Freespace
16th International Architecture Exhibition
A reflection on a new use of space that gives the inhabitants
an opportunity for development and better cohesion with
their daily environment
"W
e are architects, not curators”,
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara
– founders of the Grafton Architects studio –
explained to us. Architecture must be
pragmatic in order not to be spectacular, said
the director of the Venice Biennial Paolo
Baratta: “It has done too much damage for too
many years.” These two statements allow us
to really get to the heart of the theme of this
sixteenth edition of the Architecture Biennale.
On the one hand we have the starting point
of the spirit of this event, which is an
orientation fully addressed to the real
meaning of Architecture itself, and on the
other we have the opportunity to consciously
remember that this discipline has made many
mistakes in recent years, with repercussions
on entire communities.
In this edition there were 71 invited designers,
in addition to those gathered in two special
sections: the first one, with a total of 16
participants, called Close Encounter, meetings
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LUCE 326 / SPECIALE BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
with remarkable projects, presenting works
born from a reflection on well-known
buildings of the past; the second section,
counting 13 participants, called The Practice
of Teaching, collecting works developed in
teaching experiences. Freespace was conceived
as an attempt to scrutinize the work of the
architects to understand where and how
an added value of places and spaces
has been achieved, which have genuinely
generated benefits both for the community
and for the individual citizen, as result
of a planning generosity.
This kind of reflection might appear obvious,
but, in fact, it is not true; it is rather an
opportunity to raise the debate on the real
meaning attributed to the built space and
find out what its real implications are
on the citizen, or on the user, who is in turn
overwhelmed by the evolution of customs
and usage through the decades. Paradoxically,
it is like asking ourselves, in a planning phase,
a question to understand how much we are
involved in the functional aspects and the
compliance of the rules and how much,
in reality, we are dedicated to the research
of the perceived quality, not only as an
aesthetic value but, above all, as a catalyst
for a feeling of pleasure and gratification
in living a pro-active architecture.
The curators made the official presentation
of this edition of the Biennale directly from
their office in Dublin, via Skype, due to
a blizzard that made it impossible for them
to move for a few days. Such a circumstance
was an opportunity for them to restate
the inescapable interdependence between
Architecture and natural environment, despite
the widespread conception in which man
thinks to stand above it or in any case to be in
an illusory autonomy from its equilibrium. In
Freespace, a poetics emerges, present in many
of the projects on display and recognizable
in the desire to highlight traces of humanity,