EUPavilion : Eight proposals for the first European pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Abstract

EUPavilion is structured as a research laboratory exploring the relationship between architecture and European institutions. Since 2018, the laboratory has collaborated with a number of partners, developing its research through the organisation of public events, academic activities and publications, with the ultimate goal of staging an exhibition of projects for a hypothetical European Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: EUPavilion Eight proposals. EUPavilion Eight proposals features eight projects for the first European Pavilion at the Venice Biennale drawing on both artistic and architectural practices from across Europe. Armature Globale, BB (Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio) in collaboration with Tomaso De Luca, Jasmina Cibic, Diogo Passarinho Studio, Plan Común, Something Fantastic, TEN and Evita Vasiljeva were invited by the curators of the exhibition to reimagine the national pavilion - to this day the dominant symbolic and spatial paradigm in the Giardini and the Biennale context in general. At the same time, the project for the European Pavilion provided an opportunity to ask what new representative languages are needed in order to define the identity of a supranational organisation in a state of continuous crisis and perpetual construction such as the European Union. The variety of approaches and responses provided by the participants who grew up both within and on the borders of a Union under construction - reveals the extent to which architecture constitutes fertile - albeit underused - ground on which to cultivate debate on European integration as a cultural project. The publication is conceived as the collection of the results of the EUPavilion Eight Proposals exhibition alongside the research produced by the editors since 2018.