British Pavilion Venice, muf, Villa Frankenstein, Architect, Photo, Design, Installation, News

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Venice Biennale British Pavilion - design by muf architecture/art

14 Jul 2010 COLLABORATIONS ANNOUNCED FOR BRITISH PAVILION AT 12TH VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE The British Council announce a series of collaborations for the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale under the artistic direction of London based practice, muf architecture/art Llp. The Biennale will run from 29 Aug - 21 Nov 2010. British Pavilion photo © John Riddy The British Pavilion has been developed by muf as a series of ‘Made in Venice’ collaborations:   The Lagoon Room Collaborators: Environmental scientist, Jane da Mosto; life scientist, Lorenzo Bonometto; Venice Natural History Museum; Venice in Peril; Cambridge University.   Two Way Traffic Collaborators: Artist-philosopher Wolfgang Scheppe; cultural historian Robert Hewison; Ruskin Library.   The Stadium of Close Looking Collaborators: Specialist gondola builders, Spazio Legno; Venice based artists collective, ReBiennale.   The Child in the City/The Schools of Venice Collaborator: artist Lottie Child, working with the teachers and pupils of the schools of Venice.    MUF photo © Phil Sharp 2010 The Pavilion, which has been ironically reframed as Villa Frankenstein, making direct reference to the work of John Ruskin, will act as a stage for drawing, discussion and scientific enquiry. It will put forward the proposition that meaningful strategies for development can only come from understanding a place in detail.   Villa Frankenstein will enable an exchange of ideas between Venice and the UK, examining not only the city’s relationship with the UK, but the situation of Venice itself as archipelago and sinking man-made city, a series of mud banks that have given birth to one of the most iconic and alluring architectures in the world.   Debates, workshops, drawing classes and scientific discussions will take place during the three months of the Biennale, which will lead to a catalogue, edited by Adrian Dannatt, to be published in three chapters across the period of the Biennale, acting as a further creative platform to inform thinking for London, as it moves towards 2012.   Vicky Richardson, Director of Architecture, Fashion and Design, said: “Responding to Sejima’s call for an architecture grounded in its use by people, muf’s approach to the British Pavilion blurs the boundaries between the exhibit and the city, moving Venice into the Pavilion and taking the Pavilion out into the surrounding areas, creating a long-term relationship with the city and its people and informing our future work in the UK.“   Liza Fior, Founding Partner, muf architecture/art Llp, said: “From John Ruskin and the Stones of Venice to Ralph Rumney, the only British founding member of the Situationist International, the British have been obsessed with Venice and in different ways have taken Venice home. This two-way traffic of ideas, knowledge and experience has left its mark on both archipelagoes. Through Villa Frankenstein, we hope to explore and showcase the methodology behind our work, making multi-purpose public spaces that negotiate between the needs of different communities.” About the team Vicky Richardson, Commissioner, British Pavilion Vicky Richardson was appointed Director of Architecture, Fashion and Design at the British Council in March 2010. Previously she had worked as an architecture and design journalist and moved to the British Council from her position as editor of leading architecture and design magazine Blueprint. Having studied fine art at Central St Martins and Chelsea School of Art and Design, she went on to gain a BA in architecture at the University of Westminster. Her book New Vernacular Architecture was published in 2001 by Laurence King Publishing. Richardson was previously deputy editor of RIBA Journal and editor of Public Service and Local Government magazine. She became editor of Blueprint in March 2004. In 2007 she was shortlisted for Editor of the Year by the Periodical Publishing Association. She is a trustee of the educational charity, the Campaign for Drawing and a member of London Mayor Boris Johnson's Cultural Strategy Group   muf architecture/art Llp, Artistic Director, British Pavilion muf was established in London in 1995. The practice has an international reputation for its site-specific research driven public projects, which negotiate between the built and social fabric; between public and private spaces. Current projects are predominantly focused in East London around the approaches and margins of the olympic site, but not exclusively so. Projects range from urban design schemes to temporary interventions, landscapes and buildings.  Awards for muf projects include the 2008 European Prize for Public Space (the first UK winner) for a new 'town square' in Barking, East London. Publications include This is What We Do: a muf manual, the partners are visiting professors at Yale where their last studio explored alternative legacies for London’s Olympic site. muf Lottie Child Lottie Child is an artist based in London. She constructs situations that defy the traditional context of museum and gallery environments, focusing on behaviour in urban places. For the last ten years she has been developing her practise of ‘Street Training’ a form of extended research and performative intervention. Through Street Training, she explores how we use public space in creative, playful and sometimes subversive ways. She trains performers, police, planners and architects in the playful shaping of the streets at the social level. She often apprentices herself to young people because of their heightened skills in seeing opportunities for creativity and boundary pushing. She is a lecturer at the University of the Arts, exhibits internationally and has shown at Tate Britain, the ICA, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Kiasma Helsinki, was a recipient of a Brazil Links British Council research award. She has established Street Training teams at the Centre for the Urban Built Environment Manchester, Camberwell, with the South London Gallery and at the UNICENTRO University Guarapuava in Brazil.   Lorenzo Bonometto Born in Venice, Lorenzo is an expert in the life sciences with special emphasis on coastal and lagoon environments. President of the Società Veneziana di Scienze Naturali, he was founder and director of the Centro di Educazione Naturalistica Ambientale at the Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia. He also works as a consultant for the Ministry of the Environment and Venice Town Council and a lecturer in Applied Ecology at IUAV. Author of numerous technical reports, scientific and educational publications, he is a consultant on environmental restoration projects in lagoon and coastal areas.   The Ruskin Library Opened in 1998 with Heritage Lottery Fund support, the Library houses the largest collection of archive material relating to John Ruskin (1819-1900), the leading cultural figure of the Victorian era, now in the care of the Ruskin Foundation. Ruskin’s significance as a pioneer of conservation and ecological issues continues to be appreciated over a century after his death, as are his perceptive commentaries on social and economic issues, through seminal writings such as Unto This Last (1862), an influential critique of self-centred capitalism.  Also in the Library are most of the thousands of drawings and watercolours made in preparation for The Stones of Venice (1851-53), a three-volume study of the city’s Gothic architecture and early Renaissance painting.  The notebooks, detailed studies and preparatory drawings for the book (available in digital form on the Library’s website) were an important inspiration for Liza Fior and Wolfgang Scheppe in framing the theme and content of the British Pavilion.   Robert Hewison Robert is recognised as an authority on the work of John Ruskin. He published his first book on Ruskin in 1976, and in 1978 curated the exhibition Ruskin and Venice for the J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. This exhibition was the beginning of a lifelong study of Ruskin’s relationship with Venice, which culminated in January 2010 with the publication of Ruskin on Venice: ‘The Paradise of Cities’ by Yale University Press. Robert is a former Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University, and is currently Professor of Cultural Policy and Leadership Studies, City University London. He has published widely on 20th century British cultural history, and has written on the Arts for the London Sunday Times since 1981. He is an Associate of the think tank Demos.   Wolfgang Scheppe Wolfgang is a German artist-philosopher, curator and creative director who lives and works in Venice. He is currently working on relating two obsessive archives of Venice in a conceptual work entitled "Done.Book". The archives are the previously unseen documentary photographs taken since the 1960s by a local resident of a working class area of the city, and selected pages from John Ruskin’s notebooks. Both bear testimony of optimism towards the cognitive means of the image and a moral commitment towards representing the city. Other recent work includes a major multi-media project on globalised Venice at the Fondazione Bevilacqua, and an award-winning two volume book-sculpture entitled Migropolis, which captures the cultural, social, political and economic developments of the city in thousands of photographs, essays and interviews, as well as statistics, motion profiles, graphs and diagrams. Wolfgang also teaches at the School of Architecture, Art and Design in Venice (IUAV). Jane da Mosto Jane is an environmental scientist (MA, Oxford University, MSc Imperial College) and international consultant on sustainable development. Since 2001, she has been working with Venice in Peril and Cambridge University to develop an independent platform for examining scientific information concerning the current state and future of Venice in a clear, interdisciplinary and comprehensive framework. Other research areas include new economic valuation methodologies, indicators for sustainable development, and, broadly, the integration of different branches of knowledge with different degrees of uncertainty to overcome complexity and characterise urgent issues, especially climate change.   Venice In Peril For over 40 years, the Venice in Peril Fund has disbursed millions of pounds for the restoration of Venetian monuments, buildings and works of art. Venice is a city facing a range of threats, and Venice In Peril finances essential studies and publications into issues such as the rising water level, industrial pollution, tourism management and transport, and demographics and employment. ReBiennale ReBiennale is an international network based in Venice of activists, collectives, architects, students, artists, writers, and technicians who share knowledge, methods and expertise in the process of recycling, self build and their understanding of regeneration / the productive reclaiming of communal spaces. It is a project born in 2008 from the experimentation by a group of Venetian activists who began to recover the discarded materials from the Art and Architecture Biennales, with the aim of giving them a new life and to promote the processes of environmental, economical and socialsustainability as well as the re-possession of the city, its resources and its territory. Spazio Legno Spazio Legno was founded in 1980 to continue the tradition and craft of the marangòni (the carpenters of the Serenissima Republic) and the remèri (specialists in gondolas and oars). The Spazio Legno craftsmen are now recognised as being among the finest in Venice, as demonstrated by the numerous articles published about their work in architectural, interior design and craft magazines. The marangòni of Spazio Legno make furniture and made-to-measure interiors in solid or veneered wood, as well as specially designed doors and windows, roof terraces, stands for trade fairs and exhibitions. The remèri produce oars and forcole for Venetian rowing, masts and spars for the vela al terzo (small, traditional sailing boats), and oars for fixed-seated rowing. They are suppliers to the Comune di Venezia, and are building the Stadium of Close Looking for the British Pavilion. Venice Biennale British Pavilion images / information received Jul 2010

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