13th Architecture Biennale Venice – Live and Green, UK.

Venice Takeaway. Ideas to change British Architecture. Ten architectural teams were sent on a discovery tour to come up with responses to contemporary issues. Their research did not just stop in Great Britain, it took them all over the world, embracing the Biennale brief: Common Ground.



Curated by Vanessa Norwood and Vicky Richardson, the British Pavilion explores imaginative responses to universal issues in contemporary architecture: from designing schools through to the awareness of urban planning risks. The exhibition stresses the importance of understanding the architectural context and showcases the fact that architecture is as much about observation and thinking as it is about building and designing.





Not surprisingly, the various teams also included other professional figures – academics, filmmakers, writers.



The results are exhibited in two sections: a “research emporium” that presents the results of the participants’ research and a second part with installations and objects presenting their proposals for Great Britain.



This gives visitors a look at a broad spectrum of studies that take in a very wide variety of places: Rio de Janeiro, the Dutch floating community in the Netherlands, Belfast, which all share a common denominator: the importance of research, of looking outside the box. Or to quote one of the participating firms, dRMM: “Research can be a combination of curiosity, conjecture, discovery, cataloguing and experimentation”.



The perfect ingredients for architecture in the new millennium.


13th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice
Dates: 29th August to 25th November 2012.
British Pavilion

Captions (Fotografie: Cristiano Corte):
British Pavilion – Venice Takeaway: Ideas to Change British Architecture

Venice Takeaway Research Emporium: Global Research Map 
Darryl Chen
 Along the High Street in the Working Village Scroll & New [Socialist] Village, 
propaganda booklet by Darryl Chen

Public Works, Urban Projects Bureau and Owen Pritchard
 Installation: The Image of the Architect – An Open Charter

Takero Shimazaki / Toh Shimazaki Architecture, Installation: People, Nature and Place

Swan swimming amongst waterhouses, IJburg, Waterbuurt West, Amsterdam, dRMM