In Venice, a biennial responsible architecture – Télérama.fr

The Chilean architect Alejandra Aravena, commissioner of the Venice Architecture Biennale, met his counterparts meet their social and political responsibilities in a more inspired exposure than are this year most of the national pavilions at the except Germany

at the Venice Biennale, that’s saying that they were waiting around the corner, the curator of the edition 2016: the still young Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. Good looks to Clooney, messy hair, crowned MOREOVER last year (at age 48!) Of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, is known for its half-houses to the poor while earning his living working for oil giants. Hardly appointed by the Biennale, he announced that he intended well overturn the tables of the architectural law, grand gestures and big egos. Both feet in his time in crisis, along with his theme “Reporting from the front” (news from the front) to architects meet their social responsibilities and policies: from now, they will have no choice but to be attentive, creative, relevant, frugal … and the Commissioner promise, bully, there would be a before and an after in 2016 Venice.

to visit the huge halls of the impressive rope Arsenal or the central pavilion of the Giardini where Alejandro Aravena presents the work of a good forty of his counterparts around the world, we must recognize that its promise, and rather well. From the outset, in a plasterboard decor and aluminum rails recovered from the previous edition, a keyword avalanche sets the mood: peripheries, migration, pollution, natural disasters, quality of life, sustainability, habitats, insecurity, re …

The French pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2016
 

Photo: Sophie Scher

Of course, all those who pride themselves more or less architecture can deplore (and in the aisles, some do not deny) that number of projects submitted are neither very new nor really unknown. Indeed, we find here the most professional of the responsible architecture that Télérama touting for years: Chinese Wang Shu champion reuse of demolition materials, the Colombian Simon Velez, ace bamboo, Burkinabe Francis Kere, magician of land and rebar, and many others already noticed since 2005 by the excellent Global awards for sustainable design co-piloted by the City of architecture in Paris. Yes, but their exposure here in Venice, gives them an international resonance that can only further the cause …

There remain the national pavilions or countries expose their own response to the theme of the biennial. With unequal happiness. What got the Italians who offer us a trip Noddy the country’s sustainable development and good conscience? As for the Chinese, under the pretext of rediscovering the virtues of ancestral knowledge peasant (shown how museum 60s), they legitimize the demolition and reconstruction of the hutongs (traditional neighborhoods) in order to make fashion boutiques and design …

And France? Orchestrated by Frédéric Bonnet, Grand urban prices, and the young winners of the award-winning AJAP last year by the Ministry of Culture, the French flag attacks a face we know well a Télérama : the lousy France, suburban, towns entries centers towns and villages battered by the time. Using examples of transactions both very modest and exemplary hexagonal team suggests that with generosity, intelligence, listening, and the expertise of architects are true professionals of the organization, even the worst can be repaired. With a catch: knowing that the average visitor to the Biennale goes to the best 10 minutes in a pavilion (and even at this rate, it has for two days), not sure he is in pretty pale images of our peripheries cure the urge to take the time to understand.

Models presented within the French pavilion.
 

Photo: Sophie Scher

There is finally Germany that rocks the house. Literally. To signify the porous borders and the cities that are growing and seeing their population to renew itself, the Germans bluntly broke the walls of their flag. That speaks net.