EUTOPIA

NSK State Pavilion

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NSK State Pavilion
57th Venice Biennale [link]
Venice, Italy
May 11 – July 15, 2017

The NSK State Pavilion models itself on the inherent shortcomings (and aspirations of) applying a theory to a certain contemporary situation of historical importance. A hard-tilt slanted room with swaying floors and Borgesian passport desk are analogous to the precarious nature of the refugees’ situation in Europe. A selection of blank-page copies of the West’s foundational texts are indicative of the potential for complete change but also of the uselessness of those same texts to remain practical. Keep in mind that one of the most influential (and most popular) surveys of contemporary art in the 21st century is structured around a 19th century idea of nationalism.

~ Chad Dawkins
images courtesy of the author

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The Urburb

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sarale gur lavy2-3-1k

The UrbUrb: Patterns of Contemporary Living
Curators: Roy Brand, Keren Yeala-Golan, Ori Scialom and Edith Kofsky
Israel Pavilion, Venice Architectural Biennale 2014 [link]
Venice, Italy

Accompanied by tinkling music grand plotters stutter and whir across beds of imported cultural sand, intricately etching diagrams derived from decades of urban, suburban and agrarian developments in Israel. Overlaid into illegible complexity the patterns present an evolution of enmeshed modern approaches to designed living, after which the sand is wiped clean: tabula rosa. Echoing issues of “design from above” universal modernism, the diagrams take on a hypnotic, alien character further abstracting architecture into an automated practice with scant concern for site or culture. Poetically dense The Urburb eschewed “excess-as-intelligence” and pedantic wall texts, elaborating manifold issues through succinct implementation.

~ Ryder Richards
images courtesy of Sarale Gur Lavy

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Rem Koolhaas and AMO

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Ceiling by Ryder Richards

Ceiling: Elements of Architecture © Ryder Richards

Rem Koolhaas and AMO
Elements of Architecture [link]
Venice Architecture Biennale 2014 [link]
Giardini, Central Pavilion
Venice, Italy

Entering to find a myriad of exposed duct-work over a drop-down ceiling in a classic cupola makes for great spectacle, a metaphor of the old contrasted with shiny space-age portals issuing forth nothing and leading nowhere. Roaming through the massive rooms overladen with a vocabulary of stairs, building skins, toilets, balconies or flooring the Pavilion functions as educational trade fair exhibit attempting to re-assert the historicity of constituent elements.  Offering little concept the pavilion overwhelms with quantity and gadget engagement, implying architecture has forgotten the basics in favor of theory and must be patronizingly re-grounded by an entrenched authority figure.

~ Ryder Richards

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