Clarity at the Biennale

by Billy del Monte

Japanese Concept Model 

 Japanese Final Concept

After returning from the Architectural Biennale, I was really impressed with the overall experience from visiting the different exhibits, and pavilions on display, but for me the national pavilions was the most interesting part of the festival. After returning to Genoa and thinking back on these pavilions the ones that I remember most clearly and I think where most successful, were the exhibits that had some kind of cohesive message or theme to show about the current state of architecture within the nation, This was especially evident in the Finnish and Japanese pavilions. These two countries where both able to give real life examples of projects that were going on in their country that gave some insight into the style of the architects who worked on these projects, and showcased new and unique ideas that where coming out of these nations. Other pavilions where notable for the first impact they were able to make and for the, unique ways in which they set up for their display, if you had just walked out of the pavilion you couldn't really say you had any cohesive idea about the kind of unique ideas that are coming out of that country. For example the Russian Pavilion, while a completely novel and interesting piece of architecture on its own due to the unique system of coded tiles covering all of the interior space, seems that it was all made for the purpose of serving the information that had to be read off of a computer tablet, one project after another. This lead to the realization that the presentation of projects really came as an afterthought to the system the user must use to select the information. This is in sharp contrast to the example of the Japanese Pavilion which instead of trying to pick all the biggest projects from Japan that where worth displaying, they decided to find one project that most embodied the ideas and collective interest of their architects. By doing this they were able to look deeply into the entire creative process that a few young Japanese architects used to create a uniquely unifying piece of architecture and provide a specific understanding of that project. And also a better understanding of the process the Japanese architects use to solve the challenges of their particular situation, far better than a series of descriptions that just scratch the surface of many different projects, or even a feature of what the most well know architects from that country have been working on in the last two years. The Finnish Pavilion is similarly successful in its clarity as the Japanese Pavilion but uses a different approach, instead of focusing on one important project they decided to focus on one particular trend within their country that both reference the historic architecture of the country and show how there being applied to new ideas of design. Since many young architects in Finland have been working on doing new projects, often times with complex shapes, all in wood, they were able to find three examples of this to focus on for this exhibit and show the way in which this sort of new national style is developing. So at the end of the day I enjoyed most of the pavilions the ones whit the most cohesive theme and identity are the exhibits whose ideas where most understood and who I can take away the most. 

Finnish Pavilion