Twelfth Biennale di Venezia
What happens when a sgrullata, the Earth will take off houses and buildings? Or when the revenge of a stormy sea walls of water rise and swallow whole cities? Reconstruction, deaths, injuries and a host of goods destroyed, of course, but also a real culture shock in front of the vulnerability of technology and the collapse of architecture and urban planning that promised cheap final victory over nature. So much so that after the recent earthquakes and waiting for the turmoil to come, the 12th Biennale of Architecture, rich and poor facilities in projects, which gives evidence of humility ever seen. A explicitly mention the terrible task forces, we think first of three initiatives. The Chilean Pavilion (but could be to Haiti), set up around the terrible earthquake on 27 February devastated the country. The U.S. pavilion, with its plans to rebuild New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Finally, Sismycity, joint initiative dedicated to the Palazzo Ducale in L'Aquila and its no reconstruction. In all three cases, the lesson is clear for all, effectively summed up the iconography of the tragic events in the media. Not only old towns to rubble, the fragile structures of stone or wood came down along with centuries of history, but the images of gleaming modern buildings in steel and concrete that were believed infallible, imploded miserably with their inhabitants or disassembled on the ground as construction lego. For the survivors, a double tragedy that erases identity, links the past and puts a mortgage on future promises. Where one would expect the launch of sustainable architecture and industrial prospects of green technology, so, here is a Biennale focused almost entirely on the rediscovery of limits and infinity of human nature. Which opens with a work inspired by his Chilean earthquake: The Boy Hidden in a Fish, and the sculptor of Smiljan Radic Marcela Correa, granite quarry which serves as a natural retreat in the face of an "increasingly uncertain future." It continues with an enumeration of those principles that challenge the skills essential poetry of architecture: the force of gravity, which is evoked in two huge beams that stand in counter-balancing act in the installation of the English-Antón García Abril, the cyclic evolution atmosphere, staged in cloudscapes of Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo Architects in a room that mimics the formation of clouds, and the intrinsic properties of materials capable of withstanding the ravages of the elements - wood, metal and earth - lined up in work-place, the key architect of the Indian studio Studio Mumbai. This, in the institutional process supervised by the director, the Japanese Kazuyo Sejima, behind a title based on a certain existentialist rhetoric, People meet in architecture, suggests its relationship with the natural holism of Zen Buddhism (although somewhat 'messy).
But even in the national pavilions, as always real open windows on the international scene, we witness a return to traditional practices seen as forms of technology wise that follow the cycles of nature, pursue research of ecological niches in which to protect themselves and do not seek to hold his head stupidly. A rediscovery of the ashes of the modern West and in the name of glocalization, that spariglia consolidated rankings and is a ground search for contemporary architecture in an identity crisis after the eclipse of the twentieth-century aesthetic. So much so that the Czech and Slovak pavilion, with its Natural Architecture or buildings in Rwandan bamboo fiber, and are far more ugly and banal of innovative sustainable construction projects of the American pavilion. Or that the Swiss Pavilion in the survey on quality landscape of late nineteenth century civil engineering (roads, bridges and viaducts) appears much more of the usual futuristic modernist utopias, such as those offered by the Australian Pavilion: vertical architecture, rational and bright. But, as everyone knows by now, unsustainable, vulnerable and not quite perfect.
Italy Pavilion A critical look at Italian architecture and urban planning from the environmental assaults that past and present, changing the identity of the land, have undermined social cohesion and identity of historical and anthropological. This is the ambition of the Italy pavilion designed by Luca Molinari and promoted by Mibac and PaBaac. A feeling of loss is evident in much of the country, where rapid changes have not ruled fueled the excesses of identity and autonomy of recent decades. The intent of the pavilion is noble and puts his finger on some taboos as the "crisis landscape" or "destination of the goods stolen from the Mafia." But in view of available projects is apparent backwardness and inability of institutions in helping creative and organizational excellence, putting them into the network to promote collective intelligence. Their hypocrisy is in front of the construction industry back, dedicated to a very short-term speculation to the detriment of innovation. To realize how inadequate the Italian proposal, just the comparison with the Dutch pavilion. With the idea of \u200b\u200busing the real estate currently disused state to create educational and cultural institutions that will enable the Netherlands to become by 2030 one of the leaders of the knowledge economy. Namely to establish new institutions capable of spreading the necessary skills to take the lead in the global economy. No sale of state property for commercial purposes, therefore, no false redevelopment that will only spread to new territories saturated concrete (as it is from us), but a slight regeneration in the name of innovation, development and cohesion in a country where plans house does not serve to encourage speculation, but to break down and rebuild so ugly intensive architecture of the last century.
