The Spain Pavilion, becoming at Freespace, 2018 Architecture Biennale

becoming is the title of the Spanish representation at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. This year's Spain Pavilion in the Giardini has been extended with a small garden area, as well as a virtual pavilion, with the aim of widening the cultural offer.


During the Venice Architecture Biennale preview, we visited the Spain Pavilion located at the entrance of the Biennale Giardini, and which won the last edition's Leone d’Oro with Unfinished (link). 
Whereas two years ago architects Carlos Quintáns and Iñaqui Carnicero explored the reinvented architecture of the housing crisis, now the Spanish Pavilion opens its doors to the actions, discourses and output of architecture students, developed between 2012 and 2017. Because the curator Atxu Amann and the team of four co-curators, Maria Mallo, Gonzalo Pardo, Andrés Cánovas, Nicolás Maruri, selected 143 proposals, beginning with an open call based on 55 adjectives, the same ones that act as indicators on the dedicated website.
The contributions from schools and faculties provide diverse responses and thoughts about architecture that are exhibited in the Spanish pavilion during the 2018 Architecture Biennale. They also include input from architects known to our readers, such as Mauro Gil-Fournier.
The pavilion layout leaves plenty of free space to move around because the proposals take the form of a kind of collage of posters and works on the walls. Obviously, you can't read everything but it's a symbolic action. These ideas and projects are replicated and expanded in the virtual pavilion, a repository for the entire content of the actual pavilion that defends learning environments as places of criticism and architectural creation.
A very attractive and new feature of becoming is the extension of the space to the small abandoned garden at the end of the pavilion where the project that won the call, (in)temporary garden is located. The idea reclaims this abandoned space, recognising its character as a spontaneous garden where visitors can also contribute by planting seed balls. At the end of the Biennale, the pavilion will again be left to its own devices, but the garden will stay and continue to grow and evolve independently until we rediscover it in the next Biennale. 
A second initiative, also outside, completes the pavilion. The textile installation, Come-In aims at engaging directly with the idea of becoming proposed by the curatorial team. It takes the form of a temporary initiative with an 8-metre high tent made of metal links that creates the adjectives defining the projects inside the pavilion. The words seem to float thanks to the colours chosen, which blend perfectly into the palette of the Biennale Giardini.
The Spain Pavilion is part of a wider context since the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, all on this side of the avenue, have joined forces this year through another open call.  Out of the Box Celebration called for proposals for the space between these three pavilions. The winner - Europa installation - was selected from more than 100 ideas. Submitted by Belgian students, it proposes breaking down the barriers between countries and pavilions. This also led to a joint opening ceremony as well as a dazzling Europarty held by the three countries during the preview. As the saying goes:  “All good things come in threes”!

Christiane Bürklein

26 May to 23 November 2018
Commissioner: Ministerio de Fomento AECID, Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo-Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación AC/E, Acción Cultural Española
Curator: Atxu Amann
Co-curators: Maria Mallo, Gonzalo Pardo, Andrés Cánovas, Nicolás Maruri
Exhibitors: Students and architects from Spanish learning environments
Images: ImagenSubliminal (Miguel de Guzman), Ana Matos, Ocamica Tudanca
Find out more: http://b-e-c-o-m-i-n-g.com/