the Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennale 26/8 - 21/11 2010.

9 Oct 2010

Closing time

closing time
A hectic saturday at the Nordic pavilion comes to an end. See you tomorrow!

Cover art video


The environment in video footage.

The climax of cover art

cover competition
Sorry Anders, Erik and Tor (Testbedstudio/ Economy)! Our cover art competition almost depleted the paint, pen, paper and glitter depot, made the printer run out of ink, and got all of the tables smeared in pink stains and glue. The Conditions crew was on their feet for the duration of the day, juggling architectural discourse and kindergarden skills at the same time. We had no idea people were so competitive!

People meet in cover art

cover competition
As a mini-version of the competition for the coming issue of Conditions, we launched a cover art competition for the duration of the At Work With week. At first the visitors where hesitant, but as soon as a couple of the chairs at the working table got filled, everybody joined in. The winner will be announced sunday afternoon. Have a look at the Flickr photostream to see young and old, professionals and amateurs "meet in architecture"...

8 Oct 2010

On behalf of the winner...

"on behalf of the winner..."
Ms Bandolin was unfortunately not able to make it to the House of Ambitions for the ceremony, but has put forward the following statement: "The public opinion is very important for me as it is for every artist working in the public realm. I am an artist (not an architect, as I am presented in the exhibition) and a professor and teach at the Master's programme Art in the Public Realm at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. The way I get to know the public opinion is both through comments, but as often in the way they use my sculptures in the public. I have been working with public places for a long time. Over the years my places have been used in many ways, which has given my inspiration to construct new places. My sculptures have been used for such diverse events as weddings, children's babtizements, art-installations, as well as sets for TV and film production, and cd covers (McCoy Tyner used my sculpture Socrates Well in New York on his cd cover, which I found out by finding the cd in a shop in Stockholm). They are often used for leisure means, as sun bathing, picnics, gymnastics, biking, playing etc. This is the way the public tell me what they think of my work. Somtimes they are tagged by graffiti artists too, but not very often. "Conditions: "In general, what is your opinion about architectural prizes? "Gunilla Bandolin: "Architectural prizes are ok."

... and the winner is

"on behalf of the winner..."
The winner of Conditions magazine's Renna d'Oro - Golden Reindeer Award at the 2010 Venice biennale of architecture is the Swedish artist Gunilla Bandolin's Observatory at Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm Sweden, with an impressive 19,8% of the votes. Observatory was in the lead from the very beginning of the week.

Renna d'Oro official prize ceremony

Golden Reindeer Award Prize Ceremony
The Golden Reindeer Award stirred up an overwhelming curiosity among the passers-by as well as the invited VIPs. What we all have been waiting for the whole week to find out will now be revealed. Tor Inge, one of the three founding editors of Conditions, had the honour to announce the results. As you know, Renna d'Oro is the people's prize and their vote is our commitment. So, how did it go then? Coming in third, with 13,2% of the votes, was the "Outdoor fireplace" in Trondheim Norway by Haugen/Zohar arkitekter. And on the second place, with 17,8% of the votes, was the "Viewpoint and landscape hotel Gudbrandsjuver", in Valldal, Gerianger Norway by Jensen & Skodvin arkitektkontor. Congratulations to you both!

Voting closed

Voting closed!
The voting for the Renna d'Oro - Golden Reindeer Award is now closed. The winner will be announced at the prize ceremony in the House of Ambitions at 17.00. See you there!

More hopeful participants

cover competition
The cover art competition continues to attract the attention of the biennale visitors. The competition is also open to online contributions, but hurry up! We need your proposal before sunday at 17.00.

7 Oct 2010

The Steneby project award ceremony

Winners!
To great applause, group three receive the prize t-shirts for the winning project.

Project presentation

Steneby student presentation
After an intensive work-session by the participants, it was time for the project presentation. Two of the projects were adressing alternative uses of the Giardini area and the national pavilions when the venue is not in use by the biennale. Both groups wanted to make the biennale area more accessible to the city. The first project proposed urban farming and other alternative uses, while the second project worked on the possibility of turning the Giardini into an international knowledge park. The third project was dealing with interstitial spaces and borders between private space and public space within the Giardini at a smaller scale. It was great to see so much interesting work done in a short time.

Quality workshop

Quality workshop intro
The day started off by Tor Inge Hjemdal and Anders Melsom introducing the topic "quality", the theme of the latest issue of Conditions magazine. The introduction was the starting point of a one day workshop for a group of visiting master students from Steneby, school of craft and design.

Underlying conditions

IMG_0005
The voting for friday's Golden Reindeer Award is, as you may know by know, well on it's way. As a teaser, we just post a snapshot of the "underlying conditions" placed on panels under the exibited projects of the Stay in Touch exhibition. Can you guess which project these conditions relate to?

6 Oct 2010

At sleep with...

at sleep with..
Italian high school kids taking a nap in the donut bean bag after an intense afternoon of cover art design. Gislunn working at the At Work With-station in the background. That's all for today.

The Renna d'Oro statue

the golden reindeer
The prestigious award statue is now in place at our House of Ambitions, awaiting the prize ceremony on friday. The anticipation is rising.

Hopeful participants

cover competition
The cover art competition immediately attracted the attention of the visitors. All of the proposals so far have been visual or three dimensional additions to the cover template, in a wide range of styles and qualities. But just as with our "Tell them what they need" competition, there are no fixed requirements regarding submitted material: "entries could be in the form of text, manifesto, collage, illustration, SMS, image, fax, diagram, installation, etc."

Cover art competition

cover competition
The coming issue of Conditions magazine will be on the theme "the future of competitions". One part of the issue will be dedicated to the proposals in the architectural competition Conditions magazine has launched: "Tell them what they need". It is a competition on competitions, and we invite you to join us by contributing the questions not yet asked. As a mini-version of the competition, a competition for the cover art of the coming issue was just launched in the Nordic pavilion. The design task is to make a cover art proposal for this issue. Winners will be annonced here at the At Work With blog, sunday the 10th of October, 17.00. For online participants, please download the cover template. Good luck!

Under production

the golden reindeer
Wednesday morning starts off with designing and producing the prestigeous award statue for friday's winner, before the visitors arrive.

5 Oct 2010

In the lead

The leading conditions
The observatory is apparently the people's project of choice so far. As the first day comes to an end, we conclude by looking forward to the coming days. See you tomorrow!

Voting started!

voting for the golden reindeer
The projects of Stay in Touch have been recontextualized by adding background conditions to each of them under the themes evolution, copy and interpretation, compromise, added value and quality, topics that have been discussed in full in the past issues of Conditions magazine. Through "Golden Reindeer" stickers, the visitors of the Venice biennale are invited and encouraged to vote for their own personal projects of choice. The Renna d’Oro - Golden Reindeer prize will be awarded to the project which conditions have attracted most votes of "the people". So ask for a Golden Reindeer-sticker and vote for you favourite! The visitors have already started to vote for their favourite piece of work.

Renna d'Oro - Golden Reindeer Award

Renna d'Oro - The Golden Reindeer Award
You are hereby invited to the official prize ceremony at the "House of Ambitions", Nordic pavilion, Venice architectural biennale, friday the 8th of October, 17.00. The ceremony will be followed by an after-work relase party for the brand new issue of Conditions. The Scandinavian architectural magazine Conditions will award the best architectural conditions out of all the projects presented in the Nordic pavilion exhibition Stay in Touch.

People meet conditions in architecture

People meet the conditions in architecture
By moving the donut, from experience the most visited part of the pavilion, into the centre of the space we created lots more interaction between the visitors and the exibited projects.

Setting the scene

Conditions lay-out
First thing tuesday morning: organizing the pavillion, planning the week's programme, and making the damned printer work. The "Donut" was moved into the centre of the pavilion, to make future intercation between visitors and the exhibition easier. The workstation (plus magazine and t-shirt dispaly) was moved into a favourable corner position, and the small greenhouse turned into the "House of Ambitions", by a few adjustmenst and additions, and set up in the far end of the pavilion. More on the plans för the "House of Ambitions" later on.

4 Oct 2010

The switch - Conditions meets Economy

Tor LIndstrand of Economy.
Joana da Rocha sa Lima, Björn Ehrlemark and Gislunn Halfdanardottir of Conditions magazine is since monday morning present at the residency workstation. Tor Inge Hjemdal and Anders Melsom will join us later on. For the switch we met with one of the At Work With initiators, Tor Lindstrand of Economy, who got one of our t-shirts as a thank you for the invitation. On the shirt you can see the beautiful "Renna d'Oro - Golden Reindeer Award" logo, our main event during the week. More on this later on, but keep the time 17.00 on Friday in mind for later reference.

3 Oct 2010

Night falls


Night falls over the Nordic pavilion.

Film project


And how did the film turn out? Like this! This is an on-going film project by Economy, mixing architectural model work, imaginary landscapes and associative film-production. A project were the set moves and the camera is fixed.

Good times

At Work With: Economy
Final Day in the pavilion. Finishing some sets, filming, doing an interview for RUM and talking to people. Hoping that the lovely people from Conditions will have an as wonderful week as we have enjoyed. Spending the last night cleaning out, screening our work from the week and having drinks with people from the Finnish, Australian and British pavilions. Good times.