Architecture On Display
Architecture On Display
Architecture On Display
Vittorio Gregotti
Paolo Portoghesi
Francesco Dal Co
Hans Hollein
Massimiliano Fuksas
Deyan Sudjic
Kurt W Forster
Richard Burdett
Aaron Betsky
Kazuyo Sejima
Paolo Baratta
architectural association london
Architecture on Display
Architecture on
Display:
On the History of
the Venice Biennale
of Architecture
Interviews
21 Vittorio Gregotti
35 Paolo Portoghesi
49 Francesco Dal Co
65 Hans Hollein
79 Massimiliano Fuksas
93 Deyan Sudjic
105 Kurt W Forster
127 Richard Burdett
141 Aaron Betsky
165 Kazuyo Sejima
181 Paolo Baratta
5
Preface
Brett Steele
VG: That’s very difficult to answer because AL: I want to return to your Molino Stucky
it’s a critical problem, of course. What is the exhibition. You mentioned that in a sense it
relationship between art and architecture? was a political manoeuvre. You made a political
For me architecture is an art, so there is no calculation by involving artists, architects and
problem. It’s not a visual art, but a special field. the inhabitants of the city, in this way creating a
competition of ideas. But you were also interested
WM: And it has its own way of presenting itself, in the very real future of the Molino Stucky – in
so you could display it in that kind of way. the future of the city itself. The Molino Stucky,
after all, is now a luxury Hilton hotel: it has been
AL: But it seems that you did more than just transformed from an abandoned flour mill into
involve artists and architects in the Molino Stucky a tourist site.
project: you also involved urbanists, builders,
inhabitants of the city. It seems that you were trying VG: Yes, it has changed completely. The
to be inclusive on a very broad scale. problems that the city of Venice faces are
complicated, and very difficult to address.
VG: Of course. But the reason for this We never think to speak about these problems.
exhibition was the problem of 1968. Molino In the case of the Molino Stucky, of course,
Stucky represents the connection between the it was different.
ideology of 1968 and after. And that’s why it
was very political – I wanted to make a clear and AL: You mean it was not meant as a polemic but
certain declaration that the biennale was open rather as a symbolic gesture towards the idea of
to the public, to Venice and to non-specialists. social engagement?
WM: Do you think your exhibition contributed VG: Yes, of course. There was also a strategy
to, and maybe determined, the biennale’s concerning the relationship between visual art
subsequent course? and architecture. That was really the beginning
24 25
of this idea for the exhibition. With the next VG: The problem was to convince all of the
exhibition, in 1976, there was only a small people overseeing the biennale, as well as
number of internationally known architects at those coming to the biennale and representing
that time, so in a sense the choice was easy. Now regions, states, etc. In effect, three years passed
the choice is practically impossible, and this before the first real exhibition of architecture.
is the problem. I tried to discuss the exhibition
with the representatives of all the different AL: It’s interesting that the process now is so
nations. This was very difficult because every different to how things were done then. But you
nation was completely independent. were doing it because you were trying to convince
the administration that they needed to have this?
AL: In his remarks in the Molino Stucky catalogue
the biennale president, Carlo Ripa di Meana, VG: Exactly. Now it is completely different,
explains that he hopes that the project – by because the president makes the decisions very
involving artists and architects – would influence quickly and easily.
the institution. Was that the stance he had to
take following 68? WM: The other thing that is surely different is the
amount of money now available – a lot of euros are
VG: Of course. Afterwards, his position required today to make it all happen!
changed completely.
VG: That is another problem, the problem
WM: I want to go back to your earlier remarks of money. At the time we were in Venice, it
and understand one thing. In 1975 you organised was absolutely impossible. Practically all my
the Molino Stucky exhibition at the Magazzini assistants arrived without money, they paid
del Sale, yet you said that the following year’s their own way.
‘Werkbund’ exhibition was for you the real
biennale. ‘Utopia and the Crisis of Anti-Nature’ WM: And the architects featured in the exhibition
took place two years later in 1978. These also paid to come and be involved?
exhibitions unfolded over three years, but you
thought of them in a way as a single project. It was VG: Yes, but it was a very special moment
all part of the same thing. because of their enthusiasm, and also their
friendship with me and the other architects.
26 27
WM: How many people came to it, and could with the Venetian administration, and
you tell if it was a success? The newspapers and presented ourselves as allied to the Communist
everybody talked about it? Party over the Christian Party – but political
divisions and interests were much clearer then.
VG: No, it was only ever in the specialist
and trade journals. It did not have a popular, AL: Did the participants then understand the
mass appeal. importance of what they were part of? And did they
see it as an architectural exhibition, which is how we
AL: But you assumed that its effect would be remember it now?
registered in years to come?
VG: My strategy was to downplay it and
VG: Yes. suggest that the whole thing was not especially
important. Today, though, I really feel that
AL: And the publication for the Molino Stucky the current biennales are not so interesting.
exhibition, when did it appear? Of course, the problem of information is
completely different today compared to the
VG: I think it was a few months later. It was 1970s, but the position of different architects
a very modest catalogue. Now each year they is not made clear – I think things are very
produce an enormous monument of a catalogue complicated, very confused, not only in relation
– very large, very important. to art but also within architecture. With
Portoghesi’s biennale, I was completely against
AL: The political compromises you made at postmodern architecture, but it was a position,
the time seem to be a necessary response to the that’s for sure. Then there was postmodern
circumstances you found yourself in. Today, we have and there was modern. At this moment, what
so many of our own problems and compromises. is the position? It’s impossible to know. Since
What were some of the other problems that you Portoghesi, there is no real discussion taking
remember having? You just spoke of the financial place. But I understand very well why that’s
difficulties, and you have alluded to difficulties in happening, because regardless of whether it
convincing the administration to do it. is right or wrong, the general situation
in architecture is like everything else in the
VG: We of course had numerous discussions world today.
28 29
AL: It is not the fault of the biennale that it is this architecture. In the 1960s I was part of
way, but at the same time you would hope that the Gruppo T, which was composed essentially
biennale would enable us to achieve some clarity of philosophers, poets, two or three artists,
or direction? one or two musicians and me as an architect.
We decided to occupy the triennale and made
VG: Yes, for us and for architecture. Because an exhibition on the theme of leisure, the free
of the market, the problem today is simply time after work. And in 1964 I was appointed
knowing who are the new artists. The same curator of the triennale.
goes for architecture.
WM: Was the triennale closely aligned with
WM: Had there been an architectural presence in industry at that time?
the art biennale before 1975?
VG: Not much, only ideologically speaking.
VG: No, not really. There were some architects
– Scarpa for example – who were involved in the WM: So why did you go to Venice when you
biennale, its buildings and exhibition designs, could have continued your work there? Was it
but in general architects did not have much of because of the rich history of the biennale and
a presence. it being associated with art at the time? Because
if you could already do things at the triennale,
WM: But the triennale in Milan had a long history why not just continue to curate architecture
of involving architecture… exhibitions at the Milan triennale?
VG: Oh, that’s another story altogether, a VG: I was not the director of the triennale. I
completely different history. The triennale was its curator in 1964 and that was the end
started before the 1930s outside Milan. It of it. Every triennale had a different curator,
was an exhibition of interior design. It came of course, and back then it did not feature art
to Milan in 1934 and began to become a real or architecture, just interior design.
biennale of modern architecture. After 1945
it again changed completely, becoming an AL: So for you, the triennale didn’t serve as a model
exhibition that included everything – design, for Venice. Venice was supposed to be something
fashion, interior design and a little bit of entirely different?
30 31
VG: Yes. VG: It’s a problem specific to today. Before
there were no problems with the public, the
WM: And that’s because Venice already held a very discussion was only among specialists. Now
different position in the world, a different tradition the pretension of the biennale is to involve
at the time. the people, not just architects or artists, and
that’s practically impossible. That’s what I
VG: Yes, completely different. The biennale first think anyway, maybe it’s not the case.
started in 1895, while the triennale effectively
started in 1930. It’s very important to note the AL: I’m interested to know if you’d argue that your
relationship with the triennale, because I think exhibition was itself a creative work?
it’s an important element for Italian culture,
and of course also for international culture. VG: Si, si.
In the 1930s the triennale also started with
international pavilions, or sections, for Austria,
for Germany, for France, etc. My participation
in the triennale was important, too, for my
nomination to the biennale.
32 33
Paolo Portoghesi
Calcata
Saturday 19 December 2009
35
Paolo Portoghesi: Gregotti was the director very close to the Giardini, it was also a natural
of the two exhibitions that preceded mine, expansion of the exhibition towards the centre
and he certainly made exhibitions dedicated of the city. In addition to the Corderie, many
to architecture, but after Gregotti the biennale other parts of Venice were used as well. As you
wanted to create something new – a new know, the biennale is separated from Venice,
section parallel to the exhibitions of visual arts. and there has often been a conflict between
So I was the director of the first international the Venetians and the biennales, which is very
architecture exhibition, and it was pretty strange. So I tried to create a new situation of
successful because it travelled to Paris and San cooperation between institutions, and I thought
Francisco. The idea was not to show images of it was very important to locate the biennale
architecture, but to show real architecture. My more centrally in the city.
idea was to make something close to reality that
accommodated the various interpretations of WM: One of the things Gregotti said was that
symbolic architecture set out by the architects. there was not much of a public at the biennale
At the same time, I put in a request to use when he started – it was just him and people he
the Corderie dell’Arsenale as a space for the knew. The architectural world was very small at
biennale. When I visited the place it was that point, and those who attended were people
still full of tanks and armaments. It was very who were already interested in the biennale. In
difficult to persuade the Italian military to move your opinion, did you feel that it was popular with
them, but in the end we were successful. This the public or not? Was it a closed world like that?
was a very important step, because without
the space of the Corderie it would have been PP: I think Gregotti’s view of the biennale was
impossible to create an exhibition featuring somewhat elitist – I wanted to create something
three-dimensional architecture. popular. With architecture there is always the
possibility of direct communication between
AL: Did you think of the renovation of the people and architects. Architecture for archi-
Corderie as part of the ideology of your exhibition, tects, accordingly, is wrong, and it breaks the
or as just a necessary first step? continuity of architectural history. Architecture
is not for architects – it’s for the public. I believe
PP: I considered the Arsenale to be the only that modern architecture has lost the capacity
really useful space for my biennale. Because it’s to speak to the citizens, the common people.
36 37
For example, Gregotti curated an exhibition PP: In the Arsenale, at the end of the Via
on macchine celibi (singular machines) – a show Novissima, there was this space in which Jencks
that I consider totally inappropriate. I think installed a big pencil and Norberg-Schulz made
architecture is not like the visual arts. A picture a diorama dedicated to architecture history.
can simply be shown, but architecture is some-
thing that imposes its presence on people. The AL: Francesco Dal Co and current biennale
fact that my exhibition was in a certain sense president Paolo Baratta have spoken of the
connected to postmodernism has led it to be importance of using the space of the Corderie
misinterpreted. The idea of postmodernism, in theatrically. Baratta in particular spoke of the
relation to the exhibition, was generated by importance of the curator creating tableaus.
Charles Jencks, who was present in the commis- Were you attempting something similar with your
sion. He was a friend, but his approach was Strada Novissima? Were you trying to formulate
very different. In Europe postmodernism is or advocate a spectacular, theatrical or perhaps
associated with the spectacular, the superficial. even cinematic manner of displaying architecture?
I was more interested in the Venturi experience.
PP: Many critics have spoken of the cinematic
WM: Main Street, as we call it. quality of the Strada Novissima. My idea, origi-
nally, was to make a real model of a street –
PP: Yes. I consider Venturi to be a kindred to replicate the condition of all Italian cities,
spirit. There is something similar in my own and of competition between architects, in
approach to architecture. He was in Rome order to create a social space, one that allowed
in the 1950s, and to me the lesson of Rome for the harmony of different architectural
is a lesson of humility. Venturi very sensibly practices. Certainly, the result was cinematic.
recognised this. This is quite different to Rome For the architects, it was perhaps a gallery of
as understood by Le Corbusier and others. self-portraits, and this is probably also the
reason for its success. But I consider it positive
WM: What else was in your biennale besides the in this respect, because cinematography is
Strada Novissima? Was anything exhibited in the useful in reconnecting citizens with architec-
Italian pavilion? And what was ‘The Exhibition ture. So for me this critique was a kind of
of Critics’? compliment. For me the Via Novissima was
an illusion, but at the same time a big success.
38 39
AL: Did you envision the Strada Novissima, insofar architecture that would outlast the exhibition
as it sought to reconnect citizens with architecture, was common both to Rossi and Dal Co, and it
as a prototype for subsequent biennales? has given the biennale a closer relationship with
Venice. It should also be noted that Dal Co did
PP: You know that the director who came something very important, strengthening the
directly after me was Aldo Rossi, and Rossi connection between the structures of the art
was a protagonist in my biennale – I made an and architecture biennales by involving foreign
effort to demonstrate to him the possibilities states and official commissions.
of the exhibition just as Gregotti had done
for me. The biennale provided me with an AL: Was the participation of the national pavilions
opportunity to present a different way of something you hoped to achieve in 1980, or was
connecting modern architecture with history, that not what you were interested in?
and gradually Rossi accepted my invitation to
participate. He didn’t want to design a facade PP: We organised this exhibition in a very short
on the Strada Novissima, but he did design time, so it just wasn’t possible. I was nominated
the entrance to the entire exhibition. This was director in January, by March we had already
typical of Aldo. In the Teatro del Mondo that made Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo, and in August
we constructed for the 1980 biennale there was or September the biennale opened.
also an exhibition of Aldo’s works. We made
this space together with Maurizio Scaparro, WM: We have been told that you brought workers
director of the theatrical section of the biennale. from Cinecittà in Rome to build the Strada
After my exhibitions of 1980 and 1982 Rossi Novissima. Is this true?
accepted the directorship, but there was a battle
inside the biennale. I had become president PP: It was the only way to create it in such a
by then and I wanted to give the directorship short time! All of the workers had made moulds
to Rossi because he made exhibitions that and structures, so they were able very rapidly to
invited architects to give something back to create the illusion we were seeking.
Venice through projects, photo-assignments
and various services, but many other people WM: And it then travelled to San Francisco?
in the administration wanted to make Renzo
Piano the next director. So the idea to create PP: We brought it to San Francisco because
40 41
there was a fantastic lady who was very PP: In Rome. As a teacher I went to Milan, during
motivated and who loved the exhibition and the period of unrest. I was suspended for my
wanted it there. Philip Johnson was the sponsor. solidarity with the students, along with Aldo Rossi,
It was in Fort Mason, a site that is very similar Franco Albini and Guido Canella among others.
to the Arsenale in a way. We were suspended from teaching for three years!
AL: But Johnson was also in the biennale? Was AL: What was the ‘Banal Object’, the show that
it true that you made the Presence of the Past in was also part of your biennale in 1980?
homage to Johnson, as well as Mario Ridolfi and
Ignazio Gardella? PP: To get into the Via Novissima you had to
pass through the Banal Object, an exhibition
PP: In homage to Johnson, yes, but also on the work of the architect Antonio Basile. For
to Ridolfi and Gardella who were for me me it was important for the biennale to show
exemplary architects of modernity. I was very some historical exhibitions, and I considered
interested in their connection with history Basile to be an important part of Italian history.
and their respect for place, for a kind of This was very rich material that had never been
popular culture. This was the real ideological exposed. Italy is a special part of Europe where
basis for the exhibition. The idea was that modernity was accepted with conditions. Basile
they were outside critics who were inside the accepted it completely but within a Sicilian
modern movement and not connected with the tradition. It was a biennale typical of the Italian
traditionalism that typified most Italian culture. contribution to modernity – which always
They were courageous figures who created has some condition attached. And that is the
a rationalist architecture that was connected problem of Italy.
to local traditions. Gardella’s Dispensario
Antitubercolare in Alessandria, for instance, AL: Was there anything that you learned from the
was rationalist but at the same time connected exhibition? I suppose I am thinking in particular
with popular, humble traditions. of the Strada Novissima.
WM: Where did you study architecture? Who were PP: Oh yes, I learned that it was difficult to
your professors? be understood!
42 43
AL: Even with that one, which was perhaps the AL: You also organised the biennale on Islamic
clearest of all the exhibitions on architecture? architecture in 1982?
PP: Yes. I also learned that when something is PP: This was the second exhibition that I
successful, there is something wrong with it. undertook as director. I think it was important
because it represented a spirit of cultural
AL: But you wanted to provoke with the exhibition, dialogue. The Islamic architects presented many
right? That was the very idea? interesting projects.
PP: I was against a certain type of conformity WM: Why did you choose that particular subject
typical of the early 1980s, which adopted at that particular moment? Was it because of the
the form of a style without also absorbing its richness of the work being done that was unknown
value and its quality. So this exhibition was a in the West?
provocation related to that. Sometimes in Italy
the idea is to imitate what is happening outside, PP: I was very interested in having a dialogue
and this imitation was being done badly. with the Islamic people. I considered this
very important for peace, for avoiding a war
AL: You became president of the biennale just of religions. Bear in mind that I had just
after this? completed the competition for the Islamic
mosque in Rome in 1974.
PP: Yes, I became president due to the wave
of success of the exhibition. The first four years WM: One of the things we talked about with
were very interesting for me, and the second Gregotti and Dal Co was the degree to which a
four were terrible. In the first four years the biennale should reflect contemporary culture or
visual art exhibitions (in 1986 and 1988) alternatively lead that culture. With the Islamic
were the best of the biennale. In the second show you were really trying to direct the culture,
four years there were many difficulties, because to do something provocative. I imagine it wasn’t
the financial resources of the biennale only a particularly popular subject in 1982.
stretched to paying for the salaries. So trying
to organise in this position was completely PP: The exhibition of Islamic architecture
dangerous. was very interesting because there was no
44 45
modernist movement in Islamic countries – idea of the role of the citizen in the world is not
instead, modern architecture arrived through useful, it’s not indicative of the beauty of the
colonialism. Now it’s finished, but that moment biennale, which is about artistic culture. Sejima’s
was very interesting to observe because show will certainly be more interesting. It will
the situation was so different from the one be a return to the duty of the biennale, which is
in Europe. The exhibition attracted many to manifest what is happening in the culture of
visitors, probably because the biennale had by the world.
then begun to reach international eyes. This
international character has really expanded, and AL: Was it easy to convince the architects to
the biennale is now important for international participate in the Strada Novissima and the Presence
architects. It is fantastic to see so many young of the Past?
people come. It is also a big responsibility.
PP: It was not easy to convince Robert Venturi
AL: I don’t know if you were thinking this way at to be present. The same with Aldo Rossi. It
the time, but did you think of the 1980 exhibition was Scully especially who convinced Robert
as a curatorial project or as an aesthetic project in to participate. Gehry too was unsure about the
itself? project, and certainly against the idea. After he
arrived in Venice he decided not to participate,
PP: In my life I have only made exhibitions for for the reason that the facade was too simple.
the biennale. Making exhibitions is generally I convinced him to take part in the end, and
not my thing – my preferred work is to design. his turned out to be one of the more interesting
But I remember the biennale as being a very facades, and one that had a critical meaning.
interesting point in my life, especially when I In a certain sense, his was more close to my
return to Venice. idea. In the Gehry facade was the memory of
American architecture, something original in
AL: Do you continue to attend the biennales today? the sense of an essence, a tradition.
WM: We have a couple more questions based on WM: And was Molino Stucky just a competition
our conversation with Gregotti. He at one point with young people and students to rethink
said that it was a project of his to bring architecture the building?
to Venice. Also, I wondered if the politics after 68
meant that architecture had somehow to engage FDC: I know that we were interested in
in urban issues? encouraging people to come to Venice to study
the problems of the city, and to use those
FDC: I think the architectural biennale was problems to create the occasion for a project.
the by-product of the growing interest in Aldo Rossi for instance did a competition for
architecture in general, and of the fact that the bridge of the l’Accademia. This was an
52 53
approach that all of us Italians shared – like the biennale can improve general tastes and
Vittorio, Aldo, myself, etc – and it has been help people to understand and learn more. It
lost completely. When I was director, I is a wider problem of our age. When I started
would speak directly with the ministers of working at the biennale it was a totally different
culture of different countries. I even had the time. All the guys working for me had been
direct telephone number of the Italian Prime there since the 1930s, and only a few countries
Minister. Now, it’s a different situation. were represented. Today, the whole of Venice
In my time, the director was the person, now is filled with pavilions. The furniture fair in
it’s the manager or the president who has Milan was in my time also a very simple fair,
that authority. now it has transformed the very use of an entire
section of the city. And what can you do? It’s
WM: Gregotti told us that in the beginning the bad and it’s wrong, but this is the situation we
people who went to the biennale were intellectuals, have to live with.
specialists and friends, and it wasn’t as open to the
general public. But that changed with the Strada WK: Have you enjoyed the last couple of biennales?
Novissima and of course goes on today. Do you find them compelling?
FDC: Yes, it has changed a lot since then. FDC: They asked me to go back to being
But the transformation is not only due to the director after my four years, and I had to say,
biennale itself. You wouldn’t believe how this ‘I don’t want do it again, please try new people.’
city changed after the collapse of the Berlin It’s an experience you can only do once, because
Wall, for instance. Now we have 20 million you will inevitably repeat yourself. Likewise,
visitors each year! I never answer the question about whether
I like a particular biennale. I have seen so many!
AL: I wasn’t sure, but I got the impression that Some are better than others, but each one offers
Gregotti seemed almost to wish that the biennale a chance to see something interesting.
could still be addressed to a specialist community.
AL: In some histories of the architecture biennale
FDC: I think that the nature of our society is your biennale is the fifth, but then in another sense
changing. You have to respond to these changes it could be argued that it’s the first, because it was
and try to find a way in which an institution the first one to involve the national pavilions.
54 55
FDC: Yes, this was a discussion at the time. But AL: But you were also each actively shifting or
I prefer to say that it is the fifth. I had always the transforming the institution’s identity. In 1991, for
perception that we started with Vittorio’s. I was instance, you undertook the James Stirling project,
the first one to involve all the pavilions, but it’s which I understand was continuing a new tradition
the fifth biennale overall. of renovation and rehabilitation. By including the
national pavilions for the first time, weren’t you
AL: So Vittorio’s was understood at the time as trying to set a precedent, invent a trajectory?
being the first articulation, or did this idea arise
afterwards? FDC: Yes, I had always been convinced that
the big difference between the biennale and all
FDC: Afterwards. The idea that there were the other institutions is the foreign pavilions,
five biennales came with my biennale. They and that getting greater national participation
said, ‘This is the first biennale of architecture’, in the pavilions was the most important
and I said, ‘No, it’s the biennale that comes after problem from the cultural point of view. There
Vittorio, Paolo and Aldo.’ But I would avoid used to be an interesting national tradition
the conclusion that Vittorio, Paolo, Aldo and at the Giardini: when the artist first arrived
myself invented this. We were just reacting to at the pavilion a flag representing their nation
what was suggested at the time. When Vittorio would go up. I always thought that this was
organised his triennale in Milan in 1964 it a very important message of respect, and not
was the best moment of Milanese culture. just something with symbolic meaning.
Umberto Eco was there, and all the architects
were extremely alive. It was the time when Giò AL: So that was a sort of forgotten tradition that
Ponti was so important, and Ignazio Gardella you restored for that one year.
was there, Franco Albini too. But to say that
Vittorio was inventing something in organising FDC: Yes, just for 1991.
that triennale is in my opinion wrong. You can
be the interpreter of something, and to be sure WK: We feel that in a way the biennale is in
Vittorio had his ideas. But why was the biennale danger of losing a sense of intimacy in an age
so important at that time, why is it so important when everything is becoming mutable and digital.
today? It is because it is the expression of a Information is passed around the world so quickly
culture and atmosphere of the time. now. Is it possible that the biennale, despite its
56 57
importance today, could end up being less crucial it generated a lot of controversy. Some people
to the exchange of ideas and information? Today said that architecture is theatre, others that
everybody knows everything, and in a way they architecture is not theatre, and so on. His idea
seem to know it before they get there. was brilliant and very spectacular, but it was
completely fake, and it was built by the same
FDC: I think it is a danger, you’re right. The people who built the Cinecittà in Rome. I met
first change is the way in which organisations the guys, and they can build anything in a short
are run. If you’re short of time, you just make time. It was great theatrical scenery: it had no
a few phone calls and people send stuff, and logical structure, but it stood up nonetheless.
you end up with nothing more than a vitrine, a
shop window. The profession has also changed WK: Did it run the whole length of the Arsenale?
a lot since 1976, when architects would come
and stay here for months. If they were very well FDC: No, it only went through one third of the
known, they might have been a bit reluctant, Corderie, because there was no money to open
but they were not as busy as they are now. the whole thing, and also because the Corderie
Today it’s difficult. They have to keep an eye was filled with garbage. Military equipment had
on their work, they have offices with tons of been abandoned there since the First World
people working for them. Another thing that War! So cleaning it up was not just a matter of
has changed is the way we articulate our ideas. sweeping something away. You had to transfer
When you were expressing a clear idea, you gigantic machines, tanks and guns off site.
used to assume that you would have to fight
for it. Today, everyone is looking for consensus, AL: Can you speak more about your biennale?
for approval.
FDC: Well, I was pretty sure of two things.
AL: The Strada Novissima made spectacular use One was that I had to have an object, a state-
of the exhibition space, presenting architecture in ment, about the direction it was taking. And
a very dynamic way. But it also set a very difficult the second, which was different from what
precedent – one that everybody coming after, other directors had done, was to reinvent some
including yourself, has had to live with. forgotten or unknown episodes of the past. For
instance, I arranged for the Pikionis exhibition
FDC: When Paolo did the Strada Novissima in the Greek pavilion. Millions of people walk
58 59
up to the Acropolis, and Pikionis is the man We gave a great deal of attention to the problem
who designed the area around the Parthenon. of presenting exhibitions, and I think this
But nobody knows that it was his work! This aspect is completely unknown to those who
was for me the most important thing about my have come after us. I’m not saying that my age
biennale, and it was an extraordinary success. was better, just that it’s different.
This was a statement.
AL: It’s interesting to hear that Scarpa served as
WK: So you had influence over the national such an influence, if not a structuring device, for
pavilions, then? You engaged them in conversation? your own installations.
FDC: Yes, this was precisely the role I had, FDC: I didn’t want to do a Scarpa installation,
which is no longer the case with the current obviously, but I wanted everyone to understand
directors. what they were exhibiting and what they
wanted to communicate with it. I don’t know
WK: What do you think of the current interest in if I was always successful, but this was my aim.
displaying architectural ideas through installations? You might agree with Scarpa or not, say that
he’s good or not good, but when you saw his
FDC: If you create an exhibition with real temporary and permanent installations you
objects, starting from drawings, models and would see the art of arranging an exhibition.
pictures, you have to do a lot of work to tell He continually offered you something. With
the complex history of each building. You have this critical gesture, he said: please, look at this.
to think carefully about the way in which you This object is different from that. And these
exhibit. If you just put up a lot of televisions gestures are something that we have lost.
instead, well it’s fast and boring. Everything
becomes the same, interchangeable. Our AL: And these gestures do not necessarily have to
displays were still influenced by Carlo Scarpa, be visually splendid or spectacular, you are saying?
who had installed many exhibitions at the
biennale. Vittorio, Paolo, Aldo and myself, FDC: No, you can do it with the most simple
we were aware of what he used to do, and so and obvious things.
when we installed our exhibitions we always
thought about how he might have done it. AL: Today there is such an acute desire on the part
60 61
of the public for something spectacular, something healthy cultures. The other aspect that was
visually enticing. important to this project was that the students
lived here for one month. The formula was very
FDC: Look, the Strada Novissima was just as simple. We gave them a small amount of money,
spectacular, but in a very different way. Aldo’s helped them find places to stay and offered
Teatro del Mondo is the same. When you them basic technical tools to create whatever
see those photos of it next to the Salute, where they wanted to create. But it was mandatory for
I guess it was docked, it just seems so incredible. them to participate in everything. It was really
It was emblematic of Venice but it really a great experience and some of them now are
stood apart. famous architects. We transformed the Corderie
into a gigantic laboratory for a month!
AL: I want to return to your 1991 exhibition and
specifically to the central role it gave to education AL: I have a few last questions. If I understand
and pedagogy. When you invited 43 schools correctly, the first ‘official’ participation by the
to participate, was this because you felt that the United States in your architecture biennale was
biennale could play a role in architectural education, not entirely official. Instead, it was undertaken
and that the Italian model wasn’t working? independently by Philip Johnson. Is that correct?
It is nearly impossible to find documentation
FDC: I wanted to offer an opportunity for about this.
students to understand how an architect
becomes an architect. Today, everyone comes FDC: This is a funny story. The American
to Venice, sees a building by Zaha Hadid, and pavilion didn’t have money, and for some reason
thinks she was born an architect. But she was they didn’t want to invest money. So I spoke
first a mathematician. So I wanted to show with my friends in America and said, ‘This is
the differences in approach and style across stupid, you have to do something.’ I had known
different institutions. I was also interested to Philip for many years, and so I spoke to him
see what could happen when regions that are and explained everything. And he said ‘let me
not usually in the spotlight were given a chance think about it’. The next day he called back
to shine. For the first time, we showed and and said ‘I have an idea, I have money from
worked with kids from China, New Zealand, Knoll and I want to invite Peter Eisenman and
Australia and so on, which have very lively, Frank Gehry.’ And I said, ‘Fantastic. You do the
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Hans Hollein
exhibition, you are the curator.’ And he s
aid okay. But afterwards he sent me a fax saying
that he wanted to be the official curator. And
I thought, how can I do it? It’s the American New York
pavilion, we have no power to say you are the Saturday 15 May 2010
curator. Then I thought, who cares. And I took
my best stationery, which proclaimed that I Hans Hollein directed ‘Sensing the Future: The
was the director of the biennale, and I wrote a Architect as Seismograph’, the sixth architecture
letter that officially stated: ‘I nominate you the exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The exhibition,
curator of the American pavilion.’ Philip was on display from 15 September to 17 November
happy, and nobody discussed it again. 1996 in the Padiglione Italia and the national
pavilions at the Giardini, explored the architect’s
AL: And what are your thoughts about the role in determining architectural futures, building
1996 show in the US pavilion exploring Disney on recent technological developments.
Corporation architecture? If I understand correctly,
this was also undertaken without official support. Aaron Levy and William Menking: Our questions
Do you agree that it was a very fascinating and for you today concern ‘Sensing the Future:
appropriate show for Venice? The Architect as Seismograph’, the biennale for
architecture that you directed in 1996.
FDC: I think that it was interesting because
it was kind of looking ahead to this age we Hans Hollein: I was the first non-Italian
are living in now. It was kind of a preview director of the biennale in 1996, but my
to what would happen today: first Disney, participation as an artist went back to 1972,
afterwards Dubai. with my installation in the Austrian pavilion.
Then I was commissioner of the Austrian
pavilion of the architecture biennale in 1988,
as well as in 1991 with ‘13 Austrian Positions’,
in 1996 with ‘Coop Himmelb(l)au’ and
‘Visionary Architecture’, in 2000 with ‘Austria
– Area of Action for International Architects’,
and in 2001 with ‘Area of Tolerance’. I was also
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the commissioner of the Austrian pavilion wanted to give me money, the state wouldn’t
for every art biennale from 1978 to 1990. allow it. However, by the time of Fuksas’
For example, I organised exhibitions on Arnulf biennale in 2000, it was no longer strictly a
Rainer in 1978, Valie Export in 1980 and state operation. There is an interesting story
Franz West in 1990. about my appointment as the first non-Italian
director. I am a professor in Austria, and as a
WM: It’s very interesting that you have participated professor in Austria I am a public servant. As
in and directed the biennale both as an artist and the director of the biennale I was also an Italian
as an architect. When we look back to the very public servant. I needed to apply for a permit
beginning of the biennale, the question of what in Austria to let me do both.
distinguishes the art and the architecture biennales
is somewhat less clear, even confusing. WM: It’s interesting that they allowed you at
a fairly early date to pick non-Austrians for the
HH: Not for me. Austrian pavilion. This is not yet the case with
the United States pavilion, where there is still an
AL: Weren’t you in Portoghesi’s Strada Novissima expectation that the featured artists or architects
in 1980? should be from the US.
HH: Yes, I was featured in the Strada AL: Who were the major international architects
Novissima and in Portoghesi’s later exhibition that you featured in the Padiglione Italia at the
‘Architecture: Modernity and the Sacred Space’, 1996 biennale?
which was held in 1992 on the Giudecca.
HH: I showed the work of many architects
AL: So you were the first non-Italian director of the including Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Jean
architecture biennale. What was that like and what Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Coop
problems did you encounter as a result? Himmelb(l)au, Peter Eisenman, Norman
Foster, Herzog & de Meuron, Arata Isozaki,
HH: Well, it was a very complicated thing. Toyo Ito, Philippe Starck, Jørn Utzon, Alvaro
The biennale has changed since 1996, but at Siza, Massimiliano Fuksas, Rem Koolhaas and
that time it was a state endeavour and wasn’t Rafael Moneo. I had demanded the freedom to
open to private financing. Even when people select whoever I wanted. With selections such
66 67
as these, you often get, every other day, a HH: Sure. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it!
message from someone saying: ‘you should The idea was to show how the architect is like
put so-and-so in the show!’ a seismograph, sensing the future. In contrast
to earlier biennales, most of the pavilions
AL: What about the Golden Lions for architecture chimed in with a related presentation on this
that you awarded that year, and the special awards general topic.
that you gave for architectural photography?
WM: Do you recall what the American pavilion
HH: The Golden Lion was associated with film exhibited that year?
and had never been given in architecture before.
I didn’t agree that only actors and filmmakers HH: There was an exhibition about the Disney
should get Golden Lions, so I created a Golden Corporation and its architectural patronage
Lion award for architecture as well. The first of the avant-garde. I made Tom Krens the
Golden Lions for architecture were given to commissioner because the Americans couldn’t
three people: Ignazio Gardella, Philip Johnson decide themselves. Most other countries have
and Oscar Niemeyer. They were 89, 90 and 91 a Ministry of Culture that takes charge, but the
years old at the time! For the first time, I also set up with the United States is different. So
organised an exhibition of architectural photog- I went and gave them a kind of ultimatum and
raphy. It was a joint collaboration between said: ‘You have to come up with something,
photographer Gabriele Basilico and architect otherwise you cannot participate.’
Stefano Boeri. And I gave Basilico a special
award as well. However, I don’t believe later WM: So Tom Krens made the decision to focus
directors continued this. on Disney?
WM: Could you talk a little bit about your specific HH: Yes, which was okay.
ideas for your show? Recent curators like Aaron
Betsky, Ricky Burdett or Deyan Sudjic have all WM: To return to your exhibition, you included
had a theme, be it cities, demographics or even the some architects in the ‘Emerging Voices’ show that
return to building. Did you have a particular series you had individually picked. Could you talk a little
of ideas at the time about presenting architecture bit about that? It turned out that you had a very
in a certain way? good eye for people who later became successful!
68 69
HH: Yes. Some of the other architects I HH: I made a selection, and then they were
featured were Odile Decq, Liz Diller and invited to show their work – their work. And
Ricardo Scofidio, Peter Zumthor, Ben van not something centred only on a specific topic
Berkel and Kazuyo Sejima. or even my own theme. It was very much about
the topic of the architect as seismograph, and I
WM: I think you had a great deal of impact on that was trying to show the seismographic element
generation in helping and pushing them to succeed. of the architect who is sensing the future. This
was an important criterion.
HH: Well, the list includes two Pritzker Prize
winners, and in the case of Sejima, she is now AL: As director, you also organised the ‘Radicals’
the director of the biennale as well. retrospective, which highlighted radical experiences
of urban architecture from the end of the 1950s
AL: Do you find it difficult to exhibit architecture? up to the early 1970s. Did you give these architects
When we spoke with Aaron Betsky, for instance, much direction? Or did you simply give them a
he acknowledged the difficulty of ever doing so space in which they could do whatever they liked?
successfully.
HH: At that time these architects had very little
HH: I have no difficulty showing architecture work, but they were all given their own proper
or art! space, and not just a kind of cubicle. We also
had a show on Austrian radicals in the national
WM: How did you choose those architects that you pavilion, complementing the international one.
featured in 1996? I mean, did you go around asking
people ‘Who are the young, interesting architects?’ WM: One of the things you said about the biennale
at the time was that architects should be resistant
HH: I was connected with all kinds of people to the idea of being part of schools of thought or
at the time. I knew many of them personally. movements. Do you recall that?
AL: Were you trying just to represent your HH: Well, I don’t disagree with this. The
community and everyone you knew at the time? tendency at the time, I think, was in a different
Can you tell us more about how you decided to direction.
select these particular architects?
70 71
AL: Francesco Dal Co and others have explained just for insiders. I didn’t want this. My biennale
how little money they had to work with. Did you was the first one that had a new audience.
have the same experience?
AL: So what you are saying is that yours was really
HH: I had the same experience, and I had the first architecture biennale that registered the
even less money than Francesco Dal Co! (Or emergent technologies of the time, and the new
basically the same.) The problem, though I don’t communication tools that were being incorporated
want to talk too much about my predecessors, into everyday practice.
was that the Strada Novissima was a very
interesting beginning, but then for a long HH: Yes, of course. Technology was also
time nothing happened with the architecture presented as an art here. At the time, renderings
biennale. I wanted to pursue different ideas in today’s sense were very rare.
about how to display things, for example, I
was interested in technology and in what one AL: And as a curator you wanted to show that
could do with various kinds of media in an process of virtualisation, the way in which
exhibition. But I didn’t have enough money. renderings were becoming a crucial means of
representing architecture to others?
AL: What do you feel was being lost in those shows
where it was just drawings that were displayed on HH: Not necessarily. It was not just a question
the wall? What was the problem for you with that of showing a good drawing or rendering, there
approach? were a lot of models, too. Whenever we could,
we included big models. Dal Co’s biennale,
HH: Well, we have all seen these biennales which had come a few years before mine, was
where you walk for several kilometres in front rather two-dimensional. It had featured some
of drawings. I have nothing against drawings, beautiful drawings but almost no models. And
but at the time these drawings were still in I find a model to be very good not only for
pencil, and there were very few renderings. exhibitions, but also for dialogues with clients –
And drawings are too complex, while I wanted be it the mayor, or whoever.
to address a different public. Unlike the art
biennale, the architecture biennale sometimes AL: You felt that a model was something the
received very little attention and was considered general public could understand?
72 73
HH: Yes. It’s like with a musical score. Certain vice-versa. In Venice, you already have this
things in architecture, like drawings, are more underlying duality: you have the national
for the initiated, but others, like models, are pavilions, and then also the general biennale.
easier to understand. Models can be translated And just as you can have a dialogue between
three-dimensionally from a drawing. these two aspects of the same biennale, so you
can have a dialogue between the architecture
AL: Is there anything that you wish you had done and the art biennales. But although they
differently, looking back on the exhibition? sometimes overlap it is right and important
that they are in two different sections.
HH: There’s a lot of pressure – I mean just to
set up an exhibition and to get it there by boat WM: Can I ask you a question about your
is a nightmare! And as I mentioned before, we participation, as an architect, in 1980 in the
didn’t have very much money. Of course today, Strada Novissima? Do you remember any of the
when one has more money, there is no excuse conversations you had with Paolo Portoghesi, or
for a bad exhibition. Unfortunately, we could did he just say ‘You have this much space, and
not use the Corderie in the exhibition either. you can design whatever you want’? Was there
Otherwise, we could have had something on any kind of discussion? Because now the Strada
urbanism. But the Corderie was closed, so the Novissima is seen by some people as a kind of
exhibition was actually very small. You know, beginning of postmodernism, but I don’t think
they wanted me to direct a second time after of you as a postmodernist.
Fuksas’ exhibition in 2000, but it was too
much work for me. HH: Everybody else, including Frank Gehry,
created flat facades. However my idea was
AL: In 1996 the architecture biennale was still to address the space of the Corderie and its
quite young, and still struggling to assert its columns. So in my presentation some of those
independence from the art biennale. Were you columns were represented. I put a model of
trying to keep them separate by focusing on more the Chicago Tribune Tower in between two
formal definitions of architecture? columns, and I even added a hanging
column with no support from below. There
HH: I actually think it’s okay if you sometimes is a photograph of Petra where you can see a
have architecture in the art biennale and column hanging down with no base in this way.
74 75
AL: Did you arrive at an idea of what you wanted biennale itself is more than a hundred years
to do in conversation with Portoghesi, or were you old. But there are important exhibitions in
acting more independently and on your own? other places that, like Venice, also have a strong
cultural and architectural heritage. And Venice
HH: No, I acted independently. Portoghesi itself also has several hundred years of being
simply invited me, and I said that I don’t think other things. Of course, it is a place for art and
it’s such a good idea to just make facades. So culture, but it was also once a place for war.
I just made this as I saw it, and it was actually Just think of the Arsenale, after all, which was
the most talked about one! a former naval warehouse.
MF: I gave awards to three people that I loved. AL: But by 2000 that resistance to the award
One was Paolo Soleri. Nobody remembered economy was over, it was no longer the fight
him at the time. Everybody said, ‘Paolo Soleri, to fight?
who is this guy?’ He was lost in Arizona,
working on his utopia, and the idea that we MF: Well, I didn’t want to be in the jury over
can live in a different way. the awards. I only wanted to give awards to
these guys that I admire.
84 85
WM: What do you think about some of the WM: When we talked to the architect and educator
biennales that came after you? Massimo Scolari the other day, he remarked that
you can’t understand the biennales, particularly in
MF: I cannot criticise them. Ricky Burdett the 1960s, without understanding the triennales.
tried to do something different. I think it was
really interesting but not very spectacular. MF: I think that if you stage a confrontation
Think of the film festival at Cannes: if you between Milan and Venice, Venice is much
show something you have to do something more international and Milan is really
spectacular, otherwise it’s boring. His team, provincial.
his organisation, was perfect as a concept,
but it was an exhibition. And when you show WM: Provincial in terms of architecture?
something like this, it has to be spectacular.
MF: The city of Milan is very small, perhaps
AL: In a certain sense, did you feel that Burdett’s 800,000 or 900,000 people. Venice is an
show was a sort of continuation of yours? international city, and a really big one. You have
well over 12 million people walking through
MF: Yes, I think that it was a part of my project. the space of the city every year. It’s crazy.
But I also think that Portoghesi, myself and
Burdett are a sort of appendix to the biennale. AL: Do you think of your exhibition as a project
I feel like an appendix. I think that was in itself, and list it alongside buildings you have
something that we did, to not show a building. designed in publications about your work?
AL: What of Gregotti and his Molino Stucky? Did MF: I wanted to introduce that way of thinking
you feel that your exhibition was also attempting to because an exhibition, a biennale, is an artwork.
address the future of Venice and questions such as Our biennale was not an act of sociology,
the role that tourism would play in its future? though. It was based on a feeling that the artist
can confront the state of the world, can address
MF: But I think that the biennale starts with the global situation, but it was much more about
Portoghesi. His biennale took place in the intuition than reality, because we are talking
Corderie dell’Arsenale. If you don’t touch about the biennale, and the biennale is for the
the Arsenale, it’s not a biennale. future, not for the past.
86 87
AL: Do you have regrets about what you did? Is AL: What did he want the manifesto to be?
there something you wish you could have done
differently? Do you feel that there was a certain MF: A ‘Venice manifesto’ about contemporary
aspiration to build a sense of community that you architecture and about revolutionary architec-
didn’t succeed in realising? ture. But this was the concept of a guy from
another century, and it was not possible for me
MF: I feel that there is no community of artists to do this.
as there was between the nineteenth century
and the twentieth century. There is a reason AL: With your biennale, would you say that two
why there is no more avant-garde. I think the stories unfolded, one in the public view and another
kind of biennale that I attempted can generate behind the scenes? This second story would be the
a new community of people. And my biennale story of its production, involving money, politics,
was successful in that regard because it was compromise and the like?
something new; it was also unsuccessful,
however, because it was not a winning system. MF: I very much enjoyed working on the
Today you cannot have an avant-garde because production of my biennale, because you cannot
every idea, every utopia, can be built in 20 do a second biennale in your life. But no, I was
minutes. In these circumstances the idea is fighting very hard against this development. Do
no longer possible. What is utopia, and what you know why? I didn’t want to be integrated.
is an avant-garde? To have whatever you want, But when you are close to power these things
to fly all over the world? This is not what the happen. Without being conscious of it at all,
avant-garde is about. The star system that we you start to belong much more to power than
have today is another world. Because we all you realise or want.
build so fast we are no longer part of the avant-
garde. Likewise, painting is done for when AL: How do you think we should place Aldo Rossi
artists sell their works for millions. My biennale in our book of biennale conversations? Insofar as
was the last temptation towards an avant-garde. he is no longer alive, he is the only one we cannot
I remember that Bruno Zevi had said to me, interview. Perhaps just a photograph of the Teatro
‘Please do a manifesto.’ And I had said to him, del Mundo? What do you think?
‘No, I don’t do that.’
MF: I think that this was the best building
88 89
that he ever did. It is one of the most fantastic that with this project, which is about the search
buildings! I was inspired by him during our for peace, my mission was accomplished.
biennale and I took the images of architects and This was inside my biennale, at the end of the
projected them onto the facades of the city at Arsenale.
night, along the Grand Canal. For one night
only though, because on the second night, the AL: Does your catalogue accurately document and
police arrived and said you cannot do this. communicate what you did?
AL: So, you were like a guerilla director to your MF: I think that the catalogues of the biennale
own biennale? are not useful. This conversation that we are
having right now is much more useful. The best
MF: Yes. And it was a pleasure to do this. biennale is the opening, and the day after, you
can close. Like all exhibitions, you do it for one
AL: But this is also what the biennale is to you. It’s day, for one night, and afterwards you should
not just what happened in the Corderie, it’s also all close everything. It’s just as good.
of these gestures and experiments.
WM: Do you think there’s still a reason to have
MF: It’s like a happening, a continuous architecture exhibitions, or does the internet make
happening, an experiment. them less relevant?
AL: For the generation that comes after mine, who MF: There are no reasons at all to have
won’t have had the chance to see your biennale in exhibitions of architecture. Even art exhibitions,
person, what would you like them to know about because there are now different ways for artists
it? How would you communicate your biennale to produce and communicate.
to them?
WM: But even today all the young architects really
MF: I think I would say that it is not enough want to be in the Venice Biennale. It’s so important
to be an architect. We have to give something to them! And maybe it’s just because of what Venice
more. An artist – a good artist – not an architect is, its history.
only, has to give. I feel that my project in Jaffa
for Shimon Peres was really successful. I think MF: Well, everybody meets everybody. It’s not
90 91
Deyan Sudjic
that people meet in architecture, as Sejima
is arguing, but rather that architects meet in
architecture. It’s simply a big festival.
London
WM: People still go and love to be there. Friday 21 May 2010
MF: Why not? There are many people, many Deyan Sudjic directed ‘Next’, the eighth architecture
things that are more dangerous than a biennale. exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The exhibition,
So we can keep the biennales. But I think the on display from 8 September to 3 November 2002
biennale is the memory of the last century, the in the Arsenale and the Giardini, explored future
beginning of the last century. Remember that architecture, with a particular concentration on new
the biennale is over 100 years old. Do we really developments in urban and skyscraper design.
think today that each young guy is showing
something interesting? No. But we will Aaron Levy and William Menking: We would like
continue to do it, because we are very romantic. to focus specifically on your biennale, ‘Next’. How
The world is very romantic. did you conceptualise it in terms of the history of
the biennale – in relation to what came before and
where architecture was at that particular moment?
DS: I felt like that. It was just fantastic. But AL: Being a working critic and journalist,
once the stuff got to Venice, the budget how did that influence what you did and how
suddenly shifted. you presented it?
AL: It’s interesting to hear you talk about the show, DS: I remember actually talking to Baratta
and also to hear you talk about Venice, which was about this. You wouldn’t actually have a work-
the context for all this. Could you talk a little more ing artist curating the art biennale, for the sake
about Venice as a city? It has developed even further of objectivity, but of course I wasn’t really devel-
as a tourist destination since the year you organised oping a thesis, except that I was interested in
your biennale. Were you thinking about this as you materiality, and in looking at the astonishing
were doing ‘Next’? effort that actually goes into a building as
opposed to an installation. I suppose that as
DS: Well, of course you respond physically to a working critic I may have had the vanity to
the context. The time I spent there made me want to put a few more words in. I had been
feel differently about Venice. The sense of being travelling a lot at the time, and that means you
there at night, the daily walk from the director’s start to see the world in a way that nobody else
apartment to the site – you begin to engage does. I mean how many people will actually go
with all this in a different way, for a moment you to Seattle to see the main library, say, and then
feel as if you are taken into this world. The idea off to Milan or wherever? I suppose you con-
of being locked into Harry’s Bar after closing sume all these links today in a ridiculously rapid
time, and taking the vaporetto home with people way. I mean, I spend half an hour in a building
you began to recognise, that was great. But I and believe I’ve got it.
was trying to make an exhibition addressed to
100 101
AL: So how did you reconcile your predilection for DS: Well, it’s a particularly Italian question.
language with the sheer heterogeneity of the public? They had been regularly talking about having
Your audience doesn’t all speak the same language, a design biennale in Venice, so you start to
and you have such a short time in which to engage wrestle with what you would do. The scale
them in the first place. is different in the case of design. Also you
are thinking about a different set of issues,
DS: For the catalogue I commissioned a series including customisation, the dematerialisation
of essays about major themes, such as shopping. of objects and other things. Domus is one
In the case of the exhibition, you keep it of those magazines that is embracing design,
short. At the entry to the exhibition, I tried art and architecture as part of the same
to make a series of points on the wall based conversation, which doesn’t happen that often.
on actual things that were going to happen:
here is a place, and if you come here, you will AL: One of the things that Portoghesi had
see the world of architecture as it will be in attempted to do was to leave something behind
five years’ time. through this renovated Arsenale. Did you have
the aspiration to leave something physical behind,
WM: So much of what ‘Next’ was about was the or was that not the point of your biennale?
future. In retrospect, how much of it do you think
you got right? DS: You can’t do everything. I spent four years
in Glasgow working on a series of cultural
DS: Well, some people were not actually going events there. And that was about leaving things
to get these things built, of course. But I think behind. In Venice you know you’re making a
it all reflected a very particular moment, when spectacle, and you want to make it as beautiful
there was no longer any avant-garde, because as you can.
the avant-garde was building like crazy.
AL: Did you have a history with the biennale before
AL: I have a somewhat different question: what’s your selection?
the difference between architecture and design
today? Do you curate them both in the same way? DS: Apart from going there personally, no.
Are they becoming the same thing? I was the editor of Domus, however, which
was the kind of constituency that Baratta was
102 103
Kurt W Forster
looking to at the time for input into how the
biennale was being regarded.
AL: And did you feel you can’t compete with it, on KF: That’s one of my defeats, I have to admit.
a certain level? You can only do certain things, and I think I
wanted very much to do more by bringing in
KF: No, I think you have to ride it, so to speak. architecture schools.
This is not only a trend, it’s like the sea level!
WM: What do you think of other biennales that
AL: Yes, but at the end of the day one has to come have tried to deal with contemporary issues in
to terms with the realities of exhibition-making. the way that Burdett, for instance, tried to do
And there’s this brutal realisation that creeps in in focusing on questions of density and urban
that an exhibition can only do so much. conditions?
KF. But I think you can seek different terms. KF: I was involved with Aaron Betsky in a
Your accommodation can also leave certain couple of interesting debates. It is very difficult
things visible, so that they become the object in a situation like ours, where everybody is
of attention. And I think I did this with the used to forcefully structured propositions, to
gardens. I’m not sure how far it will go, but a kind of honed discourse that has a thrust, an
this is not so important in and of itself. I think orientation, a purpose and a character. It is very
I made people realise that there’s something difficult in this moment to go back to images,
wrong with this garden, by making hints, graphs, schemes and statistics on a wall. You
pointing to certain possibilities. You need only can look at 10 maps of London, and you can
to inject one element to change the perception see anything. You’re thrown back to a kind
of a far larger area. of attention and response that is now in the
domain of technical discourse. So it’s almost
AL: When I think back to your past positions and impossible to make an exhibition out of that.
institutional affiliations, I notice a clear pedagogical And the question is: is an exhibition an effective
and discursive trajectory. Your time at the Getty platform to bring out these problems?
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AL: For a brief moment each year Venice seems to that the biennale has been a little bit like the
be centre-stage, but after the buzz recedes it’s often presidential libraries, in that it has been raided
very hard to figure out what happened. You can’t periodically by various figures who made off
just deduce it from the catalogue, as the catalogue is with parts of it. The point is, it’s like one of
often printed beforehand. And the internet is fairly those banks in Liechtenstein. It has an address
unreliable as well. and a director, but nobody knows what’s there
and nobody can ever access it.
KF: I changed the whole catalogue business
because I thought it was cumbersome, AL: Would you say that you were left to yourself, in
unnecessary and sort of gratuitous. What a way, to figure out what the history of the biennale
actually is the relationship of this huge awkward was for architecture?
thing to the exhibition? Why should anybody
lug around 700g of essays that they’re not KF: Yes. I think the need for uncovering this
going to read anyway? They’re not expected history is the reason behind Baratta’s initiative
to, so I split them off. And we also tried to do to bring all the directors back to Venice during
it in the design by using indexing and colours, Sejima’s biennale. He’s trying to tap into the
to make it more like a manual. history, and I think it’s a great idea. And I know
there is a lot of interest in this, because one
AL: One of the things that Baratta explained to us always looks through the biennale as if it were
was the sheer complexity of trying to archive the a magnifying glass.
biennale. He communicated the struggle over how
to document not just the first biennales but also the AL: Are you interested today in revisiting your
more recent ones, which have invariably played out exhibition to explore how these questions and
over BlackBerrys and email trails. ideas could be better framed with the benefit of
hindsight? Or are you not interested in looking
KF: Well it’s a much bigger problem than that back at this time?
of the BlackBerry. If the biennale had preserved
its own papers systematically and in responsible KF: I feel that it would be much more interest-
fashion, you would have had a singular body of ing, in my case, to have a further conversation
evidence on which you could write dissertations with the people I involved. That might be a very
for the next decade. The terrible thing is interesting weekend. I believe a first step is
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Richard Burdett
Baratta’s attempt to bring in the directors and
have them deal with the latest instalment of this.
So the idea is kind of bifocal – you have your
own biennale, from some time back, and now London
you’ve got the latest. And what does that do to Monday 17 May 2010
your vision of things?
Richard Burdett directed ‘Cities: Architecture and
WM: But he’s not going to bring them all at Society’, the tenth architecture exhibition at the
one time. Venice Biennale. The exhibition, on display from 12
September to 7 November 2006 in the Arsenale and
KF: No, we will come as part of a series. I think the Giardini, explored issues of density, mobility and
he probably fears for the public if he brought us sustainability in global cities such as Mumbai, Tokyo
all at one time! and Bogotá.
RB: Yes, and it worked out in a fantastic way. AL: What would you have liked to do differently?
There were at least 500–600 students from
all these schools, and they were there from RB: I certainly don’t think we needed more
the beginning. They went to other cities and time. Another three months and we’d have
then returned to spend a week in Venice. In been dead! It’s too much work and the scale is
that sense, it proved that the exhibition could too big. I think the way we decided to display
provide an opportunity for genuine research. the architectural projects, and the amount of
time and research we put into that as opposed
AL: You toured the exhibition afterwards? to the rest, was wrong. We could have had
some architectural models, why not? But the
RB: Well, 200,000 to 300,000 people saw nice thing about this show is that it’s all on a
it in Venice overall. Then within six months CD. I mean, the whole thing: the structures,
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Aaron Betsky
the density model, the instructions. The other
regret I have is the total lack of potential
engagement with curators from other countries,
which I found very frustrating. The French did New York
this fantastic thing by inhabiting their building Monday 12 April 2010
with a commune of artists. But it was all so hit
or miss. This is something that on a structural Aaron Betsky directed ‘Out There: Architecture
level the biennale could consider. Beyond Building’, the eleventh architecture exhibition
at the Venice Biennale. The exhibition, on display
AL: Some of the directors that preceded you have from 14 September to 23 November 2008 in
sought to leave things behind after their biennales. the Arsenale and the Giardini, explored the idea that
Dal Co left the James Stirling bookstore that he architecture today cannot be practised in isolation, and
commissioned, for instance. Were you tempted to that art, literature, film, landscape architecture and
leave traces? design have a vital role in the way we think about and
live in buildings.
RB: I’m no architect, so it would have been
presumptuous of me to try and do that. If the Aaron Levy and William Menking: We are
legacy is that these questions are addressed in interested in the 2008 biennale that you curated,
subsequent shows, then that’s good. ‘Beyond Building’. Could you explain what your
vision for the exhibition was, perhaps in relation to
AL: I have one last question for you, which con- your earlier writings such as Architecture Must Burn
cerns the financial aspects of your exhibition. and Architecture Beyond Building? How did these
Was the budget that the biennale provided enough, ideas play out in Venice?
or were you also responsible for fundraising?
Aaron Betsky: Well, I got a call in December
RB: Yes, in a big way. I decided I would raise of 2008 from my secretary saying, ‘There’s a
more money so I rose about a million and a half. man called Mr Baratta who would like to talk
I had to bring in someone for the opening party to you.’ And I said, ‘Who is he? What does he
and pay £100,000. It’s maybe the last thing want to talk about?’ She said, ‘I don’t know;
you want to do when you haven’t slept in six it’s something to do with the biennale.’ I said,
months! But it’s fine. ‘Okay. Give him my cell phone number.’ Five
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minutes later I get a call and he says, ‘This is Arsenale and one of the absolutely stellar staff,
Paolo Baratta. I am president of the biennale, Massimiliano, meets us there on a very cold
and I have a problem and perhaps you can help day, the day before Christmas. We walk up to
me. I was just appointed president, and my the Arsenale, the Corderie, and open up the
predecessor forgot to appoint a director of the door. I had been there many times to see the art
architecture biennale. I don’t have a curator and and architecture biennale, but I’d never seen
this exhibition opens about eight months from the space empty. So, he opens up these huge
now.’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr Baratta, that’s very wooden doors and there is half a mile of space –
interesting because I did the Dutch pavilion medieval, high-vaulted, brick-columned space,
three times and I always thought that if you all completely empty. Peter, my partner, looks
were going to do a biennale, what you really at me, looks at the space, looks at me, and says:
need to concentrate on is the spectacle. The ‘Well, there goes 2008. What are we doing
great thing about the biennale is that whatever in 2009?’ because you can’t turn down the
you think about it in moral or ethical terms, opportunity to fill that space.
or even in terms of the truths of architecture, To get a little bit more serious: I have done
it is the one place where everyone in the world over a hundred exhibitions on architecture,
comes together to look at and think about what and I’m not sure that any of them are any good.
architecture is today, and it’s even more true And that’s because it is virtually impossible to
for art. And the biennale gets criticised – you make an exhibition of architecture. I think we
can’t ever do it right – but what it needs, and can maybe have some interesting discussions
what it often lacks, is a spectacle to ground about the terms, because the Italian word for
it – some sense that people really are here for an exhibition, mostrare, means not just to show
this kind of explosion of colours and forms and but to reveal, to make public. And ‘to unfold’,
textures that together offer a critical alternative of course, also has wonderful overtones. But
to the banality of everything we already know.’ in the West and in a traditional art museum,
And I went on like this for a few more minutes you usually have to put something on the
and there was a brief silence and then Baratta pedestal, or in the frame. And the problem is
said, ‘I think you have solved my problem.’ And that architecture usually resides in buildings
I said, ‘Well, hold on a second. I have a day job and buildings don’t usually fit inside other
and I’m not sure I can do this.’ And he said, ‘At buildings. So what you wind up doing is having
least go look at the space.’ So we arrive at the scale models or drawings of buildings that
142 143
don’t have any of the spatial sense of those codes: like safety codes, building codes, finan-
buildings, drawings that only nerds like us cial codes, codes of behaviour, computer codes.
understand; colour photographs that are these They’re standardised, and there’s very little you
sappy, Disneyland versions of what, maybe, the can do. Not only that, but even in a more general
buildings look like at sunset – but no sense of sense, if you were to bring someone in here who
architecture. I had already been experimenting was not an architecture person and try to show
in previous years at SFMoMA with ways in them where the architecture is here, you would
which you could show architecture itself, and have to do a lot of dancing around to talk about
get at the essential qualities of architecture. the column that maybe represents structure,
I made what I thought was a very simple and the skylights, and to try to talk about spatial
argument in my biennale, which perhaps was proportions. Eyes would glaze over almost im-
a disaster because I don’t think anyone really mediately to anyone who’s not an architecture
understood it. I still think I’m communicating nerd. Instead, where do you find architecture?
it clearly, but obviously I failed utterly. It was Well, you find it in intentions, in dreams, and
a simple argument: that the way you show often in places where architecture is more fully
architecture, perhaps, is not to show buildings, realised, like movies and television. You find it in
because architecture is not buildings. We think utopian visions. You find it also in interiors that
they are the same thing, but they are most are fully designed, which are more powerful as
definitely not. Buildings are buildings. They scene-setting environments than buildings. You
are objects, with spaces. Building is a verb, to find it outside of buildings, in landscapes which
build something. Architecture is everything likewise have a greater power to control an en-
that is about buildings. It’s how we show build- vironment. You find it all around buildings and
ings, how we draw buildings, how we design beyond buildings. So, I said, ‘Let us look beyond
buildings, how we talk about buildings, how buildings to find architecture and to show it.’
buildings appear to us; it’s everything about
buildings. Buildings are the most complete ways WM: How much of this did you communicate
in which architecture can appear. But, these to the architects that you were exhibiting? Or
days especially, buildings are so much defined was it more a question of picking those architects
by issues outside of the discipline of architec- and exhibitors who you thought could achieve
ture, that they more often than not become the this effect?
tomb of architecture. Buildings are defined by
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AB: There were two different ways that I picked was very internet-based – a weakness in itself.
the architects. And this is back to the question For the Arsenale, I sent out a question to about
of the writings I have already done on the topic. three or four dozen architects who I respected
For what was then called the Italian pavilion, and thought were doing experimental work.
which is about 20,000 square feet of white-box And that was: ‘How can we take those systems
space in the Giardini, I made a survey of what that control our daily lives and that are mainly
I called experimental architecture. I have been of a technological nature and how can we reveal
interested for a while in what I call experimental them, appropriate them and domesticate them
architecture, which I think is a mode of making in such a manner that we can feel at home in
architecture that started appearing in the the modern world?’ And I put that question out
1970s when people realised that utopia – the and asked for proposals and out of the answers,
traditional escape valve for architects who did selected about two dozen projects. I gave them
not want to be just part of a service profession each a little bit of money and they all spent
– was ‘precluded’, and that one had instead to about ten times as much and made installations
think of architecture as a way of experimenting in the Arsenale, and that’s more or less how I
on and in the world, the real world. And filled it.
it started at places like the Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, WM: Many of the installations had a kind of
and at the Architectural Association in London. performative quality about them. Why did that
I basically first put my students to work and happen? It’s not unusual for the biennale to do that,
explained what I meant by experimental but why did you take that trajectory? Aaron and I
architecture and said, ‘Okay – go!’ They turned thought Gehry’s and Diller, Scofidio and Renfro’s
on their computers and came back the next gondola projects were among the most powerful.
morning with hundreds of sites. Then I put a They had that kind of experiential quality about
former colleague of mine at the Netherlands them. There’s also a picture of you with your head
Architecture Institute, Emiliano Gandolfi, to in Coop Himmeb(l)au’s installation ‘Feed Back
work on disciplining that and finding other Space/Astroballon 1969 Revisited’. Can you speak
things – filling it, basically, with experiments about that piece in particular? That had never been
from around the world. I only had six months built before, so it was presumably created especially
to do the biennale, and my biggest regret is for the biennale. What were you trying to get at by
that I couldn’t travel to see these things. So, it including that project from the 1960s?
146 147
AB: I think that what you want to do when you speak about your experiential and rather
you show architecture is to have an experience theatrical approach in the Arsenale I can’t help but
of architecture. Qualities of construction, of assume you were referencing Portoghesi’s Strada
spatial manipulations and sequencing and Novissima?
composition, are all issues that you want to
explore. And exploring them in a static sense AB: My great model was indeed the Strada
is more difficult than activating them through Novissima, and if I had the money and the power
installation or performance. Coop Himmelb(l) I would have made something even more like
au was part of this discourse on experimental the Strada Novissima.
architecture. The firm’s very name – ‘The
Cooperative of the Blue Way of Heaven’ – was AL: So you don’t see the Strada Novissima as
tied, in 1968 when it was formed, to the Paris something that has passed, that represents a
revolutions and to the whole notion that we do historical moment; you see it as one that has
not need to build a perfectly designed world, continued relevance.
but we do need to liberate the unconscious. We
need to liberate the body and social relations. AB: No, it’s very much a historical moment in
Their experiments from that era were all about that it’s facadism alone, where the architecture
opening up a space within the city by burning is reduced to a series of masks that present
things, by cutting holes, by attacking the static themselves in one dimension and the architects
structures (both social and physical) around then just present their own little follies within
them. Some of their ideas were so wild they only that. I never saw it in real life, but what you get
existed as drawings. When I sent this call out, from the photographs and when you talk to
Wolf Prix got in touch with me and said, ‘We people who were there is the spectacular sense
have always dreamed of doing something like of a new city emerging out of the darkness of
this, and now we think we have the technology the Arsenale: it was spectacular. My other big
to build it.’ So, they did. model was Aldo Rossi and his Theatre of the
World, floating in the lagoon of Venice. Those
AL: I’m interested in your thoughts about working were the kind of things I really wanted to try to
in Venice. It’s hard not to be attentive to what’s achieve. I did see the biennale reacting to my
come before, and to feel that one has somehow predecessors, in the sense that Deyan Sudjic
to respond to that long history. As I listen to had tried to find architecture by reducing it
148 149
to the nuggets of the best form, Kurt Forster garden, which became her project, to renovate
tried to find the best ideas, Ricky Burdett it into half a prototype for how we could turn
tried to find the economic infrastructure and our cities into places for urban gardening
social infrastructure for that. I felt like they had and half into a really utopian, beautifully
surveyed the field and now it was time to kick abstracted space surmounted by helium
out the jams, to do something that showed balloons representing all of us going to Heaven.
what was possible beyond the kind of clarity And Baratta and the organisation kept it and
and sometimes depressing truths that they built a bridge at the back of the garden which
had revealed. reconnects the Arsenale right to the centre
of Castello, the neighbourhood between the
AL: Francesco Dal Co had of course commissioned Arsenale and the Giardini, so that you now have
the Stirling bookstore. And Kurt Forster shared a shortcut right into that part of town. I’m very
with us, when we interviewed him, his unfulfilled proud of that, because I think it’s something
dream of having the landscaping of the Giardini that we left behind for future biennales to enjoy.
redone. You clearly commissioned various
installations in the Giardini and elsewhere: did WM: Aaron and I talked to Kazuyo Sejima about
you have aspirations to do something of that sort, her ideas and she mentioned how she is reacting
something that would leave a residue? to the ubiquity of architecture in the age of the
internet. How do you think that the internet and
AB: One of the first things I suggested was that the display of architecture in a virtual world has
we redo the Giardini and they all laughed and changed the actual practice of staging exhibitions?
said, ‘Every director says that.’
AL: On a related note, you have remarked
AL: How did you want to redo it? elsewhere about feeling like you are done with
exhibitions. Was the biennale in a certain sense like
AB: As a set of projects. I said, well, we need a last attempt in an age of increasing virtualisation?
a garden that is a Garden of Eden. So I called
Kathryn Gustafson and took her out to the AB: Maybe – it was certainly the largest
kind of left-over garden that’s all the way at the exhibition that I’m likely ever to get to do. So,
end of the Arsenale, the Garden of the Virgins, what do you do after that? I think there are
and she found this unclaimed piece of ruined two questions here: one is about the internet
150 151
and one is about exhibitions. The interesting spectacular. Yes – and what is wrong with that?
thing about the internet is that it takes away the Art itself is putting more and more emphasis on
novelty that biennales once had. Traditionally, its own experiential qualities or is finding ways
one of the reasons you would schlep from of integrating itself with community and media
wherever you were to Venice, or to the Whitney in a way that is completely disseminated. The
Museum of Art, or to the Carnegie, or to any medium of the exhibition is either exploding
of these kind of events was that it was your out into the street or becoming a site where the
chance to see things from all over the world. most amazing objects and spaces are collected
And now, each of us, every morning, as we have and surrounded with an elaborate framework
our coffee and in between phone calls, surf 40 that heightens your experience of them. It is
or 50 sites and everything that anyone from forcing exhibitions to try to understand what
Chile to Timbuktu is doing is on the internet their essence is, what they’re about, and I think
within a day or two – it’s very rare that you find there’s nothing wrong with that.
something that manages to remain hidden from I’m come to the conclusion that we tend
that power. So the internet is like a continual to think of museums as machines for making
biennale; everything is continually on display. exhibitions, but they’re not. Museums, art
On the one hand, this makes it easier, because museums, are machines for bringing people and
it means you have a better chance of finding art together. At the Cincinnati Art Museum,
interesting work from around the world that I’ve changed our mission statement, so that’s
you might otherwise miss; I think that shouldn’t what it now says. The museum brings the
be underestimated. And, if you find someone people of the greater Cincinnati, northern
interesting and then give them a chance to do Kentucky area and great art together. Period
something really great, that’s a positive thing. – end of it. You then have to ask the question:
I think it also puts pressure on you, because it’s what is the best way to do that? And it turns
not enough for someone just to show their stuff, out that doing standard exhibitions is a very
because you could see it on your screen. You expensive way; it’s almost impossible to do a
have to let them do something that would make decent art exhibition for less than a few hundred
it be worth going there physically to see it. thousand dollars these days. Given the financial
That sort of also answers the question limits, space limits and every other limit – I
about exhibitions. People complain about the think it’s much better for us to concentrate on
need for exhibitions to be more and more developing new ways.
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WM: We’ve talked about Gehry and Coop Luca Dazio, who is now the head of the
Himmelb(l)au and Diller, Scofidio and Renfro. architecture section. Of course there was not
Which other ones really stood out for you in the enough money to do things, and of course
Arsenale building? there’s bureaucracy. But when I gave up trying
to be an architect many years ago and decided
AB: I think I’m the only one who really liked to organise stuff, I learned that organising
Nigel Coates’ installation Hypnerotosphere, stuff always involves confronting these kinds
which people were somewhat critical about. I of difficulties and, given the scale of the
thought it was a very beautiful way of looking at operation, they were not nearly as large as I
architecture as something that occurs not as the had feared. It was easier for me than for the
making of objects but as a relationship between architects. I had to explain to the architects
bodies and buildings and between buildings who would run in optimistically and say, ‘We’ll
and cities, where you’re trying to find a do this.’ I’d say, ‘Remember little things like the
sensuality rather than a kind of harsh criticality. fact that the cost of shipping a container full
of material from Shanghai to Mestre, the port
AL: I have two different questions. The first one of Venice, is the same as the cost of then getting
calls our attention back to Kurt Forster’s ninth the material from Mestre into the biennale.
Venice architecture biennale. He talked about It’s a very complicated situation – not my
how the Italian government cut the show’s budget, problem, their problem. Once you understand
which was already spaghetti-thin, forcing him to those parameters, it wasn’t nearly as difficult
become ‘a beggar on every corner in Europe’. He as I’d thought.
had to postpone the opening when it coincided Two things to understand. First of all
with the Venice Film Festival. In every sense, he Italy, as a country, is interested in and supports
found himself caught up in what seemed to be architecture, and once you work with the press,
a logistical nightmare. Did you have a different and they get excited, for or against, it means
experience? that things have to happen. And the press in
Italy is a wonderful weapon for getting things
AB: Very different. He had the worst of it, done. I had a lot of fun working with that. The
because he had a difficult administration. I had second is that Venice is an incredible draw: I
president Baratta and Andrea Del Mercato, who mean, people will do almost anything to be in
was a fantastic executive director, and Manuela Venice and to show their work in Venice and
154 155
to be part of the Venice Biennale because they agree with you, it creates a lot of public interest,
know that 200,000 people will see it and it and a lot of debate back and forth. And then,
will be in all the newspapers and so the ability from my perspective and what I understand
to leverage those qualities is one of the things from talking to people, the board of overseers
that I think makes a biennale very doable. The are happy if they get the sense that the biennale
budget is not nearly enough, but it is more than is seen as being alive – having something that
any other situation I’ve ever worked in. people are angry or miffed or just worried
about is as good as people being excited. The
AL: Gregotti and Francesco Dal Co in particular last thing you want is for it to be boring and
cautioned us: they said that you can’t understand completely noncommittal. I didn’t even have to
the history of the biennale just by looking at the do anything. When my name was announced,
curatorial manifestation – instead you have to Gregotti wrote an editorial for Corriere della
understand the political climate of the board of Sera, I think, denouncing my appointment
overseers, and things like that. Did that not impact and saying how terrible it was going to be.
you, just as in an earlier historical moment it had I hadn’t even said what I was going to do! So I
impacted them? decided that two could play at that game, and
when they asked me what I thought of it at my
AB: I met the board of overseers twice. And first press conference I said, ‘Well, he can say
that was it. I met Cacciari, the mayor of Venice, what he wants. As far as I’m concerned, he’s
who was a great philosopher, which was a real an irrelevant architect. I’ve learned more about
honour for me. But, as I said, Paolo Baratta Italian architecture from Bernardo Bertolucci
was extremely helpful. The trick, again, was or Michelangelo Antonioni than I ever did from
the press. Gregotti.’ And that got a lot of press. Then a
good debate started, and a few very interesting
WM: I don’t understand that – how does that make critics came to see me and had serious ques-
things happen? No one has told us that yet in all of tions. The interesting thing about my biennale
our interviews. was that the Italian press on the whole loved it
in the end; the foreign press hated it. I think it’s
AB: If you say things in a way that are a record. I was panned on the same day in the
provocative without being obnoxious and you most important papers – El País in Spain, the
manage to get one or two of the key critics to Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, Le Monde
156 157
in France, The Guardian in England and the LA to call it ‘Shrink Wrap’ and it was going to be
Times, with The New York Times adding its own about the reduction of all reality to the most
insult by refusing to even review it – all on the condensed things, the containerisation of
same day. It was devastating, but I sort of knew things, having them in wrappers, and I was
it was going to happen. going to build this project with MVRDV which
was to be a huge pavilion made out of shipping
WM: Why did the Italians like it? containers that you could stack up eight high
and make a huge space – but some other time.
AB: Because I said that architecture is not just If anyone has a couple of million dollars, I
about making buildings, it is a social activity, have the plans ready, I’ll do it. That interests
a way of understanding where we are and who me. And the other thing that interests me is
we are. There’s a kind of sclerotic, historic the notion of construction, of making things.
preservation-based mafia that controls most Frank Gehry’s installation I also thought was
major construction in Italy and by attacking very, very beautiful because he went back to
them head-on it created interest and debate. something he said years ago, which is: a building
under construction is much more beautiful
AL: I want to go back to the story of the shipping than when it’s finished, and showed a building
container that costs as much to get from Shanghai as scaffolding, which again is something Colin
to Mestre as it does from Mestre to the Giardini. Rowe talked about – for me, the essence of
I’m particularly interested in sharing with the public Collage City is not the collage, but when he talks
those stories, because they impact so much of what about scaffolding.
you see. Is the notion of sharing these logistics with
the public of interest to you? Or is that precisely AL: I want to go back to the Netherlands
what a show is not supposed to display? Architecture Institute and your long, 25-year
engagement in research and education. Did you
AB: I think of logistics as a reality of modernity. see that as something that should play out in
Modernity is, in the end, as Marshall Berman your biennale? Was the EveryVille competition
said years ago, ‘no more than the continual your idea? Was it Baratta’s? Could you talk about
movement of people, goods and information’. the degree to which you saw the biennale as an
In fact, I really wanted to do a second biennale educational opportunity that should either engage
exploring ways of displaying that. I was going students or be addressed to students?
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AB: It’s one of the failures of the biennale. I can be wonderfully exuberant and sometimes
think it’s not just my failure. I think Ricky do great stuff, it also takes a certain amount of
Burdett was the only one who started to really experience and discipline to build up the ability
get students involved because he really built to show things in a spectacular way.
his biennale out of universities. In the case of
my biennale, the EveryVille competition was AL: We find ourselves in a moment when curating
organised around a series of known universities is becoming professionalised and institutionalised
around the world that did research, that did in a way that perhaps hasn’t happened before: you
projects, and they all came together to make the can get a degree in curating.
heart of the biennale. We had very little time for
an educational component when we came up AB: I’m waiting to see the real results of
with this competition. It didn’t work very well. curating programmes, so I don’t really know
We didn’t get enough people to know about what they’re going to produce. It is a very weird
it. That, for me, was one of the failures of the thing because, traditionally, there has been no
biennale; however, I’m not sure how you can way to learn how to be a curator. And there
do that better. Baratta’s dream, which I think really has been no way to learn how to be a
a fantastic one, is to make the Venice Biennale curator in the fields of architecture and design.
into a permanent institute that periodically It is fantastic that the Cooper Hewitt and some
produces the various presentations but also other places are trying to make that a more
creates a kind of research and development open and clear path. On the other hand the
institute that is a permanent centre for the notion of curating is changing even as we speak
study of the history and future of the built – people are now talking (there was an article
environment. I sort of dream of it as a kind of in The New York Times a few days ago) about
architectural equivalent of Princeton’s Institute ‘curating’ dance performances. It’s becoming
of Advanced Studies, and if he ever pulls it off, a more malleable word, so I’m not sure if the
I think it would be great, it would be absolutely programmes will be able to keep up with the
spectacular. But I think that a biennale or an mutations in the field.
exhibition is not the best place to show student
work, in general. I think that there is a skill AL: What’s so fascinating about the Venice
to presenting, which is what you do in a show Biennale is that is has the most remarkable archives
like that, that is learned and though students and yet they’re also, perhaps, the most difficult to
160 161
access. I was wondering if you had spent any time AL: But clearly the publication that you oversaw
in the archives. When we spoke to Baratta, he’d was one attempt at that. Kazuyo Sejima told us that
explained that your biennale had been a particularly she’s planning something very small and simple and
difficult one for them, from the archival perspective, compact. Your publication was not. Wouldn’t that
because your biennale played out on a BlackBerry. be an archival manoeuvre?
Does all correspondence carry the same archival
weight? How do you archive a BlackBerry? It wasn’t AB: We came up with the idea of not making
even their BlackBerry, it was not their property; it a singular catalogue. I also felt, since I am
was yours. rather strident in my beliefs, that you needed
manifestos, and I commissioned manifestos that
AB: In fact, I could not have done that biennale we collected in the book. In the end you had five
without modern technology. Yes, archiving different publications that together made up a
modern material is becoming very difficult and, kind of sprawling biennale documentation. One
of course, in the world of architecture more and of the things I’ve found is that my photographs
more of what we produce is digital, and so what of the biennale are awful, and the biennale’s are
is it that you preserve? I was the first person, worse than mine.
as far as I know, to make websites part of a
permanent collection of an art museum when AL: And the photographs would be the way that
I was in San Francisco. I kept saying to them, you would want your biennale in history to be
‘These websites are free’, and they pointed out perceived and understood?
to me that in order to maintain a website in an
archival manner – meaning that you should be AB: Right – and little QuickTime movies…
able to experience them 200 years from now in
the manner in which they were designed – cost,
in 1999, $20,000 a year per website because
you have to keep it running, continually, with
backups. It’s a huge job. So it’s a very big issue.
AB: I didn’t.
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Kazuyo Sejima
New York
Friday 5 March 2010
WM: Does that mean the projects will all be KS: Yes. So, we cannot decide things too
connected and presented as a single exhibition, or quickly and nor can the architects.
will they be presented as separate instalments?
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AL: Would it be appropriate to say that your KS: I tried to invite a younger generation, but
exhibition is a response to earlier biennales that you now so many people know each other through
feel did not take this, lets say, conversational and the computer or through travelling, and it’s not
processual form? We know that you have been in at all difficult to find or to meet young people!
conversation with Vittorio Gregotti, Francesco Dal I think that today everybody, because of the
Co and other directors recently. Do you see your internet, is already famous! And since I am not
approach as different – not a critique in a negative so good at using the internet, I always find out
sense, but a different approach to theirs? that oh, no, this person who is new to me is
already famous. There are still so many things
KS: I don’t know all the history, although I on the table. So much stuff printed out, so much
understand that recently several curators have stuff sent, so many conversations. If it sort of
focused on cities and other such topics. So feels relevant – to architecture, to the world –
this year I want to focus on the building itself. not to the theme, particularly, but just on the
But of course buildings need context, so that most basic level, then we try to take it further,
means that someone must show something and if possible, to ask for proposals. I have asked
related to the city. Throughout this process, I Yuko Hasegawa to be a curatorial advisor. I
often like to react, and not to decide. This is the worked with her for the Twenty-first-Century
conversational approach that you are talking Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa,
about. For the biennale I chose the title ‘People and now she has moved to MoT in Tokyo as
Meet in Architecture’. I realise it is a very their chief curator. I also asked my partner
difficult title, but the whole project is not easy Ryue Nishizawa to be a curatorial advisor. Our
to describe. When I selected the participants, team, including Sam Chermayeff, Jack Hogan
I asked each of them to think about this title. and Satoshi Ikeda, meets often. Mostly, we just
I always want to say that architecture should discuss things. We discuss inviting different
always be open to the public. And I hope the people, including architects, engineers and also
people I have invited to participate in this a few artists. I wanted to invite a few engineers
biennale are interesting, and interested in that. and artists to show some work through the form
of collaborations.
WM: The biennale usually represents what’s new in
the world of architecture. What criteria did you use AL: Your selection approach is somewhat
in deciding who to invite? intuitive, then?
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KS: Yes, for sure. to use the space. The money is limited and
the space is big, so it’s really not enough. For
WM: Have you approached curating the Arsenale example, to give a sense of our process: we
and the Italian pavilion differently? have a given space, and one architect will show
a few things in that space. We will think with
KS: We discussed the difference between the them about how to put things together, and
Italian pavilion and the Arsenale, but in the then this will determine ultimately the kind of
end we’ve treated them the same way. Some experience, give it a kind of continuity.
works shine more in a white gallery, while some
do better in the Arsenale. Other works feature WM: The Italian pavilion is very different.
materials best suited to a much darker space,
while in other cases, it’s white on white. Our KS: It is not one space; instead it has many
approach in this project is always to ask, for directions and paths. In other words, it is not
example, ‘How about this, or maybe this?’ conclusive. As a result, we are thinking of
With each of the proposals, we must change showing big-scale structure models, or solo
each thing, and everything happens in response shows and small studies, or else photographs,
to everything else. or… Many different things.
WM: The Arsenale is so linear, and curators WM: Yes, the Italian pavilion is very strange
usually put everything off to the side or treat the because they have rooms both above and below
space as an installation in response to that. With ground. One of our other questions for you
Asymptote, for instance, Kurt Forster created concerns the possibility of bringing universities and
a meandering line through the Arsenale; with students into the biennale. Is this important to you,
Portoghesi, the Strada Novissima created a straight and is it a priority with your biennale?
line like a street straight through the space. What
are your current thoughts about the space and your KS: It’s not about showing things. It’s about
approach to the exhibition? engaging students with the experience
of the exhibition. It’s not particularly about
KS: We are not using money for the design asking them to contribute materials, but
of the exhibition, and will try instead to give to experience it.
money to the architects, and ask them how
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AL: Philosophically, do you believe that the KS: We never talk about it, and I didn’t think
biennale needs to be more pedagogical or more about it! But I think the one reason that some
didactic? Do you feel that the exhibit, in a way, people still have some expectations of the
should be placed more directly in the service biennale is that the city of Venice is so special.
of teaching? I think we are competing, perhaps not explicitly,
with the city, and that it is important that
KS: The first time I came to the biennale I was when people visit the exhibit they respond
not a student but an exhibitor and I didn’t know with a certain degree of ‘wow’. Because the
how to communicate with other people, or even biennale is so big, it is a spectacle. And because
how to see the whole thing. But I’m hoping the internet, and books, cover the biennale’s
that a lot of students will come, and that they history and architecture in general, there are
will also be a part of the biennale. It has become more smart people around thinking about
a good opportunity to start to think about architecture than I’d realised. Thus to go back
architecture, and to help them to connect. For to spectacle is maybe okay.
this reason, we hope to do a conference during
the biennale that asks ‘what is architecture AL: Is exhibiting art and architecture the same
education?’ In addition, the official plan of the thing? Do you feel that one can show a building in
biennale is that every Saturday the director the way that one shows an artwork?
of a past biennale will come back and quietly
discuss their exhibition. KS: I have been to the art biennale three times,
and while artists show the artwork itself, in
AL: One of our other questions concerns Venice an architecture exhibition we cannot use the
itself. In a way, in organising the US pavilion, we real thing – the building. Therefore in an archi-
felt we were in competition with the city, because tecture exhibition we have to think about how
many people come to the Giardini and the Arsenale to show architectural quality. Even if someone
with the same sort of expectations they bring to makes a model, one-to-one scale, we are still not
Venice, which is such a spectacular site. There is a dealing with context. I ask every participant
spectacular logic and a sense of economic tourism to show a model, together with each room’s
that has perhaps invaded or defines the public’s context, to create something. They must think
relation to the biennale. Do you think about Venice about how it would be possible to show a project,
in this way? albeit within the existing walls and conditions.
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WM: This would be a departure, then, from not show things that are so exact that they still
Betsky’s biennale, which was about an architecture need qualification. Rather, we will try to show
beyond building, so to speak. You, on the contrary, the ways of participation.
want to return the focus back onto architecture.
AL: It seems that everyone has such high
KS: I am sorry if I am not being clear, but aspirations for exhibitions today – we want
the title of my exhibition is ‘People Meet in exhibitions to change the world, to enact a certain
Architecture’. I have an image of the current politics, etc.
society we live in and role that architecture
has to play. I am thinking right now about KS: I think I want to simply make an exhibition
how we make architecture today, as compared that will bring people closer together to think,
to the past, when an architect was a kind of to see lots of things, and to have a chance to
grand master in charge of everything. That’s talk about them. I want to provide a greater
impossible now, both in daily business and connection between the viewer and the
also in how one works with so many other exhibition itself.
professionals – engineers, designers, etc. I
wouldn’t say that either approach is good or AL: Have you curated other exhibitions in the past?
bad. But this new way of making architecture
also gives architecture a new quality, or KS: Well, at SANAA we’ve curated our own
character. And sometimes collaborations can exhibitions and done exhibition designs, but
help generate new styles of architecture. we have never selected participants like we are
doing now.
AL: So are you inviting some of the architects and
others you are featuring to collaborate? AL: Are you excited by the possibilities of doing
curation?
KS: Yes. There are three or four sets of
collaborators right now, maybe there will be KS: Of course. Building is a conversation
a few more. For instance, sometimes there is a with the user, the client or the programme
live person collaborating with a dead person, itself. And to design a small house or to build
and thinking about history. I hope to be able a big museum somehow exemplifies the same
to cultivate some new experiences. But we will approach. I don’t think there is that much
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difference for us between designing projects document the exhibition, or display the work of
and curation. the featured architects?
WM: Working in Venice is particularly difficult; KS: We’re trying to make it smaller and a
financial limitations and the short amount of time little bit less cumbersome than in the past.
can be very frustrating. We envision a small guide used as an index
to the bigger catalogue, which will have reduced
KS: From a monetary point of view it’s true, it’s pages and be more specific, rather than creating
maybe too concentrated in time, it happens too some sort of rule where everybody gets two
quickly and there is too much to do. pages and has a set amount of text. It must be
freer, because we’re inviting participants to
AL: Do you mean you wish you could work with a do quite different things that are leading us
smaller space, for instance just the Arsenale? in several different directions. So we’re trying
to keep it very open, and looser, but also kind
KS: Yes, from a monetary point of view, or from of contained. Where necessary, we are showing
the point of view of time. It would be better, things in situ, meaning what they’re actually
smaller and certainly easier to curate! making for the biennale.
WM: You alluded to this before, but what is the WM: I think the past Venice Biennale catalogues
role of the biennale in a technological age, in an age have been an afterthought. Maybe it’s time and
of increasing virtualisation? money once again, but they seem to be printed
at the last moment, as a form of documentation.
KS: There are so many biennales and triennales
now, though for me personally the Venice KS: Hopefully this one can be, first and
Biennale is the most famous. Even though you foremost, something that you can deal with,
can see nice photographs of models on the and that doesn’t feel like a list. Rather than
internet, at the biennale one should really be a catalogue, hopefully it will feel more like a
able to see the real thing. It’s a chance for less book somehow.
information and more feeling.
AL: Will there be a discursive aspect?
AL: Have you thought about the catalogue? Will it
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KS: Yes, I want there to be some kind of critique explained how complex it is today to document
in the book, and for the participants to write how it all comes to be. Do you feel that you need to
something that will help the public think differ- document not just what you show at the end of the
ently about architecture and questions of beau- day, but the process of curating what you show?
ty. I am an architect, so I would like people to
feel the possibility of architecture. But I want KS: We don’t really. I mean, we keep all the
short and contained texts, not texts referencing drawings that are sent to us by the participants.
everything. I want a few texts addressing overall But it’s not like we are having a BlackBerry-
issues, rather than each participant’s explana- generated discussion, it’s all very literal. So
tion, which we will try to keep kind of small. there are drawings on the wall and drawings on
And, obviously, we will try to make the design the table, and there are little cutouts of various
and printing seem a little bit nicer, so that architects with little strings. It’s a process that
whatever you look at seems important on that you can see at any point playing out, now, here.
page. I thought at first to reduce the number So we do document that, but I don’t know
of participants, but at the same time I was very what’s going to happen with it all. I don’t know
worried that I could not show the diversity that what to do with all this material.
exists today. There are some Venice Biennale
catalogues that show only the top architects
and projects in the exhibition, and others that
show everything. I worry, as I don’t think I can
show everything. I wish we could spend more
time on it.
AL: Native Americans too… PB: Each of them is really quite special in itself.
I mean, I have seen curators who have covered
PB: Yes, and we also have the Basques, the the Arsenale with white walls, others who
Iraqis, the Kurds and also the Formosans. have been taking the walls off. Some have been
thinking about the space and the work, and
AL: Can you say ‘no’ to these requests for others haven’t cared at all. And then there are
representation, or would that run counter to those who were just ordering things as if it were
what you want the biennale to aspire to be? a museum.
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WM: Do you think that the biennale should reflect necessarily the most obvious recent questions
contemporary culture? Or should it lead culture about architecture. We are living in a moment
and predict, in a way, what will be occupying the when we are all talking about the city, urban
perspective of the vanguard? development, technology, water rights,
sprawl and so on. And you can organise in a
PB: I have done both. After Fuksas’s exhibition fairly easy way exhibitions underlining these
I asked Deyan Sudjic to curate, and his biennale possible themes. But is this really the right
reflected the current thinking on architecture way to organise an exhibition of architecture?
at the time: we had discussed whether a biennale No! Perhaps next year we will organise an
should always concentrate on what is going exhibition of architecture that can be more
to happen in the future. But you cannot have active in the surroundings, that can get people
the same thing every two years, and that is more involved.
why I have turned to Sejima for the 2010
biennale. With Betsky’s biennale, he took the WM: What else are you planning for the 2010
critic’s criticism of architecture to the extreme architecture biennale?
by arguing that today architecture is almost
everything. The world is not one of building PB: I plan to introduce discussions, meetings;
but of space and of things to be seen and heard and each Saturday will be dedicated to a former
and enjoyed. By contrast, in selecting Sejima, director of the biennale. The only one missing
I chose an architect who is in fact one of the is of course Aldo Rossi. It is my way of asking,
most architectural. She starts from the problem can you contribute to the question ‘what
of architecture, and the question of how to is an exhibition of architecture?’ It’s not that
define limits from inside and outside, or from one has to give a specific answer – it’s a question
two different outsides, or from two different to which there are always many possible
insides. The freedom of architecture in dealing solutions. The first ones didn’t know whether
with space, in dividing space, is most elemental the biennale should be an exhibition of specific
and strong. So Sejima seems to me to be an projects and ideas or something larger. I am
interesting choice, because with her we are asking each of the previous directors to come
returning to an architect who speaks about back, and to rethink and start talking again
architecture and to some extent puts back on about what each of them did and how their
the table the basic questions which are not exhibitions were different.
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WM: Francesco Dal Co said he had two years to like Szeemann had his problems in developing
prepare for his 1991 biennale, and explained how new and creative ideas for a second biennale. If
important it was to have that time. Today, there is you go beyond a certain number of years with
so much less time available to each director. the same curator, he begins to consider himself
to be the only one who is capable of choosing
PB: That is not in fact the problem. We are and selecting what is new. And that is what we
developing technology that is changing the want to avoid. The formula of the biennale
time needed to create an exhibition. Sejima has might seem a bit inefficient from some other
a model of the Corderie in a room in her office point of view, but it is to keep a certain intensity,
in Japan, and she can see how it works if you to keep changing the criteria.
put this or that in it. So the technology today
helps – roughly 70 per cent of the work can be AL: One of the most difficult things for us in
done by computer at this point. That being organising the US pavilion was knowing that
said, a biennale is a place where you meet things, the public passes by so quickly. We hope that the
where you touch things. If you lose that idea exhibition will affect their senses and their mind,
you don’t need an exhibition. A biennale has but we have such a short period of time to play with.
to become, like Santiago de Compostela, a Are you concerned with this? Does it seem specific
place of pilgrimage, a ‘Mecca’ where you have to the technological moment in which we live?
to go once in your life because the process of
knowledge is completed by that sort of experi- PB: In logic, a problem which is an inevitable
ence. You need to bring people together to problem disappears as a problem.
talk and see each other. So this is my mission,
to transform the biennale into a Santiago de AL: You mean that it is simply the reality today?
Compostela. But this goes back to where we
started: What are you coming to see? What PB: Once again we are back to the question
should we offer you? Why are you coming of what a visit to the biennale is. I cannot
to Santiago de Compostela? And once again pretend that if you start in the morning and
this is the question of each biennale, and once end in the evening you will see everything with
again each biennale has its own answer. You complete attention, fully entering into a spirit
know, I asked Harald Szeemann to curate two of understanding what is there. Therefore the
biennales in a row. I must say that even a genius role of the theatrical capability of the curator is
196 197
fundamental, because it is this capability which more effective in speaking to the public in an
makes for a good or bad exhibition. When you emotional way. Have you seen this biennale by
think back upon what you saw, it’s not that you Birnbaum, and what he is doing there in the
need to fully digest it all, because that would be Corderie? He is one of the most interesting
like reading a book. The biennale is simply too curators I have ever seen. With the Corderie,
large. We have to live today with an unsolvable you can easily fall into the trap of anxiety about
problem, which sometimes might appear as a empty spaces – I’ve had exhibitions where the
setback. We simply do not have enough time curators were obsessed with putting different
today to fully appreciate what is going on. things on white walls. Birnbaum, on the other
A curator should not make compromises, and hand, understands the complexity of what
should live with these contradictions, because it means to do a biennale; he understands
these contradictions make us very modern. that there is such a rich history, and that this
We must live with the problems to which we means that you need to justify the current
have no solutions. This is as true in politics articulation. He understands the complexity
as it is in economics and the modern world. of the problematic – that, in a certain sense,
I am not afraid of living with this, but I am the biennale is exhausted because there have
afraid of those who want to solve everything, been so many iterations. The challenge is to
and who do not leave any possibilities to the reinvigorate it each year, and sometimes to
visitor. You think that curating is like writing be sufficiently naïve. In particular you find
an essay, and that people should come in and there that the whole Corderie is a traditional
start at the beginning and progress through passegiata. A passegiata through fancy, through
to the conclusion? This is not an exhibition fantasy, through fairy tales.
model that can help you, not here. We have to
be quite clear, I am really interested in problems AL: He was one of the very first curators to also
with no obvious solutions. I leave total freedom accept that we don’t know what a work of art
to the curator, but I always am clear about the is anymore, because today it can be absolutely
problems that they have to face. I encourage anything.
them to involve their imagination, and not only
rationality. If you want to develop workshops PB: I think he was so good because he really
or seminars to think about these things, that’s showed us that artists are a bit lost in creativity:
okay. But the visual part of the exhibition is they have left behind the idea of being the
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saviours of the world, the interpreters of the his own world. But all this is not obvious when
tragedies of contemporary life. Birnbaum has you begin, because there is no recipe. It’s not
been perfect in that reading, and in therefore something that you can codify, and you cannot
having no anxiety about the empty space. He say, ‘This is the formula. Please, next curator,
has been using the Corderie like the third act apply it.’
of Mozart’s Magic Flute, where you have this
walking experience of emotions. He has really AL: Would you ever consider selecting more than
lived with the instruments we have given him one curator for the biennale?
in the most clever way.
PB: No, I cannot work with a team of curators,
WM: Did he work closely with each of the artists because then all the tension is lost. I am for one
to make this theatrical experience what it was? man, one show, and one responsibility. If you
give them this chance and freedom, curators
PB: Yes, he discussed with each artist the size feel as if they are artists with their own work of
and the dimensions of each piece. To be a art to be imagined. Therefore, co-curatorship
curator really means to be a director of a theatre, is a wrong form, and I will never adopt it. Even
and to make a sort of artwork. You have to with that size of task, one man is a prerequisite
discuss everything with everyone: how much, for this responsibility, which is at once moral,
where, this or that? I liked this Corderie because aesthetic and administrative. Now we don’t have
it gives the exact sensation of present time, the money to pay all the costs of what we show.
and the sense of artists who have become lost Last year we rewrote the regulations on funding
in creativity with no more guidelines. These for the exhibitions: we divide the cost of the
artists were retreating to some sort of incredible curator, the cost of the exhibition from the
individualism. Artists were painting themselves, point of view of the curator, and all the rest.
their wives, their friends, their mothers, their Then we have a certain sum for, let’s say, each
homes, where they live. They turned their eyes installation; make an average, and that is the
toward themselves, as if we were once again in cost. Of course, the money is not sufficient.
Alice in Wonderland. These artists were lost The Gehry installation last year was built by our
in a world of objects and colours, and the title people, and the cost of that was almost eight
of the show, ‘Making Worlds’, was a perfect times what was allotted. This meant that he had
representation of that because each was making to help organise some of the funding. But you
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Afterword
cannot fill the Corderie, you cannot fill the thea-
tre, if you do not spend money. So the curator
has to use their ability in imagining whom to
bring there and what to invite him to do, while William Menking
at the same finding money to do what he wants
to do. For this reason, we have developed over The ten Venice Biennale curators interviewed
the last two years in particular relations with for this project seem to agree on only one thing
an incredible number of foundations that help – the impossibility of creating exhibitions on
artists, and it is the responsibility of the curator architecture. Confronted with tremendous
to engage with them. We call the potential responsibilities, chronic underfunding and a
artists who come to the biennale the roots, breakneck schedule, why did they take it on?
trunk and sprouts. For the roots, we have to The temptation to put on a show is probably real
give money because we have to take them out enough. Aaron Betsky suggests that ‘when the
of museums. For sprouts, we give money. huge wooden doors of the empty Arsenale are
The trunks, well they have to pay, because they opened and you are presented with a half a mile
are already in a position where they can find of medieval, high-vaulted, brick-columned space,
money, and for them being at the biennale really you can’t turn down the opportunity to fill that
means something to their collectors. For the space’. Then there’s the city of Venice itself, with
young ones, we pay, and we even give a sum that its legendary architectural associations and the
is larger than what we pay the famous artists. heritage of the 100-year-old biennale. But these
And we always have a certain number of young are not the only factors attracting these figures
artists, managed according to criteria which are – all with distinguished reputations of their own –
very simple. to try and prove themselves here on a scale larger
than most had ever encountered before. It is more
likely that they agreed, or sought, to participate
because the Venice Biennale is the one event where
the entire architecture world – practitioners, critics,
academics, students and others – comes together
to present, look at and debate architecture. Simply
put, it is the most established and prestigious
event in the world of architecture and curating,
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and represents a crowning achievement for the conditions of architecture current at the
any career. time and the problem of how to make these clear
But despite its current pre-eminence in to audiences including both architects and non-
architectural culture, the origins of the biennale, designers.
as Aaron Levy points out, are rooted in radical Paolo Portoghesi, for example, told us
politics. In 1968 politically engaged students that it was modern architecture that had ‘lost
beseiged the gates of the art biennale, protesting the possibility to speak to the common people’.
that the exhibition had become elitist and detached He went on to say that giving people ‘only a
from reality. As the organisers believed that statistical idea about the role of the citizen in the
architecture had more potential to connect with world is not useful, it’s not indicative of the beauty
day-to-day problems and conditions, they asked of the biennale, which is about artistic culture’.
Vittorio Gregotti to curate – create, actually – This might be read as a critique of exhibitions
an architecture-inspired event. The 1976 Molino that catalogued current urban projects (Sudjic)
Stucky competition was the result. But even or foregrounded statistics (Burdett), but more
Gregotti, curator of the critically important to the point Portoghesi was arguing that with
1964 Milan Triennale, argues in his interview architecture there is always the possibility of direct
that when it comes to presenting architecture, communication between people and architects,
‘Communication with the public is practically between people and architecture. ‘Architecture
impossible.’ And at the time – and given his politics for architects’, he argued, ‘is wrong, and it breaks
– it still seems a strange choice to ask Gregotti the continuity of architectural history. Architecture
to lead the way in making these connections. is not for architects; it’s for the public.’ His 1980
Gregotti’s dilemma turned out to be a Strada Novissima was his attempt to present a
recurring one. Every biennale curator that we different way of connecting modern architecture
interviewed described the difficulty of presenting with history and the public.
this ‘specialised field’ to a broader public but then All the curators in fact believed that they
proceeded to do just that: create a poplar exhibition were connecting to the public. And so it comes
for a public of non-specialists. All argued that their down to how they made it happen. Hans Hollein,
own biennales were popular in a ‘new way’. Most for example, said, ‘My biennale was the first one
of these were only semantic differences (presenting that had a new audience.’ He presumably meant
the historical versus the modern), but they also that his was not just for professional designers
projected real and strongly felt positions regarding but was an attempt to showcase avant-garde work
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of his day. Both Burdett and Sudjic argued that
their presentations were aimed at bringing the
conditions and experiences of architecture to the
general public. Even Aaron Betsky and perhaps
Kazuyo Sejima focused on the work created by
the perceived avant-garde while framing it for
public education and consumption.
The biennale exhibitions that work best,
president of the biennale Paolo Baratta argues,
are the ones that are the most cinematic and
entertaining. While this may be a desirable goal
for a public exhibition, it is equally true that the
best exhibits are the ones that inspire without
preaching. This leaves us with a Venice Biennale
that tumbles together not only the most radical,
experimental and design-focused propositions,
but also the kind of work most likely to speak
to the public about everyday experiences. How
well the biennale achieves this every other year
is the reason for going to Venice yourself.
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Colophon
ISBN 978-1-902902-96-8
ISBN 978-1-902902-96-8
AA Publications
www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications