1996 Venice Biennale - Reciprocity: Emerging Territories in Canadian Architecture
Selected project, group exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion, VIth international architecture exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 15 september - 17 november 1996.
Group exhibition at the Design Exchange, Toronto, Canada, 20 february - 12 march 1995.
With the theme of, “Reciprocity: Emerging Territories in Canadian Architecture,” this National Ideas Competition would permit to select sixteen winning projects with the mandate to represent young Canadian architecture during the 1995 Venice Biennale International Exhibition of Architecture. It consisted of designing a conceptual project for a Canadian pavilion of architecture in Venice (at least 800m3) that would house an architectural exhibition. Participants were to collaborate with a representative from an exterior discipline (visual arts, dance, philosophy, history, biology, computer science, literature, environmental science, etc.). The projects elaborated should therefore suggest, in images and in writing, a particular vision of the notion of reciprocity between architecture and other disciplines.The sixteen winning projects were presented during the Biennale of 1996 in conjunction with an exhibition dedicated to the work of Patkau Architects.
Project team: Thierry Beaudoin, Roberto DeMarco, Pierre Gendron, Philippe Paré, Francis Novak.
Press reviews:
La Presse 25 march 1995
The Globe & Mail 5 november 1994 (p. A-11)
Le Devoir 5 november 1994 (p.D-12)
Related links: Canadian Competition Catalogue
TRACK 1
The starting point for our proposal is to imagine an invisible line that crosses Venice. Three points along the line break the city into fragments. Each point is unique because of the way in which Venice exposes it. Each of the three fragments of the city is unique because of the particular way in which the pavilion located there influences and describes it. Thus, Track 1 is the result of the superimposition of two distinct systems and their reciprocal relations.
Mega scale
The bridge as an element of speed; it is extended over the organic fabric of Venice. The extension (axis) over the Grand Canal (fluid): a creation of intersections.
Metro scale
The intersections become places of transgression. Each stage, each platform provides an opportunity to transgress boundaries (water). The particularities of the intersections generate each stage.
To know Venice is to dream that fragment of space and place fit together in a free overlay of memories. In this dream, the reality of Venice, like all other cities, is at last perceived as incomplete.
Competition panel
Stage 1: Arrival / Departure
Leaving the train station, the first stage is an introduction to Venice and to the following stages.
Stage 2: Bridge
The second stage is a bridge that appropriates the boundaries of the canal and a broad terrace (exhibit space)
Stage 3: Observation quay
The third stage is comprised of an exhibit platform, and walkways that start at the edge of the Royal Gardens and project over the water (frontier).
Final stage
-Arrival / Departure-Bridge-Observation quay (unification)
The cognitive construction is made by the urban flâneur after the experience of the three stages. The new frontier of the architectural territory can be realized in other cognitive or physical spaces.