Notes
August 29, 2012

The Architecture Biennale opens today on COMMON GROUND

Famed British architect David Chipperfield, curator of The 13th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, challenged the exhibitors to explore the Common Ground in the architecture, provoking them to showcase a portrait of the collaborations and affinities behind it.

Visual identity of The 13th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Design: J. Morgan.

“The Architecture Biennale is not an ‘Architecture’s Got Talent’ show!” – stated David Chipperfield for The Art Newspaper.

„This theme is a deliberate act of resistance towards the image of architecture propagated in much of today’s media of projects springing fully formed from the minds of individual talents. I wish to promote the fact that architecture is internally connected, intellectually and practically, sharing common concerns, influences and intentions.

This Biennale, coming at a time of global economic anxiety, offers us a chance to put into perspective the undeniable individual architectural achievements that have given identity to the recent years, and to provoke a more focused consideration of our shared concerns and expectations.

Against all odds, Italy remains the spiritual home of architecture and it is here we can fully understand the importance of buildings not as individual spectacles but as the manifestations of collective values and as the settings for daily life.

The sensibility and understanding of the people is without doubt the result of living amongst the world’s greatest patrimony of architecture and urbanism. This tangible sense of context and history remind us that our built world is a testament to the continuous evolution of architectural language and critical to our understanding of the world around us.

David Chipperfield at La Biennale. Photo: La Biennale.

With this in mind, I was inspired to direct this Biennale towards concerns of continuity, context and memory, towards shared influences and expectations, and to address the apparent lack of understanding that exists between the profession and society.“ – wrote David Chipperfield when presenting the theme of Common Ground for this exhibition. He hopes that selected architects have used every available medium to tell stories about the common ground of the profession, and of the city.

The Biennale opens to the public today and stays open until 25 November.

Tatjana Bartakovic

Tatjana Bartakovic

Editor in Chief of Design Agenda. Works as Design curator and writer but mostly living from the work in public relations, branding and content marketing.

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