For the 19th edition of the International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the agency Jakob+MacFarlane, in collaboration with Martin Duplantier and Eric Daniel-Lacombe, has designed a poetic off-site installation using the scaffolding surrounding the French Pavilion, which is under renovation and inaccessible to the public.
Titled “Vivre avec” (Living with), it hosts an exhibition in six parts that explores the capacity of architecture to address current challenges and opens its doors this Saturday, May 10.
© Jakob+MacFarlane/Eric Daniel Lacombe/Martin Duplantier
For the first time, the French exhibition is not taking place within the neoclassical colonnaded Pavilion, built in 1912 by a Venetian municipal engineer for France. Closed for renovation work, including energy upgrades, the usual exhibition space is currently inaccessible to the public. Jakob+MacFarlane, Martin Duplantier, and Eric Daniel-Lacombe have instead imagined a temporary structure, directly attached to the scaffolding of the construction site, from which it borrows its constructive principle.
The installation unfolds in branches at the heart of the site, in an approach of gentle integration with the environment, thus transforming the construction site into an architectural and scenographic experience. The occupied space extends to the edge of the Giardini canal and highlights the wooded area located south of the pavilion. The project uses lightweight reusable materials and offers a surface area equivalent to the existing Pavilion. Over two levels, it provides unlimited possibilities for the installation of panels and exhibition systems and guides the visitor towards the canal, through the undergrowth.
© Jakob+MacFarlane/Eric Daniel Lacombe/Martin Duplantier
© Schnepp Renou
Designed as an “inclusive shelter,” this new ephemeral pavilion hosts a thematic exhibition that explores the concept of “Living with…: the existing; proximities; the damaged; vulnerabilities; nature and the living; united intelligences.” Fifty French and international projects have been selected to respond to each axis of inquiry.
It also houses an “atlas of hazards” designed by 8 French and international architecture schools (United States, Ukraine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Togo). Each school provided research work on a major risk inspired by the issues specific to the geographical conditions of their location: fires in California, floods in France, heatwaves in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, submersion in Togo, and destruction in Ukraine. Each contribution highlights the role of architecture in risk management.
A rich and transversal proposal to discover this weekend!
© Jakob+MacFarlane/Eric Daniel Lacombe/Martin Duplantier
Emilie Bloch
