Fresh back from Venice, Miriam Stoney reflects on her highlight of the Architecture Biennale (curated by three women!) and why it is so much more than just a place to dip your feet.
This year’s Venice Architecture Biennale takes as its theme ‘Reporting from the Front’ and is unashamedly socially conscious in its remit. Buzzwords of the pavilions include ‘open’ and ‘fair’, while the architectural design often seems to fall short of the amount of (usually written) justification needed to prove some altruistic merit.
However, among the national pavilions are a few examples of architectural design communicating the ideas of the Biennale in that arresting, non-verbal language that so many of the participants seem to have given up on. One such of example being the Australian Pavilion, which just so happens to have been curated by three women: Aileen Sage Architects (Isabelle Toland and Amelia Holliday) with Michelle Tabet.
Their exhibition consists of a 60-m2 pool of water, about thirty centimetres deep. This pool covers about a third of the space, with space around the edges where you may sit and dip your feet. The voices of various famous Aussies provide personal narratives that reflect the significance of the pool in Australian culture, while a pleasant, lingering scent subtly evokes the smell of the Australian bush. Nothing is intrusive, nothing is demanding, but everything is inviting.
The temptation is to describe The Pool, as the exhibition is simply titled, as a novelty of interactive display. Critics have been quick to do so. Oliver Wainwright, writing for The Guardian, listed it as one example of the “souped-up preschool playground of the national pavilions”.
I couldn’t disagree more. The Australian Pavilion is incredibly effective in communicating something through a spatial experience without the use an infographic or some generic text about social conscious. As a European who has never visited Oz, I didn’t fully grasp the significance of the pool – but the accompanying newspaper gives such an emotive account of this sentiment that this was soon understood. From confrontations at pools to expose the discrimination of Aboriginal people to the formative experiences of children learning to swim, it is clear that swimming is a central part of the cultural consciousness and experience in Australia.
Beyond these cultural specifics, though, The Pool speaks generally of the collective experience of public space by constructing an abstracted version of an architectural typology. In this space people could come together and emerge from their intellectual selves, which are continuously battered by so many of the other pavilions. Within the chaotic context of the Biennale, this ‘playground’ actually planted the seeds of ideas without frying one’s already weary brain with vapid accounts of specific, but distant acts of altruism in “public space”. For that reason, it took me straight to the so-called front of architecture: how to build for people? Who will use this space and how? How can we make common architecture that is really fair and open for all?
However, among the national pavilions are a few examples of architectural design communicating the ideas of the Biennale in that arresting, non-verbal language that so many of the participants seem to have given up on. One such of example being the Australian Pavilion, which just so happens to have been curated by three women: Aileen Sage Architects (Isabelle Toland and Amelia Holliday) with Michelle Tabet.
Their exhibition consists of a 60-m2 pool of water, about thirty centimetres deep. This pool covers about a third of the space, with space around the edges where you may sit and dip your feet. The voices of various famous Aussies provide personal narratives that reflect the significance of the pool in Australian culture, while a pleasant, lingering scent subtly evokes the smell of the Australian bush. Nothing is intrusive, nothing is demanding, but everything is inviting.
The temptation is to describe The Pool, as the exhibition is simply titled, as a novelty of interactive display. Critics have been quick to do so. Oliver Wainwright, writing for The Guardian, listed it as one example of the “souped-up preschool playground of the national pavilions”.
I couldn’t disagree more. The Australian Pavilion is incredibly effective in communicating something through a spatial experience without the use an infographic or some generic text about social conscious. As a European who has never visited Oz, I didn’t fully grasp the significance of the pool – but the accompanying newspaper gives such an emotive account of this sentiment that this was soon understood. From confrontations at pools to expose the discrimination of Aboriginal people to the formative experiences of children learning to swim, it is clear that swimming is a central part of the cultural consciousness and experience in Australia.
Beyond these cultural specifics, though, The Pool speaks generally of the collective experience of public space by constructing an abstracted version of an architectural typology. In this space people could come together and emerge from their intellectual selves, which are continuously battered by so many of the other pavilions. Within the chaotic context of the Biennale, this ‘playground’ actually planted the seeds of ideas without frying one’s already weary brain with vapid accounts of specific, but distant acts of altruism in “public space”. For that reason, it took me straight to the so-called front of architecture: how to build for people? Who will use this space and how? How can we make common architecture that is really fair and open for all?