grassi. Opposite page, photos by Hiroshi Sugimoto: 1) MoMA, Bauhaus Stairway, 2013. 2) Serpentine Pavillon (Triptych), 2012.
3) Rotary Demisphere, Marcel Duchamp2013.
#01
At the end of this visit, if youre not

familiar with the nearby Palazzo Fortuny
(www.fortuny.visitmuve.it), we suggest
you make a little detour to discover
this house-museum, owned today
by the municipality, in a Gothic building
renovated at the beginning of the 20th
century by the artist and collector
Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (before
he bought it, the palazzo was occupied
by 350 impoverished people). Fortuny and
his wife Henriette Nigrin not only made
their home in the rooms, furnished with
eclectic and surprising pieces, but set up
an artistic workshop for the creation
of fabrics, lamps and theatrical scenery.
Right in front of Palazzo Grassi,
on the other side of the Grand Canal
(Ca Rezzonico vaporetto stop), stands
Palazzetto Tito, one of the seats of the

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa
(www.bevilacqualamasa.it), where
we strongly recommend a visit to the
exhibition Modern Times by the Japanese
photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto
(until 12 October): it presents the world
premire of eleven photographs
of important architectural landmarks
and famous museums (from Erich
Mendelsohns Einstein Tower in Potsdam
to the Serpentine Gallery in London), in
which the artist has taken an unusual and
evocative approach, strictly in black and
white. On the occasion of the Biennale,
Sugimoto has also designed the Glass Tea
House Mondrian, his first work of
architecture: an elegant glass cube for the
tea ceremony, set up in a small Japanese
164 | 165
2
For Your Eyes Only [22]
garden (open for visits until 29 November

at the Fondazione Cini, on the island
of San Giorgio Maggiore, www.cini.it).
The itinerary then proceeds in the
direction of the Accademia. Right next
to the famous bridge stands Palazzo
Franchetti (www.palazzofranchetti.it),
another Gothic building, although much
altered in the 19th century by Camillo
Boito. The exhibition Genius Loci Spirit
of Place, staged by the Lisson Gallery,
one of the best-known contemporary art
galleries in the world (with branches in
London, Milan, Singapore and New York)
is open here until 23 November.
The pieces on display, in part site-specific,
are stunning, representing a reflection
on the relationship between architecture
and public space. Visitors are welcomed
in the garden by Daniel Burens shelter
of coloured plexiglass and the cloud
#01
of bicycles designed by Ai Weiwei. Among

the works and installations that line the
staircase and rooms of the palazzo there
is no lack of surprises and big names,
from Tony Cragg to Richard Long, from
Dan Graham to Joana Vasconcelos.
You only have to cross the Ponte
dellAccademia and walk a few hundred
metres to reach another Venetian venue
that is not to be missed, the Museo
Guggenheim (www.guggenheim-venice.it).
Where, apart from Peggys collection,
always open, the exhibition For Your Eyes
Only (works ranging from Mannerism
to Surrealism, from the collection of
Richard and Ulla Dreyfus-Best in Basel)
will be staged until 31 August; and from
20 September until 19 January 2015
its place will be taken by the exhibition
Azimut/h, devoted to the neo-avantgardes and the work carried out by the
Genius Loci Spirit of Place [14]
1) Daniel Buren, 4 colour at 3 meters high, 2014. 2) Shirazeh Houshiary, Sylph, 2014. 3) Daniel Buren, A white triangle for a mirror, 2007 the artist. Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London.
4) Ai Weiwei, Forever, 2014. 5) Tony Cragg, Hedge, 2010 the artist. Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London. 6) Spencer Finch, Night Sky, Over the Painted Desert, Arizona, 1/9/04, 2004 the
artist. Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London. Opposite page: 1) Gustave Dor, Cupid with a Pistol on Top of a Mountain of Skulls (private collection). 2) Austrian master, XVIII century, Vanity
Portrait of a Lady (private collection); 3) Ren Magritte, The Ready Made Bouquet, 1956 (private collection) C.H./ADAGP, Paris 2014, by SIAE 2014. 4) Andy Warhol, Skull, 1976/77 (private
collection) The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., by SIAE 2014.
166 | 167
Art or Sound [3]
1) Artworks by Edward Kienholz, Milan Knk, Tom Wesselmann and Stephan von Heune. 2) Riccardo Beretta,Donnerwetter, 201112.Performer: Gabriele Rendina.3) Exhibition view.4)
Ken ButlerK-Board, 1983.Performer: Ken Butler. 5) From the back: Amelotti,Orchestrion Accordeo Jazz, around 1920andPierre Jaquet-DrozSinging Bird Cage With Clock, around 1785.6)
Arman,The Spirit of Yamaha, 1997. Photos: Attilio Maranzano.Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Opposite page: 1) Left: Mario Merz, Se la forma scompare, la sua radice eterna, 1982. Courtesy
Archivio Merz, Torino M. Merz by SIAE 2013. Right: Alighiero Boetti, Catasta, 1967, Fondazione Alighiero e Boetti, Roma A. Boetti by SIAE 2013. Photos ORCH orsenigo_chemollo
Palazzo Grassi. 2) Thomas Schtte, Fratelli, 2012 (detail). Courtesy of the artist T. Schtte by SIAE 2013. 3) Llyn Foulkes, The Rape of the Angels, 1991 Llyn Foulkes.
#01
gallery and magazine of the same name

(founded in Milan in 1959
by Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani).
Continuing in the direction of Santa Maria
della Salute, drop by the Punta della
Dogana (www.palazzograssi.it), the former
warehouse bought by the French magnate
Franois Pinault, already the owner
of Palazzo Grassi, to host exhibitions
constructed largely out of his own vast
collection of contemporary art. The
exhibition held there until 31 December is
called Prima Materia and compares works
and tendencies that emerged in the same
years in very different geographical and
cultural areas, from Italian Arte Povera
to the Japanese Mono-ha movement.
A reversal of direction along the Canal
Grande back towards piazzale Roma,
for the resounding finale of our tour.
At Ca Corner, for some years
Prima Materia [24]
the seat of the Fondazione Prada

(www.fondazioneprada.org), the curator
Germano Celant has staged an
extraordinary exhibition entitled Art
or Sound (until 3 November). Here, on the
three floors of the magnificent palazzo,
the history of the interactions between
art and music (from 1520 to 2014) is
explored through a collection of precious
instruments, cages of singing birds, music
boxes, barrel organs and juke-boxes,
0as well as through the many reworkings
of the theme carried out by the historical
avant-gardes, Futurism and Pop Art. Here
you will find Claes Oldenburgs mandolins
that seem to melt in the sun and Maurizio
Cattelans kid banging a drum. A bizarre
soundtrack to the exhibition is provided
by the many sounds and melodies emitted
by the devices and instruments: over 180
pieces, many of them in working order.
168 | 169
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01

14th Architecture Biennale

text by Luca Molinari

Map The Biennale and Venezia

Elements Primary characters

Absorbing Modernity / 1 In Search of a Continuity

text by Alessandro Benetti

text by Simona Galateo

/ 4 The Future Has Begun

Translations text by Emilia Giorgi

text by Emilia Giorgi

/ 4 The Remains of the Boom

Press Review curated by Chiara Maranzana

Booklist text by Luca Galofaro

Awards The Lions of Architecture

ABITARE.IT | FACEBOOK.COM/ABITAREWEB | TWITTER.COM/ABITARE

Fuori Biennale Between Art and Architecture

TExt by Luca Molinari

Every two years the Venice Biennale

which Koolhaas himself played a leading

interweaves stories of windows and

schizophrenic slivers of a country unable

The Biennale and Venice

Arsenale, Castello 2126/a (campo

Officina delle Zattere, Dorsoduro

The exhibition curated by Rem Koolhaas is a sinuous route

Rem Koolhaas. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

curated by Chiara Maranzana

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elem ents o f architec tu r e | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters

Photo by photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elem ents o f architec tu r e | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elem ents o f architec tu r e | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elem ents o f architec tu r e | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elem ents o f architec tu r e | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Francesco Galli. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

Elements o f architec ture | Pr i mary char ac ters

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

TExT BY Alessandro Benetti

a renunciation of quality and that finds

The arbitrary limits of Koolhaass century

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

of modernisation, running out of steam

is a feeling that this might have been

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Relja Ivanic

photo by Andrea Avezz. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia

photo by Jorge Gambini e Martn Craciun