FREESPACE: The earth is the client

The Biennale Architettura 2018 opens these days and will take place at the Giardini and Arsenale as well as other places around Venice until the 25thof November. The 16thedition of this architectural fair is about FREESPACE, generosity of spirit and a great sense of humanity when it comes to building which is about modulation, richness and material of surface and much more.

Architecture is the play of light, sun, shade, moon, air, wind, gravity in ways that reveal the mysteries of the world. All of these resources are free and for the architect to use.

This year curators, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara believe that everyone has the right to benefit from architecture. The role of architecture is to give shelter to our bodies and to lift our spirits. A beautiful wall forming a street edge gives pleasure to the passer-by, even if they never go inside.  So too does a glimpse into a courtyard through an archway; or a place to lean against in the shade or a recess which offers protection from the wind and rain.

Just how for example Jørn Utzon thinks about a concrete and tiled seat at the entrance of Can Lis, Majorca, which is moulded perfectly to the human body for comfort and pleasure. Spatially, it is a ‘word’ of greeting, of welcome or the architect Lina Bo Bardi who raised the museum of modern art in Sao Paolo in order to make a ‘belvedere’ for the citizens to overlook the city.


IRMA had a sneak peek
and with a view words describes what FREESPACE means when visiting the Biennale this year or when looking for YOUR space to live.


  1. Find for yourself new ways of seeing the world, how do you see it presently and what is your idea about an ideal place to live.
  2. Think of inventing solutions where architecture provides for the well-being and dignity of each citizen of this fragile planet.
  3. Takethe opportunity to emphasise nature’s free gifts of light – sunlight and moonlight, air, gravity, materials – natural and man-made resources.
  4. Is there freedom to imagine, the free space of time and memory, binding past, present and future together.
  5. Can you built on inherited cultural layers, weaving the archaic with the contemporary?
  6. Is it a space for opportunity, a democratic space, un-programmed and free for uses not yet conceived?
  8. Works your living space with the architecture in the choreography of daily life. Can you make your interior work for the beneficial integration in your personal life.
Loving grids: Jasmin wears the Scarf Print dress by Tory Burch, Summer 2018; fishnet bag by Mango; slide-ons by Hermes. A staircase at the Bauer Grunwald in Venice



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