In occasion of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, the Nordic Pavilion presents an immersive installation that aims to explore the co-existence of nature and a built environments.
Within the iconic architecture built by the renowned Swedish architect Sverre Fehn in 1962, which is itself a celebration of natural elements such as light and trees, Finnish architecture firm Lundén Architecture Company placed transparent balloons that inflate and deflate according to atmospheric conditions. Titled Another Generosity, the showcase investigates the human capacity to create architecture that is symbiotic with the environment in an organic and boundless way. The inflatables imitates a human cell, and are equipped with sensors that monitor the surrounding carbon-dioxide levels, humidity and temperature. They seem to breathe, inflating and deflating in a natural motion, with a different pace and depth according to the different conditions. The idea that inspired the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Norwegian National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design and ArkDes, the Swedish National Center for Architecture and Design, who commissioned the pavilion, focuses on reestablishing a relationship with the architecture and the thought that stands behind it because quite often we just see the buildings, and that’s it. With today’s mounting environmental challenges architecture has the responsibility to take a position and deliver a message. Open to creative experimentation, the cells can also be filled up with water, as an alternative organic molecule. The viewers experience a feeling of a vulnerability and sensible co-existence between nature and its organs in motion.
