The main world architectural exhibition is held this time under the motto "Reporting from the front". Its curator Alejandro Aravena shows the work of architects there, offering real solutions to the global problems of our time: urban overcrowding, poverty, climate change. In his manifesto, he named the qualities necessary for success in the difficult field of socially responsible architecture: the appropriateness - of the method - and the ingenuity - of its author.
The awards ceremony took place at the Biennale's headquarters, Palazzo Ca Giustinian on the Grand Canal, and was attended by the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic Matteo Renzi, who announced the winners in some nominations.
In this vein, the first Golden Lion, as announced in advance, was presented to the Brazilian Paulo Mendes da Rocha, patriarch of the São Paulo School of Architecture and Pritzker laureate, always very attentive to social problems and known for his radical left views.
The Silver Lion, the “youth” award, went to Kunle Adeyemi and his bureau NLÉ, best known for their Makoko Slum Floating School in Lagos, a 1: 1 replica now being built at the Arsenal.
The Spaniards received the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion: under the title Unfinished, they demonstrate a spectacular selection of buildings, projects, photographic series showing how architects solve problems that have arisen after the construction boom, while maintaining the high quality of the project and its implementation. These are various reconstructions (a cinema for housing, for example), buildings - "inserts" between existing structures, etc. The jury noted the exact choice of curators and the quality of the presented material.
Incentive prizes were awarded to the Japanese pavilion featuring a selection of collective housing from young architects - they are distinguished by the "poetry of compactness" in the dense urban environment, the jury said - and the Peru exposition dedicated to the construction of modular schools in the Amazon jungle.
The Paraguayan architects Gabinete de Arquitectura, led by Solano Benitez, received the Golden Lion for the best project in the main exhibition: in conditions of a shortage of almost all possible resources and acute social problems, he creates from a combination of the most accessible material - brick - a variety of structures, from prefabricated panels”(mortar is poured between two layers of bricks) to complex curved structures, depending on current needs. Moreover, there are enough unskilled workers to implement his projects.
Maria Giuseppina Grasso Canazzo received an honorable mention for the main exhibition: 40 years of her work in southern Sicily - an example of work on a very small scale, which improves people's lives, avoiding the pressure of capitalism: these projects are too small for the cells of its "network".
