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AN INTRODUCTION
"The 7th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, particularly if compared with the 48th Visual Arts Exhibition, highlights the difficulties all architecture exhibitions have had to face so far.
Only very recently have the media and the public begun to show more interest in what architects actually do.
For the first time the Architecture Biennale will use both the Arsenale complex, incorporating the Corderie, the Artiglierie and the Gaggiandre, and the Giardini di Castello, where the event traditionally takes place.
This means that the exhibition has grown bigger and will last longer, with over four months of shows and events aimed at broadening the scope of the dialogue between architects and among a wider audience.
Through its main theme CITTA’: LESS AESTHETICS, MORE ETHICS, the 7th Architecture Exhibition intends to focus on the deep sense of disorder affecting a society in rapid transformation, where an architect's reference points have been changed completely. The overwhelming pressures of urban agglomeration facing the world today were unthinkable only a few years ago. The populations of cities like Calcutta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Mexico City have increased tenfold, presenting scenarios as complex in their contradictions as in their forms of urban life, possibly asking architects for solutions.
The questions arising in the century before us resemble those asked in the one just past. They stem from the unshaken belief in the ability of industrial progress to improve mankind's quality of life indefinitely. Likewise, today's questions still ask whether technology and innovation can bring about the changes necessary for a better human existence. Yet, the past century's artists and architects failed miserably in their belief that an object of art could be mass produced. One can only hope that things will take a different turn in the future.
The artists and architects invited to the Biennale have contributed works originally designed and created for this exhibition. Devoting their time and resources, they have made a personal and enthusiastic commitment to the exhibition’s theme.
The exhibition's subtitle Less Aesthetics, More Ethics is not intended as an axiomatic statement but rather as a search for confrontation and dialogue. It underscores the role of this Biennale in bringing together installations and images to attract a much wider audience beyond the trade of architects and artists.
Its focal point is the super screen display measuring 280 by 5 meters installed in the Corderie. It shows images that capture the immensely complex nature of cities: sprawl, brown fields, social conflict, pollution, plight of refugees, new social centers, stations, airports, shopping centers as well as interviews with 50 prominent architects.
Any attempt the architect makes at uncritically integrating his work with the turmoil of globalization ought in my opinion to be counterbalanced by a positive viewpoint that seeks to innovate our work as architects and creators.
As Beuys once said, in the end, artists and architects are but the Red Cross of the world".
BY MASSIMILIANO FUKSAS
(director of the Architecture Section of Venice Biennale)
DIRECTOR'S BIOGRAPHY
Of Lithuanian origin, Fuksas was born in Rome on 9 January 1944. He opened his Rome office in 1967 and graduated from the University of Rome School of Architecture in 1969. He has been guest professor at many universities (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart, Germany; Ecole Spécial d'Architecture, Paris, France; Columbia University, New York, USA; Institut für Entwerfen und Architektur der Universität, Hannover, Germany; Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, Austria).
He is a member of the board of directors of the I.F.A. (Institut Français d'Architecture) and served on the board of the French Academy in Rome.
He opened his Paris office in 1989, and divides his professional and private life between Rome and Paris.
In 1993 he opened an office in Vienna.
For many years he has studied the problems of urban centers, especially those affecting the outskirts of cities.
He is former member of the board of the Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umweltschutz, Berlin, and of the Magistrat der Landeshauptstadt Salzburg. He was awarded the Vitruvio Internacional a la Trayectoria prize at the 7th Architecture Biennale of Buenos Aires in 1998 and the Grand Prix d'Architecture Française in 1999. He is Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française. He writes for the architecture column of the weekly news journal L'Espresso. He is director of the Architecture Section of the Venice Biennale 1998-2001.
Among the many competitions he has won, special mention must go to the international competition held by the city of Rome and the Ente EUR for the Centro Congressi Italia at Roma-Eur in 2000.
Main projects and works: Renovation of the Seine waterfront at Clichy-sur-Seine - 92 (Paris); Maison du Cablage et de la Communication at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Paris; a residential quarter at Candie Saint-Bernard, 75011 Paris; Couvent des Pénitents in Institut Européen d'Aménagement et d'Architecture, Rouen; International Trade Center Pudong covering an area of 4 million sq. m., Shanghai; modernization and restructuring of the port of Nagasaki; an urban plan for a 1000-hectare area of the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris; the university in the center of Brest; Europark, Salzburg; Musée des Graffiti, Niaux; Maison des Arts, Bordeaux; competition for the Place des Nations, Geneva; design of the Maximilien Perret High School, Alfortvile; 94 (Paris); invited competition for redesigning the Tiburtina railroad station, Rome; design of two towers of the Wienerberger company (150 m. high, 160,000 sq. m.); The Peace Center at Jaffa commissioned by Simon Perez and Yasser Arafat; design of a office-apartment building on the Austerfleet in Hamburg
THE CITY OF THE FUTURE
In the different pavilions at Giardini, Arsenale, Corderie, Artiglierie and Gaggiandre, the 7th edition of the International Biennale Architecture is focused on highly frequented places such as airports, shopping centers, railway stations: Massimiliano Fuksas in fact considers an architect as a humanist town creator paying a special attention to megalopolis.
There are for example spectacular plans for the Corderie where the Director has devised an enormous cinema screen, 280m long and 5.5m high which images of cities and interviews with leading architects will be projected onto. There are also a lot of web-cam equipment operating 24 hours a day to view all the time the state of some of the largest megalopoli in the world: Mexico City, Calcutta, San Paolo, Moscow, Los Angeles.
Many more countries exhibit their works outside the Biennale exhibiting rooms: Argentina at the Querini Foundation, Armenia (obviously) at San Lazzaro degli Armeni island, Slovenia at San Samuele and Ireland at Thetis gallery, Castello. The italian architect Maurizio Nannucci exhibits his work around the city at boats stops on the Grand Canal and also on a "vaporetto". THE AMERICAN PAVILION, A NEW PROJECT
It's an architecture workshop, a place where students from the Architecture and City Planning Departments of UCLA and Columbia University explore and present a lot of new planning models: the American Pavilion isn't a traditional exhibit of finished projects. The main theme is modern technology and its possible application to contemporary architecture in classic areas as houses, sport arenas, airports. The result of these exerimentations will remain on display at the Biennale for the whole run of the exhibit, thus giving increasingly more space to and opportunities for young architects.
The young American architects work under two professors at Columbia and UCLA: Greg Lynn and Hari Rashid.
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