Mostra Internazionale di Architettura

As I mentioned in previous posts, the actual purpose of my trip to Italy was not shopping, as some may have presumed. The Biennale is an international architecture exhibition that takes place every two years, in two different venues in Venice. This year the theme was titled Out There: Architecture Beyond Building. I may be starting on the architectural mumbo jumbo here, but the actual words of Aaron Betsky, the Biennale director, were:

"It should be obvious that architecture is not building. Architecture must go beyond buildings, because buildings are not enough. [...] Most buildings are ugly, useless and wasteful. Yet architecture is beautiful. It can place us in the world in a way no other art can. It can make us at home in a modern reality. It offers and shapes that most precious and luxurious of all phenomena in the modern world: space. The exhibition seeks to collect and encourage experimentation in architecture. [...] The 11th Architecture Exhibition, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building will therefore present installations, manifestos and utopian visions in the venues of the Arsenale and the Padiglione Italia at the Giardini. These experiments developed here to meet the specific goal of the exhibition: to experiment with forms that will renew architecture, the space we live in, our own existence."

In addition to that there where also 56 participating countries, each one with a different vision to present on the theme of Architecture Beyond Building, and this is what the pictures today are about:


















Tommorow it will be all about the Arsenale. For those who would like to learn more about the Venice Biennale of Architecture, visit the official site here.