There are many things in our surroundings we take for granted because they’re everywhere—they’re simple and they work. But sometimes their very ubiquity makes them significant: think of wood framing, a system so basic and straightforward that it is used to build more than 90 percent of all housing in the United States. Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, curators of this year’s U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, shine a spotlight on this humble method of construction to explore what it says about America’s history and our attitudes toward labor and the built environment.
Sometimes dismissed as “stick construction” and usually ignored by the architectural academy, wood framing reveals much about American design and building. “It’s ad hoc and allows for on-site changes and improvements,” says Preissner. “It’s not uptight.” The same might be said of this year’s U.S. Pavilion. Instead of getting lost in the weeds of theory or postulating on the latest “ism,” Andersen and Preissner cheekily ask if the mundane can be illuminating or even, perhaps, captivating.
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