The 2016 edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, entitled Reporting from the Front, was curated by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, recipient of the 2016 Pritzker Prize, and will focus on “sharing with a broader audience, the work of people who are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, (...) informality (...) and the participation of communities.”
Play for Real
51N4E’s participation, entitled Play for Real, will be exhibited in the Corderie of the Arsenale and will revolve around TID Tower, the largest architectural project ever launched in Albania, that will —finally— open this spring. The installation will go beyond the icon by using the project as an entry point to introduce the viewers to the Albanian context and to 51N4E’s long term involvement in this country since it won the TID Tower competition in 2004. The installation combines a large scale model with a movie and a publication which will function as an introduction to the city of Tirana, as well as to the numerous projects that emerged in the wake of the tower. Those projects have become one big story on development and on the challenges of shaping a society in transition.
Overall, the installation accounts for this shared endeavour —through building, dialogue and reflection— that aims at making the most out of Albania’s assets and deal with the huge potential that lies therein.
51N4E at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale
Corderie, Arsenale
28 May – 27 November 2016
How Things Meet
The publication that accompanies the installation is entitled How Things Meet. It is a dual-narrative, part photo-novel, part real-life journey, telling one story in multiple ways.
In its first part, the book couples short stories by Falma Fshazi with photographs by Stefano Graziani. The story of a discovery; an encounter with a strange land, beyond East and West, and a city, Tirana.
The second part casts a retrospective look at the construction of a tower designed by 51N4E, and on all the projects that followed in its wake, from 2004 onwards. It describes moments, processes and relationships that allowed the architects to come into contact with a culture and a context so different from their own. Overall, this book is a story of embracing otherness, and a contemplation on how things meet.
How Things Meet will be launched in multiple events during the opening days of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Conversation on How Things Meet
Freek Persyn & Johan Anrys of 51N4E will give a presentation of the office’s new publication, entitled How Things Meet, as an introduction to a conversation with Falma Fshazi (author and director of the Center for Openness and Dialogue in Tirana), Andreas Ruby (architecture critic, curator, publisher and teacher, director of the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel) and the public about the Albanian context, and how to engage with it and learn from it. Friday 27th May 2016 - 2pm
Albanian Pavilion - Arsenale
Debate / Books on architecture from Flanders and Brussels
There is a continuous stream of books on architecture which are published in Flanders and Brussels. During the opening of the Biennale Architettura the pop-up salon in the Belgian pavilion is the venue of a promenade conversation with authors and contributors of recent books and magazines.
Along with other Belgian architects like devylder vinck taillieu and Office KGDVS, 51N4E will engage in a conversation with Christoph Grafe (Flanders Architecture Institute) and Pieter T’Jonck (A+ magazine). Friday 27th May 2016 - 4:30pm
Belgian Pavilion - Giardini
Reporting from the Front
15th Venice Architecture Biennale
Arsenale
Campo della Tana 2169/S
30122 Venezia http://www.labiennale.org
51N4E's participation to the Venice Architecture Biennale was generously supported by: