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

25 Sept 2010

Forgotten robot #4


Forgotten robot #4: "Pregofant". Behold the Pregofant.

Smoking hot

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The pavilion is crowded today and smoke is rising from the office table.

Haunting Venice #2

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The monastery island of San Lazzaro outside Venice has a mythical past which its mental image thrives upon. An enhanced, modern imagery for the island has been created through postcards depicting San Lazzaro's unknown, dark secrets. "Venice of the mind" contiunues to grow.

Strategies for building your own palace in Venice #3

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Strategies for building your own palace on a prime location in Venice #3: Second level. The facades fronting the canal at the backside of Palazzo Ducale are clad with scaffolding and huge prints of a blue, cloudy sky, which has been there for three years due to the renovation of the facades. Tourists and Venetians has started to see it as a part of the city image. In the future it is likely that the temporary structure will be a long lasting structure and a tourist attraction. Level two of the palace uses scaffolding covered with textiles, with cut out clouds as windows. Tourists will love it.

Places for play

Places for Play
Small survey of places for play in Venice. Existing, possible and structures that might be used in order to produce a "Venetian" playground typology.

Forgotten robot #3


Forgotten robot #3: "Peaches". And yet another robot emerges from the operation table at the Nordic pavilion.

Boat production

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Svensk Standard tries to top the Arsenale by producing more than 300 boats a day.
Keep on folding!

Draging for Vencie


Objects once lost to the sea are brought back ashore to inhabit the grid, bringing with them the aroma of the seabed.

24 Sept 2010

Half past


More than halfway through our stay here at the Nordic Pavilion, production is at full speed and the grid is starting to get populated by artifacts. Our Venice is slowly growing.

Strategies for building your own palace in Venice #2

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Strategies for building your own palace on a prime location in Venice #2: Plinth level. In different places in Venice you can find piles of benches, used for temporary structures to walk on when parts of the city become flooded. The plinth level uses these benches as building blocks. If you take one bench from every pile in the city, you can build a pretty big plinth level that people will think is temporary.

Forgotten robots #2


Forgotten robots #2: "Venize". Another forgotten robot has been reanimated.

Superstudio!

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The first visitor of the pavilion this morning was Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. He explained that "I was also a part of a group that worked with a grid once... it was called Superstudio".

Early morning start

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Some of us "got up with the rooster" this morning and cleaned the pavilion.

Quarter to three-drag

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Daniel continues his tireless subsurface explorations, this time during night. The magnet caught a lot of strange artifacts, which could be refered to as "ancient iron" or "cosmic ore". Now these shards of urban culture will be further analyzed and deciphered to reveal its origins and the myths behind and in front of them.

23 Sept 2010

Strategies for building your own palace in Venice #1

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Strategies for building your own palace on a prime location in Venicey #1: Foundation. Pour concrete on the pavement and write "Provisorio". No one will notice.

Haunting Venice #1

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Venice is very much a city of the mind, it's identity being built by both real and fabricated myths. One could argue that the "Venice of the mind" is more real than the physical city. The mental image is what we bring home from our trip and what all the souvenirs depict. While the physical Venice can't be transformed or modernized, Venice of the mind can. In "Haunting Venice" Ola attempts to fabricate updated versions of classic Venetian phenomena, such as the Ghetto, which got hauntology-washed through give-away postcards...

Respect the electricity

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We do not respect the electricity as much as the Italians respect the architect.

Forgotten robots #1


Forgotten robots #1: "Cigge". Karin and Sara are working with robots made of things they've found in Venice.

Learning from Venice

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Anders is measuring and copying Venetian ornaments to bring them home to Solna.

The printer is working

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This morning we got new toner for the printer. Print fiesta.

Archeology


Digging up the Nordic pavilion.

22 Sept 2010

Office table

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After the presentation, some of us felt like we needed to produce a bit more.

First presentation

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Today we had the first presentation of everyone's work so far. We will have a presentation every day at 14.00 in the Nordic pavilion, and the grid will slowly turn into our own interpretation of Venice.

The grid goes archeological

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Venice, sinking into its own waters and shedding its traditional urban functions, can be construed as a "dying" city. Through "Venice of the North", Svensk Standard performs an archaeology - the recovery and examination of remaining traces and artifacts - to explore possibilities for the animation of both a city and a pavilion, through the active gestures of mapping, exhibition, collection, curation and architectural intervention.

21 Sept 2010

Grid

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Venice is gridded...

Climbing Venice

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We brought a Playstation and the game Assassin's Creed, in which you can run and climb around to experience Venice from another perspective.

We rearranged

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Here are all of us starting from the very back left, going around clockwise like a spiral: Daniel Johansson, Fredrik Andersson, Caroline Ektander, Rutger Sjögrim, Bree Trevena, Joël Jouannet, Sara Liberg, Martin Losos, Helen Runting, Markus Wagner, Karin Matz, Anders Berensson and Ola Keijer.

At work with Svensk Standard

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XYM welcomed us to the pavilion. They encouraged us to rearrange and so we did.

19 Sept 2010

Architecture

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Architecture.

Whiteboard action

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Sunday morning branding time on the At Work With whiteboard.

18 Sept 2010

Rain gear improve-session

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The weather was terrible today. It was one big soggy shivery situation with Venice flooding in all directions. Per and Eline decided to make their own rain gear.

Lunch time

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The most photogenic office food to come out of our kitchen in the Nordic pavilion as of yet!

Office time

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Time well spent in the office.

17 Sept 2010

Opinions

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Mixed opinions, although generally happy ones!

XYMEMORY USB sticks

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The XYMEMORY USB sticks presented in a mini exhibition in the office.

Architect gangsta

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Screening of Ilja Karilampi's video "The Chief Architect of Gangsta Rap".

Picture posing

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A group of proud Scandinavians posing for photographs in front of Sverre Fehn's Nordic pavilion. At Work With visible in background.

16 Sept 2010

Speculation

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XYMEMORY USB stick production in the Nordic pavilion. Part III.

Production

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XYMEMORY USB stick production in the Nordic pavilion. Part II.

Raw material

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XYMEMORY USB stick production in the Nordic pavilion. Part I.

15 Sept 2010

Locking

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Per locking up the pavilion in the evening.

Horizontal donut

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Horizontalizing in the sitting donut with screening of XYM PDF publication images.

Submission

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Reading submissions for "Horizontal Life & Death".

14 Sept 2010

Fashion shoot

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Fashion shoot for some big Italian economy magazine in the Nordic pavilion today.

XYM in Venice

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XYM is is working on a PDF publication in the Nordic Pavilion. Day 1: Chaotic but good; collecting of all contributions and starting to structure material to work with for the publication. Tomorrow we will rearrange our brand new office, socialize more with the Biennale visitors and start a small XYMEMORY USB stick production factory. Weather today: Sunny and warm, 25º C.

12 Sept 2010

End

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At work with is cleaned up and ready for XYM.

Interns

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For the last day in the pavilion 0047 had two interns: Massimiliano & Christian from Berlin. Thank you both for your help.

11 Sept 2010

Afternoon lecture by Carson Chan

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While the afternoon sun streamed throughout the pavilion we had the pleasure to present a telephone lecture by architecture writer and curator Carson Chan based in Berlin. He was discussing how to display and discuss architecture within the frames of an exhibition space. The conventions of architectural representations on display are strongly challenged by the current Biennale curated by Kazuyo Sejima, where many of the works create spatial atmospheres, conditions and subjective associations rather than representing built work on display. Carson also argued in his lecture that architecture, and related fields, can be discussed and exhibited without having to exhibit reproductions of built work. As a director of the project space Program in Berlin, Carson Chan constantly aims to test the disiplinary boundaries of architecture through collaborations with other fields by exploring ideas through exhibitions, performances and workshops. 0047 had the pleasure to host a double exhibition by Carson Chan this spring and these two shows formed the content of Chan's lecture.

Sold out

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All the books we brought with us from Oslo are now sold out, and Sandra Herrera became the lucky owner of the last copies of Europan 9 and Northern Experiments. The books published by 0047 are still available at our webshop.

Potential architecture

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Lectures on Saturday started with 0047 director Espen Røyseland talking about the International Collection of Potential Architecture. An online user based database of architectural efforts and designs which remain unrealised, the collection gives visibility to alternative, speculative futures through projects that for a variety of reasons have never seen the light of the day. To join please visit www.potentialarchitecture.net and create a user account to upload your projects.

10 Sept 2010

People meet (and talk and drink) in architecture

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0047 improvised an after work party for all the staff working in the pavilions. It was nice seeing the faces of the different nationalities represented in the Giardini park and not just the buildings. People from the Russian, Slovakian, British, Greek, Danish and Japanese pavilions were showing up and all enjoyed drinks and talk.

Kitchen stories

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The greenhouse has been transformed into a kitchen and cantina, and nothing seemed more natural than to pile up mozzarella, fresh tomatoes and bread and some bottles of wine.

Connecting Oslo and Berlin via Venice and Reykjavik

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Just now german graphic designer Ariane Spanier is talking about her work and cooperations with 0047.

Kids chill in architecture

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The kids love the calmness of the pavilion and the big comfy sitting donut.

After work party

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We are having an after work party today.

9 Sept 2010

British conversations

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Ingrid from 0047 talks with Alex Whitby from British Council about 0047’s coming exhibition in London.

8 Sept 2010

On dreams and needs

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Kelly Doran from LRA presented "Repositioning the Remote" (a strategy aiming to turn Vardø into the "green tool" in development of the North) to an audience, and received some questions and comments. Most notably, a Norwegian in attendance asked "do you think this can actually happen in Norway, or is this just a dream?" Kelly answered he felt that their strategy is not only a possibility, but something that needs to happen in Vardø and Norway.