by Tamara Moscowitz

The 12th International Architecture Exhibition commonly known as the Venice Architecture Biennale or the place “where architects come to dream,” opened in August with the overarching theme of ”People meet in architecture,” to emphasize the interaction between people and spaces in new social and natural environments. Viewed by many as a notable and worthy departure from some of the more obtuse proclamations of the past, conceptually this humanistic, basic approach to architecture falls in line with the universal zeitgeist of getting back to basics echoed in the general design trend toward less is more. (See VandM’s Bill Indursky’s article “Austere Luxury: Revisiting the 1990s.”)

Forty-eight international practices, including architects, artists, and engineers brought projects that were stimulating, relevant, and fun. Two commissioned installations of special note that responded with practical, innovative ideas are indoor/outdoor sculptural sponge seating by the only US representation a New York based design studio, and a shelter made from carved stone and perfumed cedar wood constructed by a Chilean architect and his partner a sculptor.

“Let’s make something people can use,” stated Ben Aranda of the design studio of Aranda/Lasch who with his partner Christopher Lasch and Island Planning Corporation created “Modern Primitives,” a two-step project. A collection of seating composed of inter-connected geometric foam pyramids that appear to multiple to be covered in Fendi fabrics. The viewer is encouraged to experience the work by sitting, leaning, or holding as it unfolds in surprising new variations, thus blurring the division between art and audience. The high-end Italian fashion house of Fendi is also a sponsor through its partnership with Limited Edition Design. The completion of “Modern Primitives” as a multiple level installation representing the inter-relationship of architecture, art, design, and fashion will be shown at Design Miami in December 2010.

As curated by Pritzker Prize winner Kazuyo Sejima (the first woman to do so) whose firm with Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA, designed The New Museum in New York, the 2010 Biennale is a “reflection on architecture with multiple points of view rather than a single vision.”

Diversity was key and no less evident than in Chilean-based architect Smiljan Radic and sculptor Marcela Correa’s minimal sculpture, “The Boy In A Fish,” a response to the earthquake one of the global catastrophic natural disasters that shook his country last February and that are occurring with greater frequency. Inspired, in part, by artist David Hockney’s etchings of the Grimm’s fairy tale “The Sea-Hare,” “The Boy In A Fish,” a one-person habitat, is an egg shaped refuge meant to protect and soothe. The team’s aim is to offer hope for a more serene future.

Several lofty conceptual installations from Olafur Eliasson’s streams of cascading water in a dark room captured by strobe lights to the German engineering firm Transsolar and Tetsuo Kondo Architects “Cloudscapes” where visitors walk up ramps to reach layers of vapors to experience climate changes and real clouds to the timely “Seaswarm” by the MIT Senseable City Lab who erected small robots fitted with conveyer belts made of Neowire mesh that soak up oil, have made the 2010 Biennale a delightfully playful and intellectually accessible exhibition. Plus, who can complain when surrounded by the glorious splendor of Venice. Through November 21, 2010.