Back To Basics: 5 Standout Biennale di Venezia Installs

Biennale di Venezia installations riff on the fundamental.

1. Firm: Gonzalo Puga
Project: Monolith Controversies.
Curators: Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola.
Standout: Socialist housing developments in Chile were built with prefab concrete panels such as this 1972 example, front and center at the country’s pavilion.

2. Firm: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Project: Moskva: Urban Space.
Curators: Sergey Kuznetsov
Standout: This test run for Moscow’s forthcoming Zar-yadye Park experiments with concrete benches heated or cooled with the help of embedded capillary tubes.

3. Firm: Bekkering Adams Architecten
Project: Form/ContraForm.
Curators: Rem Koolhaas.
Standout: Small spheres in painted foam, suspended on wire, form an 8-foot cube punctuated by a narrow pathway through which visitors can walk.

4. Firm: Hiroshi Sugimoto
Project: Glass Tea House Mondrian.
Curators: So-oku Sen.
Standout: Traditional Japanese tea ceremonies for two, plus the tea master, are staged in a cube poised above a reflecting pool lined with mosaic tile.

5. Firm: WTA Architecture + Design Studio
Project: Fragments.
Curators: Karlyn de Jongh.
Standout: For the Philippines’s “Biennale” debut, balsa models of various Manila neighborhoods are displayed on the top of acrylic pedestals.