Among the latter, undoubtedly, there is a small exposition “Pier Luigi Nervi. Architecture as a challenge”at Palazzo Giustinian Lolin. This is a kind of "preview" of a large retrospective of the brilliant engineer in the Roman museum MAXXI: no originals were brought to Venice, and the exposition itself is rather modest in size, but not in content.
Drawings, drawings, models of buildings and their details, wonderful photographic materials - historical and modern, as well as videos allow us to assess the scale of the personality, which is far from being limited to textbook buildings. The "viave" exposition is complemented by the master's Venetian building - the bank building "Cassa di Risparmio" (1964-1972), named after its authors Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin - one of the few examples of modern construction on the territory of the lagoon.
Also extremely interesting is one of Frank Gehry's new projects, presented at the headquarters of the Venice Biennale of the Palazzo Ca Giustinian - his large-scale plan of a “workshop park” for the Swiss foundation LUMA.
According to him, the former industrial zone in Arles should turn into a center for exhibitions and artistic creation (significant areas have been allocated for the workshops of artists).
Along with the reconstructed industrial buildings, a number of new buildings are planned, the main of which will be the metal-clad LUMA Tower with housing, a (indispensable) 5-star hotel and conference center.
A multitude of models - both of the entire complex and of individual buildings, explanatory materials and video projections are presented in the newly renovated Ca Giustinian Hall of Columns, which for the first time entered the circle of exhibition venues of the Biennale.
The theme of expansion and renovation under the auspices of the Biennale was continued within the Biennale Works in progress exhibition on the ground floor of Ca Justinian. It is dedicated to the slow process of reconstruction of this palazzo, the Arsenal and its surrounding spaces and structures, and the Palazzo delle Espositioni, which has been going on since 1998, when all the "divisions" of the biennale, with the exception of the film festival, were left without exhibition and even administrative premises.
Since then, the Arsenal and the adjacent buildings have been almost completely "put into operation" (in addition, two auditoriums for the Biennale of theater and dance have been built there), the garden delle Vergine has been decorated, the Ponte dei Penseri has been built ("bridge of thoughts" - by analogy with the Bridge of Sighs), which facilitated the path from Arsenal to Giardini. It should be noted that all projects are presented in the form of soft pencil drawings, not cold renders.
In Ca Giustinian itself, a wonderful space has opened - a spacious terrace open to everyone, overlooking the Grand Canal. It is combined with the new L'Ombra del Leone (lion's shadow) bar, also available to the general public.
The exhibition "From Things to the City" of the French National Higher School of Decorative Arts in Palazzo Loredan near the Accademia Bridge presented the work of the best graduates of the last years in 10 specialties taught by this prestigious university. The exposition, although it is not at all uninteresting (among the exhibits there are works in the fields of animation and scenography, all presented "diplomas" are of very high quality), but it is more an advertisement for the institute than a substantial addition to the 12th Architecture Biennale.
On the contrary, the Architectural School of the London Architectural Association has prepared a very rich exposition on the theme of different types of energy and their direct and indirect influence on our lives - we wrote about this exhibition
in the material dated August 28 this year.
The exhibition of Louise Bourgeois, whose sculptures complement a variety of modern buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, has become a successful addition to the Biennale.
It takes place in the hall of the Vedova Foundation, which was opened last year, by Renzo Piano.
The architect reconstructed the studio of Emilio Vedov, placing large-format canvases of this artist in the back of this narrow and long space, which mechanical "hands" take from the store and show them to visitors. This decision was caused by an inconvenient floor plan; thanks to this mobility, “the work of art comes to the audience, and not vice versa,” explains Piano himself.
Also, the parallel program of this year's biennale officially includes the expositions of Taiwan and Hong Kong, which Archi.ru covered earlier, as well as a series of events "Italian Province", which includes various conferences, seminars and round tables in cities of the Veneto region, including Vicenza and Bassano del Grappa.
