Dear Blog: The Venice Biennale

Dear Blog
by Joel Pominville

Dear Blog,  

     I hope you are doing well, and everything is going well there in the online world!
     I just wanted to catch up with you and let you in on some things the class and I did while we were in Venice for the start of our first ten-day trip. We saw several works by Carlo Scarpa and Palladio. I took particular liking to Scarpa’s Fondazione Querini Stampalia and Palladio’s Basillica de San Giorgio. My most favored thing we saw was the Venice Biennale of Architecture. First of all, there was a long exhibit in the old Arsenale in which spaces were designed by David Chipperfield. However, the exhibits were designed by many famous and rising architects including Sir Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaus. 

     Although this long exhibit was very interesting and had a lot to offer, I think I enjoyed the individual country exhibits in Giardini. It is not only nice to see the works of architects in the different countries, but the pavilions themselves offered great lessons of design and contruction. There are two pavilions that I really enjoyed. The Brazilian pavilion was very postmodern and represented the materials still heavily used in Brazilian architecture, wood and reinforced concrete. The Venezuelan pavilion, designed by Carlo Scarpa, had a very close sense of detail and purpose found in most other Scarpa designs. 

     

     Two exhibits I learned a lot from were the Spanish and Denmark/Greenland exhibits. The Spanish pavilion exhibited works by achitects such as Ecosistema Urbano and RCR Arquitectes. I found that Spainish architects are putting large emphasis on two things: Green, reusable, and sustainable architecture and systems, as well as an emphasis on product and industrial design becoming just as important as design at an architectural level. I found that particularly interesting as I have an extreme interest in pursuing industrial design as well as arhitecture. The Denmark pavilion was just as interesting, but with a bit of a different design focus. The exhibit included a project by BIG Architects, one of my most highly regarded architectural influences. The architecture displayed in this exhibit focused on sustainability as well, but now with a bit more focus on efficient heating and cooling systems, as well as modular housing. The BIG project was a proposed scheme for an airport and a shipping port combined into what they call Air+Port. It was an icredible design that incorporated the need of both aircraft, and sea craft in a way that was virtually seamless. Overall, there was much to gain from the Biennale this year and I feel so honored to have seen what we did.