Biennale curator Aaron Betsky posed a difficult topic. No one really understands it, hence the variety of solutions. Flowers and cabbage beds alternate with rows of books and computers, paintings with installations, furniture design with landscaping. Some pavilions are almost empty, leaving room for meaningful interpretations. The word beyond hurts the eye, because every time it is obvious that it appears for a reason, but specifically in order to build a connection with the motto of the Biennale.
In such a situation, the jury (which consists of five people: Paola Antonelli, Max Hollein, Jeffrey Kipnis, Farshid Mousavi and Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi), it was probably difficult to determine their preferences. However, the three new laureates announced yesterday (two gold lions and one silver one) are quite obviously lining up in one row. All these are very easy, almost childish projects.
The Golden Lion for the national pavilion was awarded to the Polish exposition called ‘Hotel Polonia: the afterlife of buildings’. Several new and well-known buildings in Poland are depicted having changed function in graceful and funny collages. A giant temple turned into an aqua park, Norman Foster's Metropolitan office center - into a prison, cows roam the airport. The glass tower has been turned into a tombstone: reliefs are added to it, and the bottom of a rusty overpass is depicted on top, as if the 40-storey giant had become miniature. Which reminds one of the films of the National Geographic channel about life on earth after people or just a fantastic movie. All together is pretty fun, if not cool. The idea of Aaron Betsky about architecture that goes beyond the concept of "building" is turned inside out - here the buildings are taken out of their functions, and the authors are openly playing with words with an abstruse curatorial motto. Everything would be fine, but a little lightweight - but the soul and the head rest.
Among the projects of eminent authors exhibited at the Arsenal and designed to interpret the theme set by the curator in the form of installations, the jury chose a small, light and bright one - several sculptures by Greg Lynn, assembled from plastic children's toys cut into pieces, intertwined into incomprehensible and not devoid of surreal smack of the composition. The author calls them furniture prototypes, but it is clearly visible that this furniture is glued together from plastic rocking chairs, ducklings and eggplants.
The third - not gold, but silver and youth - went to the Elemental stand of Chilean architects. These are the embryos of suburban social housing, growing out of the joint work of architects and future residents. As far as can be understood from the extremely laconic and poor exposition, architects distribute paper scans to residents - models of future houses - and give them the opportunity to create within strictly defined frameworks - draw windows where they want and paint future facades with pencils in the color they like. Therefore, one third of the stand is made up of painted facades, the other is laconic paper cubes, and the third is an attraction that connects them. Looking through paper stereoscopic eyepieces, you can observe different stages of the realization of the idea, which stubbornly end in a red velvet interior. The stand is located in the Giardini, in the Italian pavilion dedicated to architectural experiments, on the third floor (you have to climb the stairs twice), it is small and difficult to see - probably as modest as the Chilean suburbs in question.
Thus, judging by the choice of the jury of the Biennale, architecture, in addition to the building, consists of: jokes, toy furniture and painted houses. One might think that from the uncertainty of a profound topic, architects fell into childhood, became spontaneous and finally achieved freedom of creative expression. Now, it is likely that new horizons will open up.
