Next at the British Pavilion, 8th Venice Biennale, Venice

In 2002 the British Council selected Foreign Office Architects to create a site-specific installation to represent Britain at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale. In response to the Biennale’s theme, Next, the installation used FOA’s own Yokohama International Ferry Terminal project to answer the question posed by the Biennale, ‘What will architecture of the future be like?’ The presentation dissected the project to illustrate some of the emerging questions which the disciplines of architecture, urbanism and design are confronted by due to radical changes in the modes of production and economic integration. These included questions raised by the conflict between global processes and local singularities, the mutability of structures, the re-organisation of programmes and the proliferation of information – questions which had already generated interest in a number of practices around the world who were developing new methods and techniques both to exploit the architectural potential of these emerging forms of production and to develop new forms of organisation to operate within them.

FOA transformed the British Pavilion into a dark, labyrinthine space in which the visitor moved through a sequence of rooms, each dedicated to a different theme of the project: Landscape; Borderlessness; Growth; Complexity; Tools and Technology. Using state-of-the-art projectors provided by NEC UK, the Pavilion was turned into a spectacular virtual and immersive space, at the heart of which was a room with projections of the Terminal itself.

Architect - Foreign Office Architects

Commissioner for the British Pavilion

Deputy Commissioners - Emily Campbell, Brendan Griggs

Curator - Ruth Ur

Assistant Curator - Alison Moloney

Executive Arts - Luisa Trabucchi

Arts Assistant - Marina Machelli

Visual Arts Press Officer - Sarah Gillett

Technical Team - Tony Connor, Chris Hands

Sponsors - NEC Projectors UK

Location

Venice, Italy

Client

British Council

Date

2002

Total area

250m²