The Australian Institute of Architects has announced the winning proposal for Australia’s exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.
The Pool by architecture practice Aileen Sage and urban strategist Michelle Tabet emerged victorious from the shortlist of five.
The exhibition will explore the democratic, social and sacred principles of the pool. The creative directors see it as a metaphor for their vision of Australian architecture that is driven by plurality but is also accessible, inviting, playful and collaborative with new and emerging voices across the discipline.
“The pool is a key architectural device,” said the creative directors. “It has the unique ability to evoke both the sacred and the profane and also aptly represents a distinctively Australian democratic and social space - a great leveller of difference.”
Featuring an immutable pool element, the exhibition will bring this particular Australian architectural condition to a global audience in Venice. It will use light, mirror, glass and perspective to create a series of perceptual illusions, augmented by sound, light and smell, creating a highly sensorial experience.
The exhibition will also profile a survey of archetypal pools from across the country – be they man-made, inland, coastal, permanent or temporary.
The Venice Biennale selection committee were won over by the vitality and perceptiveness of this proposal, noting particularly its “incisive interest in the connections between landscape, culture and architecture as observed through the frame of a singular architectural and landscape typology.” Read the full jury report by Ken Maher.
The selection committee also noted the cross-disciplinary team of young women behind the exhibition concept. Aileen Sage is a Sydney-based practice founded by Isabelle Toland and Amelia Holliday. Along with Michelle Tabet, the team has also recruited Olivia Hyde as a senior advisor.
The winning creative team. L–R: Amelia Holliday, Michelle Tabet and Isabelle Toland.
Image: Alex Mayes
Australia’s 2016 exhibition will be the first architecture exhibition to be held in Denton Corker Marshall-designed pavilion at the Giardini in Venice. The content of the exhibition will need to adapt to the overall theme of the 2016 International Architecture Exhibition once it is announced in late-2015.
On the selection panel were: Paul Berkemeier (chair, immediate past president of Australian Institute of Architects), Janet Holmes à Court AC (Commissioner), David Karotkin (national president of the Institute), Ross Clark (chief operating officer of the Institute), Rachel Neeson (Neeson Murcutt), Ken Maher (Hassell Fellow), Helen Lochhead (deputy Government Architect of NSW) and Peter Malatt (president of the Institute’s Victorian Chapter, Six Degrees).
