Venice VE

Family connections have brought me to China every year since the millennium and enabled me to observe developments from near at hand and far away and see the country change with great leaps. Eight years ago there wasn’t a single car in the village of…

Architecture must do more than provide shelter for us. Architecture must offer us a secure home in the confusing modern reality. With this biennale Aaron Betsky wants to stimulate experiments and show how we can establish (new) relationships between …

Gas pipe You can’t be clear enough when making a political statement at a circus like the biennale, as the tiny country of Estonia understands all too well. In response to controversial plans by Gazprom for a pipeline between Russia and Germany, cura…

In the last part about the architects presenting their projects in the exhibition Home/Away in the British Pavilion in Venice you can see projects of Witherford Watson Mann. Alisa Street Masterplan, Lea Valley, east London A mile to the south of th…

Such questions were exhaustively discussed by some fifty national and international guests through a number of ‘discussion media’ (round table talks, speed dates, keynote lectures and a workshop). But apart from all the talking, there was mostly work…

First of all, Colombia is a festive country. No matter where you order a drink or a juice, it’ll always be served with a straw – even in expensive restaurants and even as a handy stirring implement with tea or coffee. What’s more, a daily dose of Sal…

Betsky’s presentation was lively and persuasive. His story started with a phone call from Mister Baratta. 'I’ve a problem. Can you help?,' Baratta asked. 'Maybe, but who are you?,' answered Betsky. Baratta turned out to be director of the Biennale di…

Gareth Hoskins Architects have won the competition to design the so-called Gathering Space, the Scottish presence at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale. Scotland’s first Venice Biennale pavilion ever will be situated in a major piazza during the f…

Aaron Betsky, former director for six years of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) of Rotterdam, one of the most important architecture museums and centres in the world, and since last year Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, will be the …

Brazil itself is present everywhere at the Biennale with a posse of architects around the Pritzker Prize winners Niemeyer and da Rocha. Europe is poorly represented. Other parts of the world are largely absent, apart from South Africa, which presents…

The turnout for both days was somewhat disappointing. Were architects too busy working? Or were they enjoying a long Pentecost weekend? The room has only half filled, mainly with speakers, most of them architects attached to schools and architects fr…

Born? In 1954 in Zagreb, then part of Yugoslavia. Study? I studied architecture at the University of Zagreb. Like so many young architects I entered competitions after graduation, among them a competition to design a monument for a young guerrilla fi…

The story is familiar to everyone by now. Last year the volume of construction work in Peking equalled that in whole Europe; a skyscraper is completed every single day in Shanghai; and Chongqing numbers 31.7 inhabitants. Every well-intended study of …

The jury, Ian Gilzean, Hitoshi Abe (Atelier Hitoshi Abe, Tokai), Bridget Baines (GROSS. MAX. Edinburgh), Zvi Efrat (Efrat-Kowalsky, Tel Aviv) and Gilles Saucier (Saucier + Perrotte, Montreal) selected six project which received a prize.  A Prospectiv…

The tour, which lasts two years, started in Austria in 2004 with the presentation of eleven architecture firms and will finish with 99 participating offices. The Netherlands is the fifth country on the tour itinerary. The name given to the Dutch pres…