by Emma O'Kelly
What with the current climate of austerity, it would have been somewhat worrying if no one had addressed ecological issues at this year’s Venice Biennale, especially given its ‘Beyond Architecture’ title. But luckily we did witness a strong green theme.
Click here to see more from the Venice Biennale 2008
Many a practice embraced the debate on cities and green spaces, about how to share and preserve them, on food production, recycling and self-sufficiency. Avatar architecture, who exhibited in the Italian pavilion presented ‘edible edifice’, a system for living with nature in the city, likewise CoLoCo presented a research project ‘re-naturing’ city spaces.
Climate change, consumption and environmental destruction were the theme of the German pavilion, and 50 stunted apple trees ripe with apples and drip-fed with coloured dye, were just one of the examples used to symbolise the disharmony between man and nature. In the Japanese pavilion this relationship was illustrated more subtly with a show curated by ex-SANAA architect Junya Ishigami. A series of delicate greenhouses filled with plants were installed around the pavilion turning it into garden, while inside the walls were illustrated with Utopian scenes of buildings in fields clad in greenery or enveloped by flowers, which allegedly took 10 architects 200 hours to complete.
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