At the Chinese Pavilion, the Cloud Village designed by Philip F. Yuan of the Shanghai Digital Fabrication Engineering Technology Center, is a sun trap for a snooze once you reach the end of the Arsenale. The pavilion, titled ‘Building a future countryside’, explores one of China’s major challenges – the future of rural development. In China, the countryside has become a new frontier for experiments at a speed and scale unseen in the West. The projects show how architects are trying to find a middle ground between tradition and modernisation. Photography: Gao Changjun
26 May – 25 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Arsenale
A game of small and large meets the typical estate agent’s house viewing in the Swiss Pavilion’s large scale installation, winning the country's the award for this year's best pavilion design. Created by Alessandro Bosshard, Liv Tavor, Matthew van der Ploeg and Ani Vihervaara, the exhibition explores the interior of contemporary housing through clean, simple, unfurnished spaces created in a variety of scales that evokes a playful Alice in Wonderland effect. Photography: Wilson Wootton
24 May – 25 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Giardini
At the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, the Victoria and Albert Museum have lauched an exhibition titled ‘Robin Hood Gardens: A ruin in reverse’ curated by Dr Christopher Turner and Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner that explores the legacy of the infamous London housing estate. For the V&A’s third collaboration with the Biennale, the London institution has transported a section of Robin Hood Gardens to Venice. Read more about the exhibition here
26 May – 25 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Arsenale
During the vernissage of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the book Insert Complicated Title Here by Virgil Abloh launched with a live cover-printing session led by Abloh himself. Crowds gathered to watch him at work making the unique covers. The book is published by Harvard GSD/Sternberg Press. Photography: Giorgio De Vecchi
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) bring the installation ‘Scale + Form’ to Venice. Featured as part of the ‘Time Space Existence’ exhibition hosted by the European Cultural Centre, the installation includes a series of models ordered in a line climbing in height from high-rise to skyscraper. The display investigates the intersection of urbanism, architecture, and structural design and expands on the firm's research initiatives, bringing to life the ideas of SOM's collaborative and integrated architecture, structural engineering, and urban design practices.
25 May – 26 November; European Cultural Centre, Palazzo Mora, Strada Nova 3659
WallpaperSTORE* has teamed up with the Venetian Design Studio Zanellato/Bortotto, for the creation of its concept pop-up shop within DESIGN VE. Exhibition (Biennale Design Walks through Venice). The environment is a homage to Venice and its ‘Acqua Alta’ apocalyptic recurrent syndrome, when waters from the Canals & Laguna invade streets and campo around town, due to high tides. The STORE* will be serviced by local Venetian students architects giving hints of secret Venezia and Biennale walks around town. The space will house unique previews & limited editions pieces from some of our top Design partners: Minimalux, Salvatori, Venini, La Chance, L’Objet, Michael Anastassiades, Nason & Moretti – all available to purchase online. The design installation of the store is powered by local Italian metal furniture excellence De Castelli.
20 May – 17 June, everyday 10:00-19:00; Latteria Moderna Berti, Viale Garibaldi, Sestiere Castello 1791; www.store.wallpaper.com
Pritzker Prize 2017 winners, RCR arquitectes, represent Catalonia in Venice for 2018, with an exhibition at the Institut Ramon Llull. The architects introduce the public to a ‘dream’ that inspires or drives them: La Vila, a natural place of woodlands, water and memory where they were invited to build a pool in 2002 and have since been working on an open laboratory where creativity is generated and nature is explored. The installation is a ‘cave of lights and movement’ where visitors can enter a de-materialised space that is mysterious and dynamic, like a dream. Photography: Giuseppe Dall'Arche
26 May – 25 November; Calle Quintavalle, Castello 40; www.llull.cat
This installation by Kéré Architecture titled Zoí can be found at the Arsenale location of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Working with students from the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Kéré Architecture presents a proposal for refugee camps, where the studio believes is a space that needs unexpected free spaces for improvisation and creativity. An identical structure is also installed at the Tentaja Space, a public area in the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin where leisure and sports encourage the encounter between refugees and Berliners. The textile cocoon is clad in 68m of vibrant Kvadrat fabrics and is a comforting sheltering space that can be a gethering point or a quiet spot.
25 May – 26 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Arsenale
Saudi Arabia is a new addition to Venice Architecture Biennale’s crop of national pavilions. Launching with an exhibition titled ‘Spaces in Between’, it has been curated by Jawaher Al-Sudairy and Sumaya Al-Solaiman, and can be found at the Arsenale. The group of architects involved represent a younger generation of architects all from Saudi Arabia, who were selected from a national competition. This project explores how liminal spaces can be utilised to increase community ties within Suadi’s rapidly expanding cities which are experiencing rapid urbanisation. See more of the newcomers to this year’s Biennale here.
Creating an archive of state commissioned projects of the 1960s avant garde in Korea, the Korean Pavilion titled ‘Spectres Of The State Avant-Garde’ offers a wealth of information and research material. Using four case studies of such building and revisited through a creative reinterpretation by four dynamic South Korean architecture practices, the pavilion engages the visitor through its exploration of the relationship between modern architecture and the state. Photography: Kyoungtae Kim
The US pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, titled ‘Dimensions of Citizenship’ asks architects and designers to envision what it means to be a citizen today. The pavilion defines citizenship as a tangle of rights, responsibilities and attachments linked to the built environment – so how does architecture shape citizenship? The looming US-Mexico border wall is an urgent example. This pavilion can be found at the Giardini delle Biennale.
Kengo Kuma and Associates reveals new photography of the V&A in collaboration with PiM.studio Architects at the ‘Time Space Existence’ exhibition organised by the European Cultural Centre for the occasion of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Kengo Kuma describes the project: ‘The design of V&A Dundee attempts to translate this geographical uniqueness into the building by creating an artificial cliff. The big idea for V&A Dundee was bringing together nature and architecture, and to create a new living room for the city.’ Photography: Hufton+Crow
26 May – 25 November; Palazzo Bembo, Riva del Carbon, beside the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal
Alison Brooks Architects responded to the theme of ‘Freespace’ with an installation at the Arsenale titled ‘ReCasting’ that explores the subject of housing and urban dwelling. Four large-scale, inhabitable ‘totems’ titled ‘Threshold’, ‘Inhabited Edge’, ‘Passage’ and ‘Roofspace’ have been constructed in the space and join to create a unifying plinth and collective gathering space. Each totem offers a new experience that looks to reveal the civic role of residential architecture. Photography: Luke Hayes
26 May – 25 November; Arsenale at the Venice Architecture Biennale
During the Venice Architecture Biennale, Fondazione Prada presents the exhibition ‘Machines à penser’, curated by Dieter Roelstraete which explores the correlation between conditions of exile, escape and retreat and physical or mental places which favor reflection, thought and intellectual production.
26 May – 25 November; Fondazione Prada, Venice Ca’ Corner della Regina; wwww.fondazioneprada.org
At the ‘Freespace’ exhibition, John Wardle Architects’ installation ‘Somewhere Other’ is a multi-sensory concertina of timber, framed with a delicate steel structure. Portals draw visitors into the installation to transport them ‘somewhere other’ thus becoming an ‘instrument for seeing’ expanding the space that it inhabits and celebrating the discovery of the unexpected. Made of native Australian spotted gum hardwood, the installation gives off a woody scent and the ambient sound of films echo from within.
26 May – 25 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Arsenale
Architect Francesca Torzo reveals her forthcoming project, House of Contemporary Art for Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium at the ‘Freespace’ exhibition. Presenting models, prototypes, texts and images the display captures the spirit of the building that will accommodate exhibitions, research, productions and collaborative projects relating to contemporary art, design and architecture. The design features diamond-shaped and custom-made brickwork and will slot into the urban fabric of the historical location. Photography: Francesco Galli
26 May – 25 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Arsenale
Curators Baracco + Wright Architects and Linda Tegg have created a garden in the Australian Pavilion. Featuring 65 species of local grass of different territories of Australia, the immersive installation comments on the fact that ‘architecture takes up land and affects the natural environment’. Through the show 15 Australian projects have been selected, discussing how they engage with the repair of their environment, be it urban, social, economic and cultural. Photography: Rory Gardniner
24 May – 25 November; Venice Architecture Biennale – Giardini
The installation titled ‘Oxymoron’ designed by Sauerbruch Hutton, is a timber framework that encloses a space within. It's lower part is opaque, while the upper part employs 70 singularly engineered trapeze free form Kvadrat Soft Cells panels creating a pattern of warm colour. Inside, black and white photographs reveal Sauerbruch Hutton’s M9 Museum District in Venice-Mestre. Photography: Jan Bitter
26 May – 25 November; Arsenale at the Venice Architecture Biennale
Dallas Contemporary presents ‘Paula Crown: The Architecture of Memory’, an exhibition that runs parallel to the US Pavilion at the Biennale organized by School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Chicago. The exhibition has been commissioned and curated by Peter Doroshenko, Dallas Contemporary director, who commissioned the Ukrainian Pavilion at Venice in 2017. Crown’s contemporary multi-media installation and sculptures are installed at Studio Cannaregio, where an education programme and student workshops will be also hosted.
25 May – 26 November; Studio Cannaregio, Cannaregio 1345/D; www.dallascontemporary.org
Curated by Momoyo Kaijima, the Japanese pavilion presents the work of 42 studios, from university design ones to professional architecture ones and art ateliers - examples are spread all over the world. The project ‘questions the nature of architecture from the perspective of users’, says Kaijima. Ultimately the show explores how life and architecture interact and enhance each other through exquisite hand and technical drawings.
Curated and designed by London based practice Neiheiser Argyros, the Greek Pavilion titled ‘The School of Athens’ explores the idea of learning and universities as a 'Freespace'. The space's minimalist interior is presented as a series of steps from which rise 3D-printed models of carefully selected architecture school buildings from across the globe. Photography: Ugo Carmeni
