Rute Figueiredo
former doctoral student
SNSF Research Project
Beyond the Venice Architecture Biennal
The research project Beyond the Venice Architecture Biennale analyzes how architectural disciplinary frames have been conceptualized, discussed and presented within the context of the Venice Biennale of Architecture, from 1980 to the onset of the 21st century. It is, thus, concerned with connecting two apparently distinctive story lines: architecture’s disciplinary culture on the one hand, and the Venice Biennale’s own culture on the other.
The study will, as the title suggests, look beyond the biannual architectural displays to enquire how the crossed analysis of three lines of architectural discourse — public discourse, institutional discourse, critical discourse — and how the constellations of relationships (between actors, institutions, concepts and fields of knowledge) in which the events are grounded, can reveal new arguments on the topic. In this sense, the route proposed from the Presence of the Past (the first exhibition, curated by Paolo Portoghesi in 1980) to the Common Ground (curated by David Chipperfield in 2012), embodies a story line an axis of which is given by the disciplinary discourse.
The research project has been motivated by the idea that disciplinary knowledge is not exclusively contained in academic or classificatory categories and that the study of architectural discipline should consider its own fluctuations over time: architecture is a historically discontinuous field and a subject of change.
Beyond the Venice Architecture Biennal
The research project Beyond the Venice Architecture Biennale analyzes how architectural disciplinary frames have been conceptualized, discussed and presented within the context of the Venice Biennale of Architecture, from 1980 to the onset of the 21st century. It is, thus, concerned with connecting two apparently distinctive story lines: architecture’s disciplinary culture on the one hand, and the Venice Biennale’s own culture on the other.
The study will, as the title suggests, look beyond the biannual architectural displays to enquire how the crossed analysis of three lines of architectural discourse — public discourse, institutional discourse, critical discourse — and how the constellations of relationships (between actors, institutions, concepts and fields of knowledge) in which the events are grounded, can reveal new arguments on the topic. In this sense, the route proposed from the Presence of the Past (the first exhibition, curated by Paolo Portoghesi in 1980) to the Common Ground (curated by David Chipperfield in 2012), embodies a story line an axis of which is given by the disciplinary discourse.
The research project has been motivated by the idea that disciplinary knowledge is not exclusively contained in academic or classificatory categories and that the study of architectural discipline should consider its own fluctuations over time: architecture is a historically discontinuous field and a subject of change.
