The Venice Biennale

Editorial coverage for CallisonRTKL

Cities of Imagination

In just over two weeks, the Venice Biennale international art and architecture festival will come to an end. The exhibition has run on alternating years since 1980, serving as a global appraisal of the architectural world's current climate. But this year, with the guidance of curator and seminal Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the Biennale has moved in a new direction.

Fundamentals, the theme of this year’s event, goes above and beyond that of previous years, acting as a launchpad for further research into the wider-reaching aspects of architecture while paying close attention to its most basic elements. And thanks to the astute direction of Koolhaas, Fundamentals has been incredibly well-received, with some critics labelling this year as the best in the exhibition’s history.

65 countries are exhibiting in the pavilions of the leafy Giardini, with the spectacular spaces of the Arsenale mainly dedicated to Italian architecture’s most promising talent. Meanwhile, dance interpretations, lectures, guided walks and sculptures can be found dotted throughout Venice's labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways.

The success of this year’s exhibition perhaps lies in its sheer depth of study. Indeed, this is Koolhaas’ vision and under his shrewd curation, the exhibition has scrutinised not just the structural elements of what makes a building, but the human behaviours that drive the design.

Representing the USA is OfficeUS, curated by New York-based collective Storefront for Art and Architecture. The interior of the US Pavilion’s Palladian-style structure has been transformed into a minimal yet fully functioning workplace, consisting of two interconnected concepts; the Repository, which presents over 1000 projects designed by American architects working abroad between 1914 and 2014, and the Office, a workspace staffed by a team of resident design partners who have been examining the submitted projects throughout the exhibition. Together, the Repository and the Office will combine to create a historical record of the USA’s architectural influence on the rest of the world, as well as a broader narrative of US modernisation and its global reach.

As official OfficeUS sponsors, we were invited to host the Big Box Rules workshop to examine the ‘big box’ typology from a design perspective, specifically through the lens of large, single-use buildings in an urban context.

The final presentation, co-presented by CallisonRTKL Director Jorge Beroiz and Atelier One Director Aran Chadwick, gave an in-depth look into two projects which detailed the big box both from an architectural and structural engineering perspective. The first was Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne, which has undergone several major transformations since its opening in 1960 to become the largest shopping centre in Australia. The other, Dolce Vita Tejo in Lisbon, is a shopping mall covered by one of the most innovative and largest roof structures of its kind in the world.

Rounding off the day, CallisonRTKL and Atelier One were joined by OfficeUS partners, including MIT Architecture graduate Curtis Roth, Milan-based architect, editor and publisher Matteo Ghidoni and founding member of conceptual design studio ‘M-A-U-S-E-R’, Asli Serbest.

The session brought together concepts from all the afternoon's presentations, examining socio-economics, architectural history, and levelling the possibilities of a boxless future as we move towards a new age of digital technologies, trends and desires.