Upon stepping into the German Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (until 26th November 2023), visitors to last year's Art Biennale will experience a peculiar sense of déjà vu.
That's not because the installation in the German Pavilion - entitled "Open for Maintenance" - is inspired by anything they may have seen in Venice in 2022, but it is because the building has been turned into a sort of warehouse storing materials from last year's Biennale.
Inspired by the Instandbesetzung (squatting and maintaining) movement of 1980s Berlin, the curatorial team Arch+ / Summacumfemmer / Büro Julian Grebe collected leftover materials from the 2022 Art Biennale and, with the passion of forensic experts, catalogued and labelled them. Then, neatly arranged and stacked, the materials were displayed in the pavilion.
Organizing a Biennale in Venice, as you may guess, is no mean feat: artworks and exhibition materials must first be shipped to the city; then they are moved to their exhibition locations by cart, hand or boat.
Only a fraction of these materials is then reused as storage locations in the city are scarce and logistics costs sky-high. Most discarded materials go straight to the nearest landfill or recycling facility.
Saving the materials from almost 40 national pavilions and exhibitions from the landfill and moving them to the German Pavilion was a physically demanding process carried out in collaboration with Rebiennale / R3B.
The local platform offers a variety of services and aims at reducing waste and assists curators in the delicate phases of assembling and disassembling the various installations.
There is a bit of everything inside the German Pavilion, from wood from the Switzerland Pavilion to acrylic glass boxes from the Central Pavilion at the Giardini, while the thick black woolen fabric and the structural red and black timber come respectively from the Uruguay and the Chile Pavilion.
Among the most visually striking debris (but also the most polluting ones...) there are the royal blue flocked styrofoam panels and columns from the Israel Pavilion.
As you walk among the stacks of fibre cemented panels, steel pipes, rolls of faux fur and assorted carpets, you start realizing the impact on the environment that the various installations may have and the importance of recycling materials.
Each lot is labelled with a QR code: the materials were indeed inventoried and included in a digital database developed in collaboration with Concular, a Germany-based start-up matching the demand and supply of construction materials.
An undercurrent of dark irony pervades the space: the curatorial team refers indeed to the materials as "spolia" from the other pavilions.
The word refers to the practice of repurposing or reusing architectural elements, remnants, fragments, sculptures, or decorative materials from earlier structures or civilizations in the construction or renovation of new buildings.
Yet the etymology of the word derives from Latin and indicates the act of stripping an enemy of their weapons and armor after a victory and displaying the "spoils" or "booty" of the conquered. Here we are not talking about enemies, but about fellow artists, designers and creative minds, and the glorious "booty" actually amounts to a variety of materials that some of us may consider as worthless.
"Open for Maintenance" is therefore not an exhibition, but a way to transform the pavilion into a productive infrastructure. The curatorial theme maintained the pavilion as it was found, leaving untouched Maria Eichhorn's contribution "Relocating a Structure" for last year's Art Biennale (Eichhorn's intervention revealed the traces of various remodelling stages that transformed the Bavarian Pavilion into the German Pavilion). Yet the team also made some architectural modifications to the space, adding for example a ramp outside the building.
In 1938, the Bavarian Pavilion, originally built in 1909, underwent a transformation by German architect Ernst Haiger to align with Nazi ideology. This resulted in the creation of a monumental architectural structure with one notable feature - the presence of four large fluted Doric columns on its portico, elevated by five steps from the Giardini grounds.
This architectural manifestation proudly embodied an ideology of superiority and power, promoting a vision that excludes and marginalizes bodies other than those deemed "healthy".
The curatorial team addressed this exclusionary aspect by introducing a semicircular access ramp. This feature serves to improve accessibility not only for individuals with reduced mobility but also for cleaning personnel, guards, and technicians who require heavy equipment.
The addition of the ramp creates a new public podium that was activated by the inclusive Forward Dance Company by Lofft - Das Theater, at the Pavilion's opening event.
The team also included a toilet: a sanitary infrastructure was missing in the building and the new all-gender urinal (that offers tools for changing diapers as well) opens a debate on the lack of a sewer system in Venice where most toilets are directly emptied into the canals.
The pavilion now also includes a kitchenette, with walls covered in posters, leaflets, and other communication materials. This space is devised as a communicative switchboard to promote the work surrounding the social struggles by organizations based in Venice and in Germany as well.
There are two other spaces inside the pavilion that will be activated in the next few months: the workshop area and the meeting space.
According to the curatorial team, practicing architecture in future will mean, first and foremost, repairing that which already exists.
Maintenance and repair require tools, knowledge, and techniques and here people will find a variety of tools in a fully equipped workshop space.
The tools will be used during the Maintenance 1:1 workshop program that will carry out a series of interventions involving grassroots organizations from various countries (including the local Assemblea Sociale per la Casa), university students and crafts apprentices who will help to maintain, repair, and care for social infrastructures across Venice.
Participants will upgrade sanitary facilities, build ramps, design furniture for the community, paint fences, and repair roofs.
The program supports existing material and social (infra)structures counteracting the negative effects of Venice's commercialization and actively promoting the social inclusion of underprivileged groups.
The meeting space is instead an area conceived as an exchange opportunity and includes a section that may be of interest to accessory designers: here people can create bags from material leftovers from the 2022 Art Biennale using patterns created by transdisciplinary association Haus der Materialisierung.
The bag making section is a reaction to the waste caused by the tens of thousands of bags that individual pavilions hand out each year.
Those visitors who want to have a rest can instead play with the educational board game Trivial Circuit developed by LXSY Architekten in cooperation with Impact Hub Berlin and Concular, which helps to understand the complex reorganization of the planning processes involved in circular construction.
The bag manufacturing area was the most crowded section of the pavilion during the opening days, proving that pavilions or installations that offer hands-on activities to visitors are always amongst the most popular ones.
The bag making area also made you ponder about future developments and projects about leftover materials from the Biennale. It would indeed be interesting if the Biennale had a shop where people could buy (also in small quantities) leftover materials from previous biennale events (a bit like Spazio Meta in Milan) or objects or accessories made with such materials.
While this pavilion looked at a series of social issues intrinsic to architecture, from recycling and reusing, to repairing, fostering inclusivity and diversity, not everybody liked the idea of the materials on display.
Patrik Schumacher from Zaha Hadid Architects (maybe upset at not having been invited?), stated in a post on Facebook that the Venice Architecture Biennale is "mislabeled" and "should stop laying claim to the title of architecture" as it "does not show any architecture".
Lamenting the fact that most pavilions do not show the work of architects, Schumacher also stated that the German Pavilion is "filled with piles of construction material". Who knows, maybe he didn't have the time to read all the information accompanying the exhibition and the impact that the workshop programme may have on the city.
Maybe he should remember that the so-called "Architecture Biennale" is not an exclusive club for architects and designers, but it is open to a wide audience (interestingly enough, he didn't complain during previous biennale events that did feature Zaha Hadid Architects and that included a variety of installations and not just architectural projects).
After all, while not all of us may be able to look at a urban plan or at a model of a building with excitement, we all know that architecture has a profound impact on our lives as it shapes the way we live, work, and interact with our surroundings, affecting our physical well-being but also influencings our social dynamics, equity, and inclusivity.
With its focus on recycling and reusing materials, "Open for Maintenance" serves therefore as a reminder of architecture's social responsibility: the project highlights the importance of creating spaces that foster community engagement, promote sustainable practices and cater to diverse needs.
Image credits for this post
All images by Anna Battista except:
1. The new inclusive access ramp to the German Pavilion, Open for Maintenance © Nils Koenning
14 and 15. Performance by Forward Dance Company by Lofft - Das Theater, © Nils Koenning
29. Open for Maintenance © Arch+ / Summacumfemmer / Büro Julian Grebe
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