ARCH'IT allestimenti / Metamorph


	Metamorph Asymptote
	The program of this year's Venice architecture biennale, curated by Kurt W. Forster, will be articulated, as usual, in two distinct environments: the Giardini and the Arsenale. Asymptote's complete engagement in the exhibition -from installation and exhibition design to graphic identity and catalogue design (with Omnivore)- provides for a seamless experience and a spatially cohesive backdrop to the curator's theme METAMORPH. Especially striking and engaging is Asymptote's complete transformation of the enfilade of longitudinal spaces in the Arsenale into a modulating terrain on which over 220 projects are exhibited with models, drawings and video installations. The computer generated morphing animation sequence used to conceive the stage in the Arsenale was derived from combining perspectival geometry with the actions of torquing and stringing. Far from offering an unfriendly and solely geometrical experience, the stage for the Arsenale's discursive exposition is highly captivating for the visitor, and spatially it is a lot more stimulating and pleasing than what the renderings and wireframes already anticipate. ARCH'IT presents, in the words of New York based Asymptote, the project for the exhibit design of the Biennale. Hani Rashid's sharp and energetic answers to Luca Molinari's interview further explain the design concept. [PG]
	INSTALLING SPACE. During the Italian Renaissance, Bramante's perspectival experiment in Santa Maria delle Grazie, a small church in the center of Milan, was not only an elegant architectural solution for a confined space but (more importantly for the architect) was a test environment for the future Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome. This precise intervention, predicated on the new found geometric principles around perspective projection, afforded Bramante the opportunity to envision his ideas as approximating full scale, producing a diorama of the great cathedrals 'potential' interior.	[13sep2004]
Study of the Arsenale.	Another predecessor to our modern notion of installation architecture is in the design of Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico built in Vicenza in 1584. This 'permanent' intervention into the theater's existing situation was essentially a full-scale environment enacted as a test of sorts, pointing the way to an ideal in city space and architecture. The Teatro, again utilizing perspectival geometry, was used not only to investigate architectural motifs and proportional systems, but also for envisioning a 'perfected' model of city space, a surrogate for a new architecture.
Study of installation at the Giardini.	There are many similar examples of interior interventions that are not simply decorative but also act as proxy architectural constructs utilizing the almost 'controlled' environment of an existing structure in order to enact an architectural experiment to scale. Later the interior structures and architectures of the Baroque and Rococo periods became preoccupied with precise reenactments of the natural state beyond, albeit in a perfected mode. And through to our present day situation, installations into existing spaces as exhibition design or stand alone interior worlds act as lenses onto an exteriorly that is either vivid and recognizable as place, or abstracted and polemical as tendency and possibility. The installation works of Frederick Kiesler for example employed experimentation with form, meaning and geometry to produce highly spontaneous and curious architectural installations. Kiesler's theater stage sets and exhibition designs pushed the limits of what he aspired to create as an 'endless' architecture.
Study of installation at the Giardini.	The list of early modern architects that experimented with full-scale installation work that, in effect, became meditations on architectural futures includes Theo Van Doesburg, Andr� Bloc, and Moholy Nagy. These artists and architects sought new forms of expression through experimental installations with light, color and space. Technology and form continued to become intertwined and critical to architectural interventions.
	Study of the platform in the Arsenale. This is seen in the work of Russian Constructivists such as Vladimir Tatlin with his large-scale models of the Monument to the Third International and El Lissitszky with his elegant Proun Space installation work. Another Constructivist, Gustav Klucis made intriguing architectural installations in the form of Agitation Propaganda machines (Agit-Props) using architectural installations as works unto themselves, self contained structures to be deployed throughout small towns in the Russian landscape showing documentary films captured by Vertov. The architecture itself becoming a dynamic intervention, a device inserted into the landscape. This work heralded the beginning of what we could identify as the fusion of media and space into architectural form. Study of the platform in the Arsenale. The evolution of these fluid architectures will be interesting to follow as architects become less concerned with differentiating between physicality and the virtual, increasingly becoming preoccupied with redefining what actually constitutes the spatial, and how we in fact move within this new spatiality. And ultimately it is within the space of the installation where these sorts of theses and assumptions can be tested. For Asymptote the space of exhibition reinterpreted as a place for experimentation is crucial for research and envisioning architectural futures and possibilities. METAMORPH INSTALLATION. The designs for all the exhibition areas by Asymptote are inspired by historic and contemporary influences and readings of these historically loaded environments. The Arsenale in particular has a colorful history as a place once used for navel ship building and the manufacture and preparation of kilometers of rope for the sails of the impressive Venetian ships of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

	Asymptote's transformation of the Cordiere in particular was predicted on a modulating spacial sequence developed by producing a morphing animation involving the actions of torquing and 'stringing' the entire space. By utilizing the resulting 'key-frames', a sequence of elements with the potential to be used as walls surfaces and platforms resulted. These resulting forms and surfaces were further designed to accommodate models, drawings and video for the Metamorph exhibition. The displayed works that move along these 'trajectories' forming a terrain of tendencies and formations as opposed to being simply displays. The experience of the exhibition is therefore spatial and acts itself as an architectural entity celebrating ideas, scale, form and meaning. Asymptotes' seamless integration of architecture, installation, multimedia, graphic design and exhibition design form a spatially integrated back-drop to the Metamorph theme, making explicit a condition of variance, affinities and flux. Asymptote info@asymptote.net

	METAMORPH - 9th International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia Venezia, Arsenale and Giardini di Castello
	director: Kurt W. Forster information: La Biennale di Venezia Ca' Giustinian San Marco 30124 Venezia tel: 041 5218712 fax: 041 5218704 http://www.labiennale.org September 12 - November 7, 2004 exhibit design: architects: Asymptote principals: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture lead architects: Jill Leckner and Noboru Ota project team: Eric Goldemberg, Asako Hiraoka Sperry, Clarissa Lenz, Ana Baltschun, Claudia Cipriani, Tobias Koch, Stella Lee, Simon Nageli, Dominik Sigg, Cara Solomon, Charlotte Schmidt-Jensen, Stephanie Wong, Christoph Ziegler graphic designer: Omnivore Alice Chung and Karen Hsu lighting designer: Arup Lighting Rogier van der Heide IALD lighting consultant: Marciano Rizzo/ Venice Biennale

	Asymptote. Hani Rashid is a practicing Architect who received a Master's degree in Architecture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1986. In 1989 he co-founded with Lise Anne Couture Asymptote, an award winning architecture, design and art practice based in New York city. In 1990 Rashid contributed to the implementation of the Advanced Architecture Design program at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, later in 1995 he contributed to the development of the school's Digital Design Studio program. Hani Rashid has also been a visiting professor and lecturer at numerous universities including the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, the Southern California Institute of Architecture and UCLA in Los Angeles, the University of Lund in Sweden, and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Asymptote has produced an extensive body of work including the Guggenheim Virtual Museum, the Advanced Operations Center for the New York Stock Exchange, and a line of system office furniture designed for Knoll International. In 2000 Hani Rashid represented the United States at the American pavilion of the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and in 2002 the work of Asymptote was featured at Documenta XI in Kassel. Most recently Asymptote has completed the construction of HydraPier in the Netherlands, a structure located near the airport of Schipol which houses technology and art. Currently Hani Rashid is working on a number of key projects including the design of the upcoming Venice Biennale of Architecture and a new theater venue for the Hans Christian Andersen festival in Odense, Denmark. The work produced by Asymptote has been featured in several publications including most recently the "What's Next" issue of Time magazine and in various exhibitions including the "Non-Standard Architecture" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and a large scale survey show of Asymptote's work at The Netherlands Institute of Architecture in Rotterdam. Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture were honored as the recipients of the 2004 Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.

	All images courtesy of: Asymptote: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture. Photos of installation by Susanne Lambert.

	> FILES: INTERVIEW WITH HANI RASHID > ESPOSIZIONI: "METAMORPH," OR FROM THE BELLY OF THE WHALE > ESPOSIZIONI: BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA, PENSIERI INTERROTTI > INSTANT FORUM: SEI PEZZI FACILI > LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA. METAMORPH > ASYMPTOTE