As a reminder, curator Rem Koolhaas proposed a separate topic for the participating countries - “All-consuming modernity: 1914–2014”. For a significant part of the participants, modernism turned out to be synonymous with modernity. Almost a third of all expositions at the Arsenal are, in one way or another, dedicated to the modernist heritage and its place in the modern world.
The main hero of the Chilean exposition was large-panel housing construction: in the middle of the pavilion there is a typical concrete panel, through the window opening of which one can look into the world of mass residential construction. One of the walls is completely dedicated to examples of the most interesting panel buildings that curators have lovingly collected from all over the world: from Argentina to Sweden and Germany. Incidentally, Burov's house on Leningradsky Prospekt also got into this collection.
The Dominican Republic showed the legacy of Trujillo - complexes built during the reign of the dictator, including the famous Columbus Lighthouse in Santa Domingo. And the national flavor of this exposition is given by colorful carpets, the pile of which imitates flower petals.
Latvia asked the question "What should we do with modernism?" The exposition of this country consists of two parts: the actual questions about the future of modernist architecture are painted on the ceiling painted in black, and numerous photographs of objects are suspended from it by thin fishing line. They are interspersed with statistics and other facts about the architecture of this period, as well as with blank pages, which symbolizes the abundance of blank spots in the study and, most importantly, understanding.
Bahrain has collected all its buildings over the past century in a puffy catalog, which has been printed in a huge circulation. But not the content of hundreds of brochures, but they themselves became the main content of the pavilion, which is interpreted as a round tower of bookshelves. As conceived by the authors, its facades will have a life of their own throughout the Biennale: some of the catalogs will inevitably be distributed among visitors, somewhere there are cracks, and somewhere voids. Inside the tower is a modern information center, where you can learn about the architecture of Bahrain in more than 20 languages.
By a funny coincidence, the exposition of the Republic of Kosovo, located next to the Bahrain Pavilion, also invites visitors to enter the round tower. True, here the cylinder is made of wooden chairs "shkambi" - a traditional piece of Kosovo interior, which the representatives of this people managed to preserve, despite all the political and economic upheavals.
Malaysia has relied on the efficiency of buildings, evaluating each of them according to the main economic and engineering indicators, and Kuwait offers a very large installation of architectural "proto-symbols", having plenty of fantasies about what landmarks of modern times can be.
