Common Ground/Different Worlds: Noero Architects with the Keiskamma Trust Hamburg Women’s Co-operative

Yesterday's post looked at social issues linked with architecture through an audiovisual installation, so let's continue the thread today and explore the themes behind another project currently on at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale that analyses the effects that the social environment can have on people's lives.

This installation by Noero Architects with the Keiskamma Trust Hamburg Women's Co-operative (inside the Arsenale) features two works that are deeply interconnected.

One work, entitled "Transformation of Red Location", is a 9 metre-long hand-drawn plan of the Red Location Precinct in Port Elizabeth – an area devastated by apartheid spatial planning – produced at a scale of 1:100 (ink on paper and digital post production printed on canvas) by South African architect Jo Noero. The project proposes a common ground in a city torn apart by the urbanistic consequences of apartheid.

The second work, entitled "Keiskamma Guernica" is a a large Picasso-inspired tapestry made by a co-operative of fifty women from the Hamburg Women's Co-operative from the Eastern Cape that tackles the sourge of AIDS/HIV and its devastating impact on the people of South Africa.

Together the two pieces work as one composition, revealing different degrees of complexity and the profound relationship between art and architecture in a dichotomic and constrasting yet complementary way: one work is more technical, the other is based on craftsmanship, art and design, but both are equally powerful and strong as they imply a series of vitally important issues such as divisions, urban conditions, global health concerns and the absence or the difficulty of achieving a "common ground".