SQUATTING AND MAINTAINING THE GERMAN PAVILION
The act of squatting and maintaining the German Pavilion starts with taking it over in its existing condition. Rather than dismantling Maria Eichhorn’s work Relocating a Structure, Germany’s contribution to the Biennale Arte 2022, the curators have actively engaged with the artist to incorporate her project into the Pavilion’s new design. By working with the Pavilion “as found,” the concept emphasizes the discursive, mate rial, and economic aspects of sustainability. In this way, Biennale Arte and Biennale Architettura are spatially and programmatically interwoven for the first time. The same guiding principle is applied across the entire project—the Pavilion’s exhibition itself will be realized entirely with leftover material from last year’s Biennale. A large number of national pavilions are lending support, making demolition material from their exhibitions available for reuse.
This integration of “spolia” from the Biennale Arte 2022 as part of a new material assemblage creates surprising new contexts of meaning and imparts unique cultural and creative value to the leftover materials. Open for Maintenance thus takes a creative angle toward the resource problem presented by biennales, which leave behind hundreds of tons of trash every year. The contribution’s practiceoriented approach opens up exciting modes of action and alternative design possibilities for architecture, contributing to its social renewal.
Open For Maintenance. Photograph by Arch+, Summacumfemmer and Büro Juliane Greb.
“FROM EXHIBITION TO HABITATION”
Tying into the subject by this year’s Biennale Architettura curator Lesley Lokko, The Laboratory of the Future, the German contribution understands the concept of the “laboratory” in a multifaceted way—including as a workshop in the literal sense. Inspired by Venetian urban activist Marco Baravalle’s slogan “From Exhibition to Habitation”, the project transforms a site of national representation into a place of communal every day practice. To accomplish this, all built interventions undertaken for the Pavilion are oriented toward local needs. The German Pavilion will become a productive infrastructure, promoting principles of circular construction in tandem with architecture’s social responsibility. It will serve to collect, catalogue, provision, and process used material from the Biennale Arte 2022. An onsite workshop will form the basis for various activist groups from Venice and beyond, as well as for universities to engage, through oneon interventions, with the maintenance of sociospatial structures.
Cleaning equipment in a corner of the Czech and Slovak Pavilion, December 2022.
PROGRAM
In addition to the question of resources, Open for Maintenance deals with questions of social and spatial inclusion in Venice. Hundreds of the city’s public housing units stand empty or in disrepair, while many inhabitants of the lagoon city can no longer afford to live there. Because of the commercialization of urban space through mass tourism, biennales, and the events industry, everyday life is disappearing, and with it go networks of social and material maintenance-oriented toward the common welfare. At the same time, this very circumstance has resulted in a variety of activist groups taking practical approaches to solve the problem. Open for Maintenance offers these actors a platform: for the entire duration of this year’s Biennale Architettura, they will have the opportunity to engage critically with the format of the Biennale and with architecture as a discipline through a series of workshops featuring interventions within the Pavilion as well as the urban space of Venice.
The workshop program, Maintenance 1:1, will be implemented in cooperation with StoStiftung and AITDialog as part of the series Venice Biennale Lab, hosting universities, vocational schools, and initiatives from Venice and beyond.
Throughout the course of the Biennale Architettura 2023, the GoetheInstitut will act as the German Pavilion’s programming partner, addressing further aspects of the curatorial concept through its program series Performing Architecture, which will feature artistic and performative projects on topics such as inclusion, care work, and urban practice.
Leftover material from the Chile Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022, Arsenale, December 2022.The act of squatting and maintaining the German Pavilion starts with taking it over in its existing condition. Rather than dismantling Maria Eichhorn’s work Relocating a Structure, Germany’s contribution to the Biennale Arte 2022, the curators have actively engaged with the artist to incorporate her project into the Pavilion’s new design. By working with the Pavilion “as found,” the concept emphasizes the discursive, mate rial, and economic aspects of sustainability. In this way, Biennale Arte and Biennale Architettura are spatially and programmatically interwoven for the first time. The same guiding principle is applied across the entire project—the Pavilion’s exhibition itself will be realized entirely with leftover material from last year’s Biennale. A large number of national pavilions are lending support, making demolition material from their exhibitions available for reuse.
This integration of “spolia” from the Biennale Arte 2022 as part of a new material assemblage creates surprising new contexts of meaning and imparts unique cultural and creative value to the leftover materials. Open for Maintenance thus takes a creative angle toward the resource problem presented by biennales, which leave behind hundreds of tons of trash every year. The contribution’s practiceoriented approach opens up exciting modes of action and alternative design possibilities for architecture, contributing to its social renewal.
Open For Maintenance. Photograph by Arch+, Summacumfemmer and Büro Juliane Greb.
“FROM EXHIBITION TO HABITATION”
Tying into the subject by this year’s Biennale Architettura curator Lesley Lokko, The Laboratory of the Future, the German contribution understands the concept of the “laboratory” in a multifaceted way—including as a workshop in the literal sense. Inspired by Venetian urban activist Marco Baravalle’s slogan “From Exhibition to Habitation”, the project transforms a site of national representation into a place of communal every day practice. To accomplish this, all built interventions undertaken for the Pavilion are oriented toward local needs. The German Pavilion will become a productive infrastructure, promoting principles of circular construction in tandem with architecture’s social responsibility. It will serve to collect, catalogue, provision, and process used material from the Biennale Arte 2022. An onsite workshop will form the basis for various activist groups from Venice and beyond, as well as for universities to engage, through oneon interventions, with the maintenance of sociospatial structures.
Cleaning equipment in a corner of the Czech and Slovak Pavilion, December 2022.
PROGRAM
In addition to the question of resources, Open for Maintenance deals with questions of social and spatial inclusion in Venice. Hundreds of the city’s public housing units stand empty or in disrepair, while many inhabitants of the lagoon city can no longer afford to live there. Because of the commercialization of urban space through mass tourism, biennales, and the events industry, everyday life is disappearing, and with it go networks of social and material maintenance-oriented toward the common welfare. At the same time, this very circumstance has resulted in a variety of activist groups taking practical approaches to solve the problem. Open for Maintenance offers these actors a platform: for the entire duration of this year’s Biennale Architettura, they will have the opportunity to engage critically with the format of the Biennale and with architecture as a discipline through a series of workshops featuring interventions within the Pavilion as well as the urban space of Venice.
The workshop program, Maintenance 1:1, will be implemented in cooperation with StoStiftung and AITDialog as part of the series Venice Biennale Lab, hosting universities, vocational schools, and initiatives from Venice and beyond.
Throughout the course of the Biennale Architettura 2023, the GoetheInstitut will act as the German Pavilion’s programming partner, addressing further aspects of the curatorial concept through its program series Performing Architecture, which will feature artistic and performative projects on topics such as inclusion, care work, and urban practice.
According to the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Building Cansel Kiziltepe, Open for Maintenance – Wegen Umbau geöffnet addresses a number of urgent questions related to planning and building: “Transformation and sustainability, in an overarching sense, are extremely relevant topics, especially in the building industry. This urgency is reflected in the intensive cooperation of so many exhibiting nations and local initiatives in Venice. I am thrilled that the 2023 German Pavilion will be presenting exciting approaches to solutions for the complex issues surrounding responsible, climate- and resource-preserving planning and build- ing for our global society.”
The German contribution to the Biennale Architettura 2023 adheres to principles of reuse and circularity that are resourceefficient but laborintensive. Achieving this requires the collaboration of a multitude of actors from civil society, researchers, and cultural producers. Without the support of sponsors and corporate partners, the project would not be possible in this form. First and foremost, we would like to thank the BMWSB and the BBSR for funding the project and for their very constructive support during the implementation. We are particularly grateful to our main sponsor, the Volkswagen Group, our corporate partners Albrecht Jung GmbH & Co. KG, Equitone, Hand schafft Wert GmbH, our supporters Agrob Buchtal GmbH, Heidehof Stiftung, our friends Euroboden Architekturkultur and New Tendency, as well as our program partners at the GoetheIn stitut and StoStiftung for their extraordinary support.
The Curatorial team (from left to right, top to bottom): Christian Hiller, Melissa Makele, Anne Femmer, Petter Krag, Juliane Greb, Anh-Linh Ngo, Franziska Gödicke, Florian Summa. Photograph by Jelka von Langen.
