A Journey into the Biennale

Alessandro Giulio

  

INTRODUCTION
In all honesty, there is so much I could talk about on the subject of this year’s 13th annual Venice Architecture Biennale. The entire experience was thought-provoking and awe-inspiring, to say the least. Lucky for us students, we had heard this was the first successful ‘architecture’ Biennale in a long time.This experience of the Biennale proved to be an advantageous excursion through architectural thought and execution; a valuable experience. The Venice Biennale made a lasting impression on me and I wish to continue to attend in the coming years, bringing along friends and family.

L’ARSENALE di VENEZIA
The main space for the exhibitions of the Venice Biennale take place in the historic Venetian Arsenale. Although impressively restored and maintained today, the Arsenale dates back to the 12th century where it was one of several buildings that comprised the complex of Venice’s state-owned shipyards and armories. The Arsenale, as used by the Venice Biennale 2012, featured a long one-way circulation from start to finish. I found gentle circulation to be a pleasing transition between exhibits. This allowed for the experience to feel more like an architectural journey as oppose to what we are usually confronted with in museums; arbitrary mixes of ‘wandering’ and colliding circulations. Upon entering the Arsenale stood the Biennale’s exhibition title, Common Ground along a blank wall. Beyond this wall, the Arsenale would reveal itself slowly, room by room. Each room hosted the best work by notable contemporary architects and was truly an incredible display of great thought and reasoning with the accompaniment of drawings, sketches, models and ‘architectural project artifacts’. I felt that the time we were given at the Arsenale, to basically walk through, was the most fruitful of visits we took in Venice. At my own leisure, I examined everything. In short, the passage along the Arsenale, surrounded by so much inspiring work, was an overwhelming experience.

I GIARDINI della BIENNALE
The Giardini della Biennale, was a complete surprise to me. I had never heard of the Giardini before and was of course excited to take the visit when Giuditta handed us the itinerary. The Giardini was an incredibly powerful experience. Apart from the lush waterside landscape, the pavilions stood clear in the locations of the Giardini. With nearly 30 nations participating this year in the Giardini, the amount of national work (and pride) was inspiring. Each of the nations have built their pavilions over time and for each year Biennale year, the pavilions are refitted to match their exhibitions demand. The severity and willingness of each nation to showcase their greatest work was most exhilarating. Having studied the World’s Fairs of the past in various classes, the Giardini was the closest experience to such international showcases of leading works of architecture. It was really amazing to have been exposed to so much progressive thinking.

Acuities in Landscape Architecture

Alessandro Giulio


INTRODUCTION
Located in the quiet seclusion of London's Hyde Park, lies the Diana Memorial Fountain designed by the architect Kathryn Gustafson. Since its opening in 2004, the Diana Memorial Fountain has attracted the masses in pursuit of both respects to the late Princess Diana and for personal contemplation. The fountain plants itself ambiguously within the spectrum between organic and engineered landscape architecture. The acuities between Space and the Senses are (in my opinion, of course) the hidden details that make the fountain an exceptional example of contemporary sensory landscape architecture.



ACUITIES between SPACE and the SENSES
When we construct walls around a given location, we create space; closed, clearly defined and often conditional space. But how does one design and ultimately provide for a sense of place without enclosing space? This is an issue landscape architecture continues to address. By consequence, landscape architecture projects range in their success of providing a sense of space. For this reason, sensory implementation allows for Kathryn Gustafson’s Diana Memorial Fountain to be a success project of landscape architecture. It should go without saying that the fountain holds a contemplative experience from approach to interaction. The following text is an experiential narration intended to portray the acuities between space and the senses.

You make your way into the grounds of Hyde Park. You wander through the tranquil landscape and suddenly you stumble upon the fountain in the distance. The fountain, an organic egg-shaped form, cuts across the Hyde Park landscape; a small collection of people are gathered at the form’s edge. You make your arrival to the fountain, where you would be greeted by a contrast in materiality and a sense of space. The architecture of the fountain, as you begin to examine, is slightly receding in the distance and provoking within you a sense of demarcation as the fountain gently carves out the ground in which you stand on. Standing on the outside perimeter of the fountain, you feel outside. You give a glance around the perimeter, where you quickly notice the footbridges that could bring you into the inside of the fountain. So you make your way around the fountain, closely admiring the changes in the waters speed and sound, briefly looking up to realize your place between the park and fountain. You reach a small footbridge that gently leads you into the fountain’s inside. The space you encounter is quiet and as welcoming as you would want it to be. You easily find yourself in a relaxed state of contemplation once inside the fountain; distanced from the perimeter of the fountain, yet within the fountain and its reaches of sound from the waters movement. At the fountain’s edge you see the collection of people from before, yet their voices are reduced to murmurs by the soft noise of water movement. A softscape path marks your return to the outside of the fountain, but you find yourself content with your position. Sitting on the lawn, on the inside of the fountain, you realize something. You are neither in or out of the any given space, but rather you are simply within the space sensorially.

Architecture Speaks

By Shawna Hammon
Lecture - "Berlin"

Death no longer belongs to an individual.  Acts of war and terrorism such as Hiroshima and 9/11 along with natural disasters like earth quakes and tsunamis have made mass deaths more common.  A single tombstone could never fully express the scope of terror inflicted on the victims of these tragedies.  Architects are challenged to find another way for their designs to speak.  Enter Peter Eisenman and Daniel Libeskind – two architects whose architecture attempts to communicate the terrible nature of the Holocaust to the public.

  

Peter Eisenman explains that “the enormity and horror of the Holocaust are such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate.”  It was along these lines that he designed his Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (aka Holocaust Memorial) with 2,711 slabs on a grid pattern on a sloping field.  The slabs, which are 2.38m x .95m, vary in height from .2 to 4.8m making each slab dimensionally unique.  Eisenman intentionally created an uneasy and confusing atmosphere so that visitors of the memorial could relate to the Jews at the time of WWII.

Similarly, Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum of Berlin endeavors to capture the emotional journey of the Jewish population in Germany during World War II.  The Garden of Exile is connected to the museum proper through the second tunnel which represents the mass emigration of Jews from Germany.  The garden consists of 49 tall pillars with Russian olive trees growing on top.  Similar to Eisenman’s design, the grid is on a tilted foundation which is meant to disorient visitors and make them feel instable. 

Libeskind noted, “In my view, architecture is a communicative medium. To me, it's a storytelling medium. And I attempted to create a building that told that complex story in many different ways… It's a cultural medium. It has to be able to communicate.”  Archdaily describes Libeskind’s building as “less of a museum but an experience depicting what most cannot understand,” he “translated human experience into an architectural composition.” 

Both works are meant to leave visitors feeling lost and confused like the Jewish people so long ago who were uprooted and forced to leave their homes or stay to die.  Amongst the pillars and slabs of both projects you can look up to the open sky and feel exalted – there is still hope.

Eisenman avoided using symbols in his project.  His field of slabs represents tombs for victims of the mass genocide like a meadow of nameless tombstones.  Libeskind’s Jewish Museum commissioned Israeli artist, Menashe Kadishman, to exhibit Fallen Leaves in the Memory Void of the museum, the only occupiable voided space.  The exhibit consists of 10,000 punched metal faces that he encouraged visitors to walk on in order to hear the sounds created by the metal sheets clanging, rattling and scraping together, an eerie, disturbing sound that would echo in the voided space 20 meters tall and cause shivers down your spine.  Libeskind pointed out that Fallen Leaves represents “that which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: Humanity reduced to ashes.”  

Clearly, both projects bring visitors on an emotional journey through their spaces.  The architecture speaks to us about a tragedy that very few of us could otherwise understand or identify with.

 

Citations:

Eisenman, Peter. "Germany's Memorial: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin." Frontline. PBS, 31 May 2005. Web. 31 Aug. 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/germans/memorial/eisenman.html>.

Kroll , Andrew . "AD Classics: Jewish Museum, Berlin / Daniel Libeskind" 25 Nov 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 31 Aug 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/91273>.

Libeskind, Daniel, and Daniel Greene, perf. "Daniel Libeskind - architect." Voices on Antisemitism. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 13 Sep 2007. Accessed 1 Sep 2012. <http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=20070913>.

Contemporary European Architecture

A part of the seminar is dedicated to the realization of a common architectural blog. 

During or after class, each student is requested to post texts, drawings and photos, fixing and discussing ideas, concepts and critical observations with a direct reference to the topics treated in classes and the building visited in trips. 

The posts should have a clear original title, different from any previous post, the name of the author in the first line, useful labels, a minimum length of 500 words and can include a maximum of three images.

When possible, posts will be elaborated in class time.

Excerpts and quotes of other texts are welcome, but they have to be mandatory presented in quotation marks, otherwise it is plagiarism.

Mid term exam

Each student will show his/her posts, with a reflection about “writing on architecture”, and trying to make evident his/her specific point of view on the treated topics.

Final exam

At the final exams, every student has to present his contribution to the blog in an organized form, explaining his/her own critical vision of the subjects and themes treated in the seminar’s classes.