VENICE BIENNALE 2006

10th International Architecture Exhibition
Cities. Architecture and Society

10 september - 11 november 2006

Biennale gardens & Arsenale

The 10th International Architecture Exhibition will take place from September 10 to November 19, 2006, showcasing four distinct and complementary events:

 

 

 

- Cities. Architecture and Society, an international exhibition directed by Richard Burdett, centered on the transformations of cities and territories on the planet. Burdett is professor of architecture and city planning at the London School of Economics, and currently one of the major experts on these issues.

In the 300-metre long Corderie dell’Arsenale, Cities, architecture and society will present -  in projections of new videos on wide screens, photography, film and three-dimensional graphic presentations, designed by Aldo Cibic and Luigi Marchetti - Cibic&Partners with the art direction and graphic design by Fragile - the urban experiences ofsixteen world cities in four different continents of the planet: Barcelona, Spain (population: 4,424,000); Berlin, Germany (population: 3,328,000); Cairo, Egypt (population: 11,146,000); Caracas, Venezuela (population: 3,276,000); Istanbul, Turkey (population: 9,760,000); Johannesburg , South Africa (population: 3,288,000); London, Great Britain (population: 7,615,000); Los Angeles United States (population: 12,146,000); Mexico City, Mexico (population: 19,013,000); Milan-Torino, Italy (population: 4,007,000 and 1,182,000); Mumbai, India (population: 18,336,000); New York, United States (population: 18,498,000); São Paulo, Brazil (population: 18,333,000); Shanghai, China (population: 12,665,000); and Tokyo, Japan (population: 35,327,000).

- an exhibition, directed by Franco Purini, focusing on the transformations of Italian territories and cities, in the specific Italian perspective of the relationship between the contemporary and conservation, between the historic landscape and new scenarios. The exhibition will be hosted in the new Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini, Arsenale

- Cities of Stone, a section that will describe the transformations that are taking place or being planned in the regions of Southern Italy, curated by Claudio D’Amato Guerrieri.

Cities of Stone a collateral section of the 10th International Architecture Exhibition curated by Claudio D’Amato Guerrieri, and organized within the framework of the Sensi Contemporanei project, is dedicated to the cities whose principal characteristic was having been conceived and organically built in stone until the decline of the structural conceptions based on load-bearing masonry decreed the end of the critical and constructional success of this material. “An exhibition – explains Claudio D’Amato Guerrieri – that arises from the conviction that there are Mediterranean architectural ideals that exist and continue to be vital today, but they risk being swept away; and that there is a need for a strong critical conscience to contrast the threat arising from the processes of cultural homologation at work on a planetary scale.” Mediterranean cities are cities of stone, directly generated by the Greek and Roman civilization, by its particular form of rationality, whose esthetic values over time have become ideals shared by Western culture. The exhibition project raises a series of questions about the dominating models that govern the urban and landscape transformations in progress, and about alternative hypotheses to those founded on the myth of a deconstructed modernist architecture, devoid of memory, uprooted from its tradition.

Cities of Stone intends to raise the question of the critical recognition, in a thematic area that is rarely explored in research, of the potential relevance of the culture of masonry, understood not only as continuity with traditional building techniques, but also as a process of radically updating them.

The section will be held in the Artiglierie dell’Arsenale, and entry will be greeted by a 15-meter tall obelisk and a barrel vault 6 meters in diameter. Two prototypes of the art of modern stone-cutting (stereotomy) which will concretely demonstrate new possibilities in the structural use of this ancient yet highly modern material. The first of the three exhibition areas into which the section is divided, entitled The Other Modernity, presents spectacular two and three dimensional reconstructions illustrating the golden age of 1930’s masonry architecture: giant black and white photographic prints and models made with rapid prototyping will illustrate the principal issues that brought fame to the cities of the southern Mediterranean, from Algiers to Thessaloniki, from Rhodes and the Dodecanese to the foundation cities in Italy and Libya, from Alexandria to Tirana. An in-depth analysis is made of the construction method and the architectural language which reinterpreted the tradition of great inventions such as the seafront walkways, all the way back to the ancient origins represented by the Greek cities, which revolutionized their era. The first modern city in history, Alexander the Great’s Alexandria, designed by Dinocrates, is the object of special attention, through the reconstruction of the lighthouse, one of the symbols of this exhibition.

- City - Port, a section centered on models of international urban and territorial transformations which will be located in a city in Southern Italy, and will be organized to coincide with the opening of the Venetian venues, curated by Rinio Bruttomesso.

City – Port. Local Gate to the Global Market will be the international exhibition hosted in the splendid nineteenth-century Palazzo Forcella de Seta, kindly made available by the Palermo chapter of ANCE and currently being restored by architect Italo Rota, who is also responsible for the design of the exhibition. Organized in collaboration with Puertos del Estado – Ministerio de Formento, Spain, and the Korea Land Corporation, Seoul, Korea, it will present a panorama of 15 case studies of port cities on different continents, with plans and projects involving their urban-port waterfronts: Oslo, Helsinki, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Rosario (Argentina), Valparaiso (Chile), Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Cape Town, Incheon (Korea), Yokohama, Sydney, Genoa and Venice. A special space will be dedicated to the city-ports of Spain, which relied on a concept of national system not only to modernize their ports, but to make their port cities more livable, by revitalizing their waterfronts with results that often achieve absolute excellence.

City – Port. Great South, located in the venue of S. Erasmo, will focus on 10 port cities in the south of Italy to offer an overall view of initiatives to requalify urban-port waterfronts, some complete and others in the planning stages, by the city governments and Port Authorities in 5 Italian regions: Pescara in the Abruzzo region; Naples and Salerno in the Campania region; Bari and Brindisi in the Puglia Region; Reggio Calabria in the Calabria region; Catania, Messina, Siracusa and Trapani in Sicily.

The new events of the 10th Exhibition include a lighting itinerary full of surprises: in addition to the lighting of the Padiglione Italia, the Corderie, the Artiglierie, the Tese and the exhibitions of the Palermo section, Targetti – a leader in the field of indoor and outdoor lighting based in Florence – has created the Info Light Box. Designed by Pino Brugellis, is it constituted by a cubic structure 4x4x4 meters, whose parts are lit by over 80.000 LEDs, and which will guide visitors to the discovery of the most significant places and events in the Exhibition. The sophisticated technology used for the lighting panels (patented and distributed by Targetti under the name SmartsLab) will allow excellent daytime visibility of images, videos and multi-chromatic dynamic performances.