University of Melbourne Magazine

Augmented Australia at the 2014 Venice Biennale

Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning
    • Cloud Space, the Australian Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.

    Cloud Space, the Australian Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.

    ABP’s Chair of Architecture, Professor Philip Goad, is in Venice this month for the opening of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, the key international architecture event of the year.

    Curated by Rem Koolhaas, the 2014 Biennale is themed around the concept of Fundamentals. “Fundamentals will be a Biennale about architecture, not architects,” says Koolhas. “After several Biennales dedicated to the celebration of the contemporary, Fundamentals will focus on histories and the evolution of national architectures in the last 100 years.”

    Professor Goad is one of the creative directors behind the Australian pavilion exhibition — Augmented Australia 1914- 2014 — which takes Koolhas’ interest in history and identity to a whole new level. The Augmented Australia team of felix._ Giles_Anderson+Goad consists of Perth practice felix (Craig McCormack, Rene van Meeuwen, Matt Delroy-Carr and Romesh Goonewardene), architects Sophie Giles (Associate Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, University of Western Australia) and Professor Simon Anderson (Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, University of Western Australia), as well as Professor Goad.

    Together, they have created an experiential exhibition which will showcase 11 historical and 11 contemporary Australian projects from the past 100 years, all of which were never actually built. Australia’s temporary pavilion for the exhibition — Cloud Space — will house trigger images of each project and scale 3D models will be geographically positioned around Venice.

    In April, the Australian Institute of Architects unveiled the Augmented Australia app, the engine of the exhibition. Available for both Apple and Android mobile devices, it is the app technology that will take users on a virtual tour through some of Australia’s most spectacular unrealised projects, such as the Nervi Cathedral (1958), by Pier Luigi Nervi, in Western Australia.

     

    The 14th International Architecture Exhibition runs from June 7 to November 23, 2014 at the Giardini and the Arsenale in Venice.