From the architects:

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was designed by Norman Foster in 1979. At the core of the project is the attempt to create a civic space, a piece of common ground for the city. Though the building’s design went through many variations – culminating in the final scheme, completed in 1985 – the common denominator throughout was a desire to create a public arena by lifting the building up to ensure a flow of pedestrian movement across the site. This covered space is lit naturally by an external “sunscoop”, which reflects sunlight down through the glazed “underbelly” of an atrium at the heart of the building. Through the medium of models, sketches, drawings, and photographs, this exhibition shows the evolution of the design of the space and the tower that defines it.

Curated by Alexander Ponomarev and Olilga Milentiy, the Ukraine Pavilion presents mobile museums projects under the concept of “Mirage Architecture”. The exhibition focuses on a conceptual design for a Museum of Contemporary Arts in the Antarctic.

“In order to build new Utopia, there is no need to raze the world. There are still places on Earth with clean, free spaces, offering room for cooperation and co-creation. On of these places is the Antarctic”, says Milentiy.

Learn the story behind the ukrainian pavilion after the break

Ensamble Studio

SPAINLab, the name of the exhibit, looks to expose the research process behind the works of contemporary Spanish Architects:

• RCR Arquitectes (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, Ramón Vilalta)
• Selgascano (Lucía Cano, José Selgas)
• Urban Habitat / Barcelona City Council (Vicente Guallart)
• SMAO — Sancho-Madridejos Archiecture Office (Sol Madridejos, Juan Carlos Sancho)
• Menis Arquitectos (Fernando Menis)
• Cloud 9 (Enric Ruiz-Geli)
• Ecosistema Urbano (Belinda Tato, José Luis Vallejo)

More photos about the pavilion and description from Anton and Débora after the break:

Vessel is a site-specific response to the theme of Common Ground – a wooden structure, composed of a stacked planks, that works in conversation with the layered brick construction of the Arsenale. Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey have created a contemplative space, hollowed out of solid matter, that is at once a light funnel, a lantern chamber, and a passage.

The Thailand Pavilion, titled “Common Collage”, presents 100 ideas that can provide people with a common ground. The exhibition, curated by Apiradee Kasemsook, Nuttinee Karnchanarporn and Tonkao Panin, presents 40 boxes of equal size, volume and weight. The boxes were designed by different Thai architecture firms, designers, lecturers and students. Each one intends to speak within its own logic.

See more pictures of the Thailand Pavilion after the break

Each year, two million Mexican residents take part in the Ruta del Peregrino (Pilgrim’s Route) – a 117 kilometer pilgrimage through the mountains range of Jalisco that is centered around the adoration to the Virgin of Talpa. This religious voyage has been taking place since the 17th century and represents the pilgrim’s act of faith carried to penitence. In an effort to provide the route with better conditions, nine architecture firms collaborated to build seven architectural landmarks that provide shelter, services and outlook points for the pilgrims.

The Master Plan, designed by Tatiana Bilbao, Derek Dellekamp and Rozana Montiel, was presented in a special exhibition to resonate with the Venice Biennale 2012 theme “Common Ground”.

The nine practices involved since the start of the project are Ai Weiwei (Fake Design), Luis Aldrete Arquitectos, Tatiana Bilbao, Christ & Gantenbein, Dellekamp Arquitectos, Alejandro Aravena (Elemental), Godoylab, HHF Architects, and Rozana Montiel (Periférica).

Read more about the route of the pilgrim and see more pictures after the break. 

After being nominated to represent Switzerland at the 2012 architecture biennale in Venice, architect and university professor Miroslav Šik decided to join forces with two other swiss firms -Knapkiewicz + Fickert from Zurich and Miller & Maranta from Basel- with whom he has been working together for many years. They have created what they call “an ensemble and atmosphere approach to urban architecture”, and decided to illustrate these concepts by putting together images of their own buildings and projects to create a collage-style exhibition.

See more pictures and read the architect’s description of the pavilion after the break: 

To celebrate the reopening of the newly restored Alvar Aalto Pavilion, they are highlighting the work of young Finnish architects who have made use of wood in their recent works.

ALA Architects have created an undulating overhang made of massive oak to welcome the visitor to Kilden, their Performing Arts Center in Kristiansand, Norway. Avanto Architects project their public sauna to be constructed out of wood in order to create an easy-going undulating building that is more part of the future coastal park than a conventional building.

With Alexander Eisenschmidt as curator, five chicago-based practices presented together “Team Chicago: City Works”. In our age of extreme urbanization, says Eisenschmidt, “architects have been placed in the critical predicament that calls for a new attitude towards the city that highlights its potentials, engages with its problems, and understands itself as a catalyst”.

Team Chicago believes that Chicago has been particularly receptive to this new attitude. In the exhibition, the five practices pursued the concept through the presentation of projects -both real and imagined.

Eisenschmidt itself presents Phantom Chicago Panorama, “where the city is recreated through unbuilt visionary projects across the twentieth century -from Adolf Loos’s Tribune Tower to Griffin’s Plan for a Better Chicago to Greg Lynn’s Stranded Sears Tower.

See more pictures of Team Chicago: City Works exhibition after the break.

The British Pavilion presents the work of ten architectural teams who travelled the world in search of imaginative responses to universal issues. Venice Takeaway charts their course in Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Thailand, and the USA, and demonstrates the creative potential of sharing ideas across borders.

The exhibition presents the work of more than twenty-six practicing architects, curators, academics, filmmakers, and writers who were selected by a scientific committee following an open call for ideas.

Jean Nouvel and Mia Hägg presented “Meetings Lines” at the Venice Biennale. For ‘Common Ground’ they decided to show their finalist project for the Slussen Masterplan competition, an ambitious urban design project that seeks to replace much of the degenerated water and transportation infrastructure in the heart of Stockholm. The project proposes three different public spaces, designed as living links for the city, inspired by infrastructure such as the Rialto Bridge in Venice.

More about the exhibit after the break.

Inhabitable Models presents the work of three practices -Eric Parry Architects, Haworth Tompkins, Lynch Architects- who find their common ground in an engagement with London, as a city of found fragments. Perhaps uniquely among world cities London exists as a series of largely unplanned, independent, layered fragments which nonetheless come together for a host of legal, political, and economic practicalities. In responding to this conception of London, each practice seeks to resist the temptation of “hallmark” architecture in favor of one which is contextually sensitive and rigorously place-specific. Indeed, the practices’ appreciation of the fragmentary and unplanned applies both to the London that they find, as well as to the London they leave behind.

In a time of rapid physical and digital connections the global phenomenon of tourism becomes more and more of a common activity. Tourism brings people from all over the world on a common ground giving them the opportunity to interact with a locality, places, and people. However, the conventional tourist entertainment character and the lack of local interaction alienate the notion of the common ground in most tourist destinations. Resorts, theme-parks, international hotel chains, global market icons, and city guides turned tourism into a travelling monopoly with global rules that are applicable everywhere. Common ground is at stake!

The pavilion was curated by Charis Christodoulou and Spyros Th. Spyrou.

Continuing our coverage of the Venice Biennale, London-based Farshid Moussavi’s installation at the Arsenale explored different experiences within everyday life and culture that are the result of architecture accepting certain “common grounds.” Entitled ‘Architecture and its Affects’, viewers were surrounded by changing projections of textures and patterns, structural configurations and facades, which were organized in such a manner as to highlight their affects, rather than their chronological existence or historical references.

More about Architecture and its Affects after the break.

From the curator Fang Zhenning:

“Originaire” is a word created to combine the meanings of “original” and “initial”. In the Chinese language, the character for “source” is specifically in the context of the water source. As such, we invoke the idea of “originaire” to seek the origin of memory and a mental image of the original world.

Five architects, artists, and designers were asked to create five installations from different perspectives to represent different interpretations of the meaning of “originaire”.

We visited “Migrating Landscapes”, the installation at the Canada pavilion for the 13th Venice Biennale. This exhibit has been organized and curated by Winnipeg- based 5468796 Architecture and Jae-Sung Chon, who joined together for this project to form the Migrating Landscapes Organizer (MLO). MLO invited, through a national competition, young Canadian architects and designers from a wide range of cultural and educational backgrounds to create scale models of ‘dwellings’ and accompanying videos that draw on cultural memories.

The installation uses pieces of unfinished wood in different sizes, a wooden landscape, where each of the participants “fit” their projects and a panel with a short video. A mix between the roughness of the wood, and the precision you can achieve with this material. My favorite? The Pickle House.

You can find more details about this exhibit in our previous article. More photos by ArchDaily after the break, and soon an interview with the curators!

Architects: Rojkind Arquitectos Location: Mexico City, Mexico Architects: Michel Rojkind, Gerardo Salinas Design Team: Alonso de la Fuente Obregón, Rafael Cedillo Sánchez, Phillip Schlauch, Birgit Hammer, Djurdja Milutinovic, Alfredo Hernández Soto, Rodrigo Medina, Juan Manuel Ortuño, David Stalin Vergara, Dolores Robles – Martínez Gómez,Isaac Smeke, Andrea León Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Courtesy of Guido Torres, Rojkind Arquitectos

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Architects: 1+1>2 Location: Tả Phìn, Sa Pa District, Lao Cai province, Vietnam Project Architects: Hoang Thuc Hao, Pham Duy Tung, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy Project Manager: Red Dream Project Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Courtesy of 1+1>2

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