Weaving Architecture by Benedetta Tagliabue Architect, Venice Architecture Biennale Installation
Weaving Architecture by Benedetta Tagliabue 2018
Immersive Architecture Exhibition in Italy – Curators, Dates, News
25 May 2018
Weaving Architecture by Benedetta Tagliabue at Venice Biennale 2018
Installation by Architect Benedetta Tagliabue at 16th International Architecture Exhibition
From May 26th until November 25th, 2018
Le Corderie dell’Arsenale di Venezia Space 1.47 Venice 30122, Italy
Benedetta Tagliabue – Miralles Tagliabue EMBT participates at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, with the installation Weaving Architecture.
71 architects from all over the world were invited to respond to the Manifesto written by the curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, in order to reveal, to lay bare, the FREESPACE ingredient embedded in their work.
In response to this invitation for the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Benedetta Tagliabue – Miralles Tagliabue EMBT participates with an installation entitled ‘Weaving Architecture’, located in Le Corderie dell’Arsenale.
The Exhibition opens to the public on Saturday 26th of May and runs until Sunday 25th of November 2018.
A free space is a well woven space
Weaving Architecture summarises a way of thinking stemming from Benedetta Tagliabue and EMBT’s experimental work through the years, starting with the wicker Spanish Pavilion of Expo 2010 Shanghai.
Progressing now in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil (in the outskirts of Paris) with the design of a metro station (part of the Grand Paris Express ), a marketplace, an urban renewal, which will be built with fibers, a delicate material resistant through time and climate.
Weaving Architecture , here in La Biennale, deals with the concept of weaving at different scales: weaving the city through its metro, weaving activities of people in the public space, weaving the structure of the canopy to dress it with fiber fabrics.
The canopy provides protection and shade, creating a comfortable, semi-open space for various communal activities. Its colourful nature expresses the spirit of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil by recalling patterns of African traditional clothing as well as local graffiti – an artwork owned by the people.
This architecture, like the infrastructure it represents, links territories and builds a sense of social inclusion by manifesting architecture’s social role.
The Grand Paris Express
Currently Grand Paris Express is Europe’s largest infrastructure and development project: 200 km of automatic metro lines and 68 new stations to build, which integrates metro networks, trains and airports. With a scale of this venture, the project is not only a technical and architectural opportunity but also an economic, social and cultural challenge that will make these stations and their neighbourhoods better places to live.
Implementation of Grand Paris Express will strengthen the attractiveness of the region to promote equality within the territories of the metropolis. For millions of users, it will create changes not only in their transport but their territory.
More of 40 teams from around the world are working to imagine the transport of tomorrow, a question of contributing to future culture that belongs to everybody in Grand Paris.
Poetic woven architecture features sustainable red oak
The poetic structure presented in Venice is composed by various elements intertwined in two levels. The higher level is built with American red oak modules and the lower one with steel modules; and both are woven with fibre glass thread of different colours, which softens the visual effect and blurs the boundaries created by the structure.
“Red oak not only has a minimal carbon footprint but is also truly sustainable”, explained AHEC’s European Director, David Venables. ‘The American hardwood forest, which occupies about 120 million hectares of the United States, has been well managed by successive generations of small landowners. Trees are selectively harvested and replaced through natural regeneration. The timber grows at a much higher pace than it is extracted and the forest increases by 401 hectares each year – the equivalent of a football pitch every minute.”
The red oak components of Weaving Architecture have been fabricated in Madrid by the craftsmen at Intrama, a workshop with more than 30 years of experience in the field of architectural carpentry.
Antonio Arce, Director of Intrama says “We have been using red oak since the 80s, for some major projects such as the joinery of the Spanish Parliament. It is a species we like to work with because it is very noble, has a great look and is easy to work with.’ And he adds, “In this project Benedetta decided to use a very natural oil to finish the timber in order to highlight the wonderful grain of the red oak.”
Future engineering on a real scale
The project, which consists of a long and deeper research on the pattern, refers to the signs and the iconographies of Africa through a mix of plots, twists and natural and artificial colours, overlying lights, shadows and radiances.
The use of non-flammable and long lasting fibers, as identifying and iconic matrix, gives a primary role to the black of the carbon, the white of the glass, the radiance of the basalt, the orange of the coloured Kevlar.
I-MESH – multifaceted, multifunctional thread that becomes a texture, a new material, a technical fabric that is fluid, tactile, versatile – confirms itself as art object and project, architecture, design – able to decipher the shape, the consciousness and the meaning of the public space.
A material which has been borrowed from the performance world and reconverted, able to adapt its language to the different expressive needs – in one moment linked to minimalism and in another to decorum – to develop the contemporary infinity contained in a thread.
Location: Le Corderie dell’Arsenale di Venezia Space 1.47
EMBT collaborators: Elena Nedelcu, Nazaret Busto Rodríguez, Ana Otelea, Arturo Mc Clean, Lin Lap, Giorgia Mazzeo, Vanessa Mingozzi, Andrea Grigoletto, Lluc Miralles, Paola Buselli.
Special thanks to: Fonds de dotation du Grand Paris Express, Société du Grand Paris, Ministerio de Fomento de España, American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), Institut Ramón Llull.
With the additional support of: Studio Iorio, I-Mesh, Intrama, Estmart, Marcotran, Tagi 2000, Tappezzeria Lallo, Artiser.
Social Media
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Enric Miralles Architect
Location: Giardini della Biennale, Castello 1260, 30122 Venezi, Italia
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