Photo: archdaily.com
The 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest architectural exhibition, opened to the public today. The event, which has been hosted by the Italian city for nearly 40 years, has been curated this year by Chilean architect and Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena. As Aravena is co-founder of Elemental, a practice that focuses on projects of public interest and social impact, this year's refreshing main theme will be the current disconnect between architecture and social need.
"There are several battles that need to be won and several frontiers that need to be expanded in order to improve the quality of the built environment and consequently people’s quality of life. This is what we would like people to come and see at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition: success stories worth to be told and exemplary cases worth to be shared where architecture did, is and will make a difference in those battles and frontiers" Alvareda declared upon his nomination.
Avarena's Quinta Monroy Housing Project in Chile, completed in 2013.
As is tradition, the event will also include a host of international participants, each exhibiting from their own pavilions staged at the Giardini and Arsenale venues in the east of the historic city, as well as across a number of smaller satellite spaces.
In the Slovenian Pavilion, the curators are building a compact wooden library showcasing books that reveal how the concept of the home has changed across the decades, which they hope will become a platform for discussion.
Architects Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregorič have built a wooden library inside the Slovenian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale that reflects on the role of the ‘home’ today.
Running in tandem to the event will be a retrospective of the work of Dame Zaha Hadid, a tribute to the architect who sadly passed away earlier this year. Hosted by the glassmaking organisation Fondazione Berengo at the 16th-century Palazzo Franchetti on the Grand Canal, the show will include early paintings, models and photographs of past and future projects from her illustrious career.
The exhibition runs from 28th May to 27th November 2016. Visit here for more details.