The opening of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia unveiled the collaborative site specific environment of the Croatian Pavilion, curated by architect Bruno Juričić. The installation, that crosses the boundaries of architecture, art, engineering, robotic fabrication and computational models, won the favor of the public, by inviting to reflect on hospitality and climate change and shaping a new paradigm for architecture in the 21st century.
The Mediterranean sea is a region full of history and past, of great conquests and culture. But is this a place we can picture our future in? Cloud Pergola / The Architecture of Hospitality, the Croatian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, surprised visitors with a exhibition curated and authored by architect Bruno Juričić, by transforming a classic mediterranean typology, the pergola, into an uncommon and futuristic forest of lattice trees.
A winning bet, that has brought Bruno Juričić and the artists involved in the project to re-think the way we look at hospitality, climate change and sociability. The Croatian Pavilion brought together visionary companies -Arup and Ai-Build- and advanced designers and innovation-oriented architects -Alisa Andrašek and Bruno Juričić- to envision new synergies between academic research, architectural practice and cutting-edge digital fabrication.
Structured through the interplay of different interventions, Cloud Pergola is the collaborative site-specific environment that remaps a unique experience, essential to the Mediterranean region: the pergola, a space where the private and the public merge, an elementary and vernacular structure that possesses a vivid significance, being both a shelter from the sun and a socially charged space. If the pergola is a space where the man-made and the natural can’t be separated, who made what here?
The use of 3D generative modeling techniques invites visitors to reflect on the future of architecture and on the interplay between man and machine, human and artificial intelligence, while still offering a warm and cozy space: a more utopian vision of what could be next, a FREESPACE where visitors are invited to sit and converse, overcoming the traditional aseptic rendition of the future.
Cloud Pergola / The Architecture of Hospitality is composed by Cloud Drawing -the main installation of the pavilion, curated by architects Alisa Andrasek and Bruno Juričićthat in fact re-designs the relationship between the natural world and human intervention by mathematically capturing clouds formation, while simultaneously integrating site-specific environmental data into a synthesis of form, figure, posture, tectonics, porosity, and light effect.
Formed of 300 kilograms of 3D printed bio-degradable plastic, the pavilion cloud-like structure is formed of voxels oriented along a field of vectors generated by a set of fluid forces designed by the architect. Arup provided structural guidance throughout all phases of the design in the definition of the voxels and in the analysis of the complex structure made of more than 100,000 extruded elements.
Arup collaborated with the 3D manufacturing team of Ai-Build to develop a simple assembly sequence for the complex and delicate piece which is meant to be touring various exhibition spaces after its passage at the Venice Biennale 2018. Under the cloud, a wall-based work by Vlatka Horvat is hosted: in To Still the Eye the visual artist explores the notion of horizon as a physical manifestation of distance and as a metaphor for the future, wanting to address this sense of possibility.
In the background, so as to create an immersive environment, transdisciplinary artist Maja Kuzmanović proposes an audio installation titled Ephemeral Garden that evokes the sense of convivial gatherings under a pergola. The murmur of conversation, complemented with the sound of animate matter, produces a space where human and non-human voices intermingle. Source by image.
- Location: Corderie, Venezia, Italy
- Curator and exhibition author: Bruno Juričić
- Curatorial advisor: Branka Benčić
- Exhibitors: Alisa Andrašek, Vlatka Horvat, Bruno Juričić, Maja Kuzmanović
- Commissioner: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
- Organization: Moderna galerija – National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
- Date: until 25 November 2018
- Photographs: Jan Stojkovic Courtesy of image