Not quite, of course. The Swiss Pavilion has been praised by everyone I have met (“interesting and humorous,” - Mark Hidekel), and it is really good because it manages to combine a joke with a serious reflection on the typification of life. Entertaining, but not overwhelmed, and for all its simplicity, carefully crafted. There was a queue at the pavilion all three days and it was definitely worth joining.
Curators Alessandro Bossar, Lee Tavor, Matthew van der Pluch and Ani Viervaara called the project “Inspection of Empty Apartments”, highlighting the problem of typing rental housing. Visitors are called interior tourists and emphasize that the pavilion is not showing apartments, but a "visit to the house."
“Most Swiss live in rented apartments (!) And move quite often,” explains Bossard, “we call ourselves a nation of tenants. So people gravitate towards a standardized space."
At the opening it sounded: we must be individual; but while the standard prevails, the curators are considering it, comparing their exposition with "Alice in Wonderland": doors, kitchens, windows and tables, typed to the extreme, sometimes grow to gigantic sizes, sometimes shrink to miniature - and this is the whole difference. The pavilion has been turned into an attraction for exploring spaces of different sizes, but these elements are identical, you can hardly think of a better technique for demonstrating repetitions. Passing through low doors, bending into three deaths, or trying to press the handle of a giant door, meanwhile, is fascinating. We must pay tribute to the authors: all the repeating elements - the firmly fixed kitchen doors, sockets, switches and door handles - are made in different scales, including the Lilliputian one visible in the window, - exactly the same.
Identical interior shells grow out of layouts, serve as their continuation, such that it is customary not to notice, but to ignore as an inevitable background suitable for any - unknown - tenant, possessing certain common properties that suit everyone. Such photographs have recently begun to appear in publications devoted to housing, curators ironically. At the same time, there are analogies with the usual white walls of art galleries and Protestant churches - the white walls of apartments are also not created to be looked at. But the shell-shell of the interior not only shows itself, it also raises questions, - they continue. Yves Klein's "empty" is replaced by Arman's "fullness". Leonardo da Vinci suggested that artists be inspired by the unevenness of the walls, and Corbusier ordered them to be leveled with plaster. But one layer of putty is not enough - summarize the authors of the concept of the Swiss pavilion.
Of course, we are talking about the transition from the periphery to the center and back. The curators show "architecture that has never been famous, translate secondary characters under the light of spotlights - this is not about architectural criticism, but about architectural discovery," they emphasize. Walking through the pavilion, you "stop being an architect, seller or buyer of an apartment, a university graduate or even an architect, you become an interior tourist." But this is where the tourist's stupidity leads to erroneous interpretations. Where is the facade? Is it private or public? Who lives here? Yes, we all, - the curators conclude. ***
Special mention by the jury went to the UK pavilion, which its curators Caruso San John and Marcus Taylor called "The Island", leaving the space empty except for chairs and event equipment and erecting aluminum scaffolding around the pavilion with a viewing platform above them. Upstairs there are chairs, tables and umbrellas. It must be said that the British platform around the ridge of the roof, the tiles of which can now be viewed from above, are extensive, reliable and do not swing at all. In the Hungarian pavilion, where similar scaffolding was built in the courtyard of the same material, the floor of the upper platform vibrates suspiciously underfoot.
Jury formulation for the UK Pavilion: for a bold proposal that uses the void to create a “free space” / freespace for events and information exchange.
The Portuguese Eduardo Souto de Moura received the Golden Lion in the Freespace curatorial exposition, and you could see how many rushed to look for it, and when they found it, they wondered why. It's easier to walk past his intallation: two large photographs on the wall, nothing in front of them. Jury formulation: for a precise pair of aerial photographs that reveal the essence of the relationship between architecture, time and place. Free space appears by itself, simple and open. So you see the jury in front of you, which walks and thinks - who to award? And let's go to the one whom no one noticed.
The Silver Lion in the curatorial exposition was awarded to the architects Widler Vink Tayo - for the project shown in the pavilion of the Biennale in Giardini. Here, even surprisingly, there is no emptiness (on the other hand, as much as possible) - the hall is filled with large photographs on wooden frames, like scaffolding, and is dedicated to the Caritas project, a series of interventions in the dilapidated building of the KARUS psychiatric center in the Belgian city of Melle: in 2015 a new the director stopped the demolition of the building and organized a competition to encourage architects to think about how the building could be used. By that time, there were no roofs or floors, and there were cracks in the walls.
Widler Vink Tayo suggested leaving the building as it is, reinforcing the ruins with steel beams and filling the holes with foam concrete blocks. They drilled holes in the floor to drain rainwater and built several temporary huts for therapy sessions and workshops among them. In the future, the complex will be able to develop, the main thing is not to collapse now. The wooden posts that support the photographs and symbolize the fortified walls. “Slowness and anticipation allows the architecture to be open to future activation,” the jury said.
There are also two "special mentions" in the curatorial exposition, both of which went to ethno expositions, so to speak. One is a wicker cube with a staircase inside, built by the Indonesian Andra Mateen in Corderi: for "a thoughtful installation that serves as a good backdrop for showing vernacular structures." The fact is that Mateen, instead of arranging his own works on the stairs, as everyone else did, exhibited models of typical Indo-Asian houses.
Raoul Mehrota was awarded the second mention by the jury for three projects for Mumbai shown at the exhibition: for “delicately dissolving social barriers and hierarchy.
