REPORT-Mobility Grant-Farah Makki
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Reporting<br />
from the<br />
front<br />
FARAH MAKKI 08I2016 VENICE<br />
BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE
<strong>Mobility</strong> <strong>Grant</strong> URBEGO<br />
I FARAH MAKKI<br />
DISCOVERING THE VENICE BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE<br />
This year Exhibition « Reporting From the Front » is laid out in a unitary exhibition sequence from the Central Pavilion (Giardini) to the<br />
Arsenale, and includes 88 participants from 37 different countries. 50 of them are participating for the first time, and 33 architects are under<br />
the age of 40. This edition is special not only for the place given to youth and new countries but also it places architecture beyond its<br />
physical shapes as a political and social art. I spent several days going through the exhibition pavilion discovering international examples of<br />
projects connecting architecture, urban planning and design to civil society. From India, to Africa through Europe and the Arab world,<br />
Alejandro Aravena, the curator, selected with his team multiple examples that recognize that these disciplines are the product of human<br />
organisation, a shared living spaces for communities.<br />
« Reporting From the Front » was the occasion to share the work of people, ordinary and militant and not only international famous stars,<br />
who are looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, housing, migration, informality,<br />
crime, traffic, waste and the participation of communities. The must outstanding thing was to discover the grade of progress regarding<br />
waste management or temporary urbanism management that reached also contexts that we usually consider as underdeveloped countries.<br />
This reminds me the ephemeral Mega city of Kumbh Mela, a hindu festival held every twelve years, gathering five million persons during<br />
fifty five days with an additional flow from 10 to 20 million coming for 24 hours cycle.<br />
These pages illustrate a selection of projects, topics that got my attention for the place that social development and sustainable strategies<br />
occupied in the core of their actions. These projects evoke reflections that i am raising through out my practice, and which deliver a series<br />
of lesson-learned, methodologies and approaches.<br />
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/
<strong>REPORT</strong>ING FROM THE FRONT<br />
In his trip to South America Bruce Chatwin encountered an old lady walking<br />
the desert carrying an aluminum ladder on her shoulder. It was German<br />
archeologist Maria Reiche studying the Nazca lines. Standing on the ground,<br />
the stones did not make any sense; they were just random gravel. But from<br />
the height of the stair those stones became a bird, a jaguar, a tree or a<br />
flower. The Biennale Architettura 2016 offers a new point of view like the one<br />
Maria Reiche has on the ladder. It is about listening to those who gained<br />
some perspective and consequently are in the position to share some<br />
knowledge and experiences with those of us standing on the ground.
RECYCLING LOCAL MATERIALS<br />
the exhibition installations followed an<br />
ecological approach by recycling the materials<br />
of the previous biennale. These installations<br />
showcased an example of waste<br />
management . They illustrate the possibility of<br />
transforming initial objects and materials<br />
function into new uses that can be constantly<br />
reinvented and inscribed within circular<br />
economy.
EPHEMERAL<br />
URBANISM<br />
KUMBH MELA<br />
The ephemeral Mega city of Kumbh Mela, a hindu festival held every twelve<br />
years, gathers five million persons during fifty five days with an additional<br />
flow from 10 to 20 million coming for 24 hours cycle. It represents the<br />
deployment of a city in a short time frame that must negotiate different<br />
issues related to cultural memory, geography, infrastructure, sanitation,<br />
public health, governance, and ecology. The cases exposes an illustration<br />
of how the temporality of a cultural/religious event, the light and unspecific<br />
instruments empower agents to set an ephemeral built environment allowing<br />
a complex management of flows.
EPHEMERAL LANDSCAPES
ALTERNATIVE<br />
PUBLIC SPACE<br />
LIU JIAKUN IN CHINA
If cities are good news, then we may consider densifying the open<br />
spaces and the services and not just the residences and the buildings.
FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE<br />
ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS AND ANIMATIONS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS INVESTIGATIONS
Schools<br />
ARCHITECTURE<br />
RESHAPING RURAL<br />
EDUCATION
Open outdoor classrooms in the Chilean Andes<br />
LEARNING FROM NATURE ABOUT HOW TO SURVIVE MARGINALITY AND URBAN VIOLENCE
Luyanda Mpahlwa<br />
DesignSpaceAfrica<br />
50 SCHOOLS FOR RURAL UPGRADE IN SOUTH AFRICA OVER TWO YEARS PERIOD
ZERO WASTE<br />
KAMIKATSU-JAPAN<br />
In 2003, the Japanese town of Kamikatsu declared its Zero Waste Ambition.<br />
Since then the residents of Kamikatsu have adopted arguably the most<br />
rigorous recycling programme in the world. In 2016 this rural community is<br />
well under way to eliminating 100 per cent of its waste.
HOME vs Real<br />
Estate<br />
HILARIOPOLIS, BUCAREST (RO)<br />
« Although marketing tries to convince us about another story, not the<br />
increase of people’s life quality is the one motivating the real estate<br />
developers: in the real estate world, architecture is many times barely a<br />
mean to make money. That is why I appreciate the fight ADN put up for<br />
architecture’s quality in this world of real estate, a world where apparently<br />
there isn’t any major conflict »<br />
Architect Alejandro Aravena<br />
Curator Venice Biennale
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