WHAT architecture - London

Venice Biennale

ProgramCULTURE
exhibition
Scale100 sqm
LocationVenice, IT
StageDesign
ClientBiennale di Venezia www.labiennale.org/en/architecture
Design Year1991

This exhibition represented work from the Auckland School of Architecture and was awarded the Venice prize by a jury comprising of Arata Isozaki, Richard Meier, Francesco dal Co and was published by Electa.

 

Schools of Architecture are often seen as barometers of all that is contemporary about architecture. Invitations were extended to 43 schools from ‘around the world’ though on closer inspection the choice of schools suggested that the future of architecture is concentrated within certain around geographic media centres (Europe, Japan, Asia) producing alienated margins (South America, South Pacific, the Middle East…). This exhibition, which won the Venice Prize, was a knitting together of Western and indigenous Polynesian building traditions to produce a hybridised new. It also goes to show that places off the beaten track, cities such as Beirut, Santiago and Auckland are capable of producing novel architectures because of their regionalised constitution and a healthy indifference to cultural homogeneity.

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