Australia’s presence at the Biennale is a major project of the Australian Institute of Architects. The Institute has supported the 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012 Biennales, and is committed to ensuring Australia’s involvement at the 2014 and 2016 Biennales.
Australia’s participation at this event is imperative in growing Australia’s international reputation. Australia’s recent architectural and design achievements are worth celebrating as magnificent contributions to our international stature and national pride. This, along with the fact that Australia is now recognised as one of the world’s top eight countries for progressive architecture, provides a solid foundation for launching onto the International circuit.
Anthony Burke and Gerard Reinmuth, working in close collaboration with TOKO Concept Design, will head the creative team for the Australian Pavilion at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale.
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Anthony Burke
Associate Professor and Head of the School of Architecture at UTS, Anthony Burke specialises in contemporary design and theory in relation to technology and its implications for Architecture the built environment. A graduate of the MS AAD from Columbia University (2000) and a B.Arch from UNSW (Hons 1, 1996) Anthony is an international curator, writer, and architectural designer, and a director of the architectural practice Offshore Studio.
Gerard Reinmuth
Gerard Reinmuth is a Director of TERROIR, founded together with Richard Blythe and Scott Balmforth in 1999. The practice emerged from conversations between the Directors around the potential for architecture to open up questions of cultural consequence. Research and practice on these questions led to his appointment as visiting Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture in 2010 and Professor in Practice at the University of Technology (UTS) Sydney in 2011.
TOKO Concept Design
TOKO is a multifaceted creative practice committed and driven by passion, offering an extensive portfolio developed for national and international clients in a diverse range of fields. Dutch designers Eva Dijkstra and Michael Lugmayr, were brought up in the rich Dutch-European culture of design and art, influencing TOKO’s philosophy. Offering a distinctive conceptual approach in which critical thought, experimentation, and potential collaborations are key, TOKO’s concepts are derived from extensive research to develop contemporary and coherent design solutions often challenging its visual application; being playful, unexpected and minimalist.
The concept for the exhibition is ‘Formations; New Practices in Australian Architecture’. The exhibition is looking to highlight the remarkable versatility and innovation of non-standard practice types and their design out puts that are expanding the role of the architect.
Six architectural teams working in non-traditional ways and domains have been selected from around the nation, bringing skills and expertise from areas as diverse as robotic fabrication, government policy and indigenous housing. The featured teams are:
- Healthabitat (Paul Pholeros, Stephan Rainow, Paul Torzillo)
- Supermanoeuvre (Dave Pigram, Iain Maxwell, Chris Duffield)
- Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd (Richard Goodwin)
- 2112 Ai (100YR City) (Tom Kovac, Fleur Watson)
- The Architects Radio Show (Stuart Harrison, Simon Knott, Christine Philips, Rory Hyde)
- Archrival (Claire McCaughan, Lucy Humphrey)
These new practice formations will demonstrate to the world a particularly Australian mode of innovation and invention in the Australian pavilion at the Biennale.
The Australian Pavilion will be transformed into a “soft landscape of connections and possibilities”, featuring a series of installations or ‘formations’ responding to the light-filled, sculpted pavilion interior. Each installation will be designed as “spaces of real world innovation”.
Focusing on actual projects and their impact, the pavilion will be a “space of engagement” in which viewers can interact and “participate in architectural conversation at close quarters”. Complementing this, will be a series of “flash formations” - free informal and intimate public events around Venice, “allowing viewers to get up close and personal with some of Australia’s most innovative architectural practices, commentators and their work”. |
