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Architecture Biennale in Venice
The crème de la crème of international architects will head to Italy to illustrate their creativity at the 10th Annual Venice Architecture Biennale. Beginning on September 10 and continuing through November 19th this is the place to be to enjoy the beauty that is Venice and explore the latest in the world of architecture and design. Among the participating countries are Switzerland, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Great Britain and Luxembourg. Switzerland :
French Architect Bernard Tschumi is responsible for Switzerland's entry at the Biennale. His proposal, Elliptic City: Independent Financial Center of the Americas, explores the real and mythical qualities of a project for a large island in the Caribbean where nature and finance merge in an unexpected manner. It is a flexible design of buildings and gardens ready to accommodate a range of activities, from a business center to a hotel, an ocean club, and shopping areas, among others. The exhibition shows unusual interactions between local ecological strategies and global banking plans on a world scale. An array of bright images, a large model, and a music video display accessible to a large audience argue for the simultaneously local and global dimension of architecture today
Canada
The exhibition will feature an enormous polar fleece sweater installed tent-like inside the Canadian Pavilion. Inside the sweater, a number of stationary bicycles will operate short films about the influence of outdoor leisure culture on the city of Vancouver. Iceland
Henning Larsens Tegnestue (HLT) in collaboration with Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson was awarded 1st prize to design a new Concert and Congress Centre in Reykjavik. It will be located on the boundary between the land and the sea; the building will stand out like a radiant sculpture reflecting both sky and harbor space as well as the vibrant life of the city.
The jury described the project as “an impressive and mystical building, referring to both the Icelandic nature and the settlement of Reykjavik”. The winning project gathers inspiration from the northern lights and the dramatic Icelandic nature.
Denmark
Collaboration is a common theme at the Venice Biennale. Denmark will present a Danish-Chinese Collaboration demonstrating how architects, in partnership with researchers, planners and engineers are contributing to solve the global challenges following in the wake of China’s massive growth and planned ”welfare boost”. Within the next 20 years over 400 million Chinese are expected to join the urbanization race, and China’s government has set itself the goal of creating appreciably better living conditions for their population of 1.3bn people. China has thus embarked on the greatest welfare increase known to mankind. “How can China proceed with its ambitious project of improving the living conditions of its population without exhausting the very resources needed to sustain a better life?” Danish director and architect Henrik Valeur asks with the exhibition CO-EVOLUTION. ”The purpose of this year’s contribution to the Biennial is to create a unique network between top Chinese universities and young Danish architects. CO-EVOLUTION marries the famous Danish tradition of sustainable and humanistic architecture with the explosive growth in Chinese construction. Such an encounter may mark the birth of entirely new know-how within sustainable urban development at world level,” explains Kent Martinussen, CEO of the Danish Architecture Centre. Great Britain
Echo City, the British entry, champions public participation in the making of cities. Sheffield is presented as an exemplar of post-industrial cities everywhere and is used as a paradigm for discussion of a city's identity and renewal.
Jeremy Till, professor of Architecture at Sheffield University and Emily Campbell, Head of Architecture & Design at the British Council both conceived and designed Echo City. He explains, "Sheffield acts as a vehicle to push around wider ideas about cities and their social dynamics. In this way, it is an echo of many cities, buffeted by the social and technological forces of modernity. The exhibition has Sheffield at its heart, but is about much more than Sheffield; it is about any city.”
Luxembourg
Welcome to Paradise is Luxembourg's entry at the 10th Annual Venice Architecture Biennale. It explores the preconceived notion of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is a tax haven and financial centre in Europe and is known as Gibraltar of the North or Little Switzerland. The world is welcome to visit Paradise!
With over fifty countries participating this is expected to be Venice's finest Architecture Biennale.
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