Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Francesca von Habsburg ...

The Venice Talks
thegardenofearthlydelights: Contemporary Architecture and the Toxicity of History
In designing thegardenofearthlydelights, R&Sie(n) have been guided by the detailed historical
descriptions of plants found in the scientific herbaria of medieval Franciscan Monks.
thegardenofearthlydelights uses contemporary art and architecture to reintroduce the medieval
rules of toxins and antidotes into present-day society, and does so within the very same
garden originally used by Franciscan Monks to grow and study medicinal plants. Through
their interest in the particular, R&Sie(n) inscribe contemporary art and architecture within the
horizon of historic preservation in an entirely new way: what is actually preserved (or rather
reconstructed) is an important historical particularity of the site – a nonphysical one, despite
the physicality of the actual plants; what is contained within the boundaries of the transient
and evasive structure is primarily an abundant set of ideas.
Speakers: François Roche, Architect, R&Sie(n), Paris; Hani Rashid, Architect, Asymptote, NY;
Beatriz Colomina, Professor of Architecture and Director of the PhD Program, Princeton
University, NJ; Alisa Andrasek, Architect, biothing, NY; Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation, NY; Francesca von Habsburg, Chairman, T-B A21, Vienna
Moderator: Jorge Otero-Pailos, Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation, Columbia
University, NY
The Morning Line: Drawing in Art, Architecture and Science
Throughout history, drawings have served as representations of different models of the universe.
Matthew Ritchie’s and Aranda / Lasch’s investigation aims at the translation of information
into material, in which the algorithm creates sets of relationships and “natural” tiling
systems with a high degree of symmetry and based on the efficiency of a limited amount
of building blocks. Their expertise in modular crystalline structures, further developed with
Daniel Bosia from Arup AGU to take on the shape of truncated tetrahedrons, is implored
to produce rules for drawings and rules for building, so that the architecture can disappear
and the drawing itself be brought into the fore. The drawing is the building, the drawing
is the substance and the structure of the building.
Speakers: Matthew Ritchie, Artist, NY; Ben Aranda / Chris Lasch, Architects,
Aranda / Lasch, NY; Daniel Bosia, Co-director, Arup AGU, London; Greg Lynn, Architect,
Greg Lynn FORM, Venice, CA (tbc); Farshid Moussavi, Architect, Foreign Office Architects,
NY; Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, MoMA, NY; Daniela Zyman, Curator, T-B A21, Vienna
Moderator: Mark Wigley, Dean of Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation,
Columbia University, NY
Thyssen-Bornemisza
Art Contemporary
Himmelpfortgasse 13
1010 Vienna Austria
T +43 1 513 98 56
F +43 1 513 98 56 22
pavilion@tba21.org
www.tba21.org