THE EXHIBITION
On December 17th, 2020, at 6 PM CET, the ’Unfolding Pavilion’ will open its doors to the public.
In its third edition, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ will enter, for the first and last time ever, inside of John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate: an eccentric solo house that until recently was believed to be a paper project by the American architect, but that in fact was built in the 1980s without his consent, on a small private island in the Venetian lagoon.
The exhibition will open on the 17th of December 2020: almost midway between the cancelled opening date of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia and its new opening date (due on the 22nd of May 2021).
Between August 29th and September 4th, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ occupied the twelve rooms of the House, inviting twelve international architects and scholars to spend a one week-long residency locked inside of them. Their works, produced in-situ, are dealing with issues of privacy, domesticity and isolation and are characterized by a powerful focus on fiction and storytelling.
Due to the legal conditions imposed by the current owners of the building, sharing the exact location and images of the House, as well of the works realized inside of it, will not be possible under any circumstances prior to December 17th.
On that date, a preview of the installations, along with the fabulous story of the house, will be published on https://www.ritualsofsolitude.com/. The complete documentation, along with exclusive additional material, will be exhibited in Venezia during the opening days of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.
THE WORKS
All the contributions to the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ 2020 were created during a one-week residency inside of the rooms of John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate.
Twelve authors were confined in twelve rooms of 1,5 x 1,7 x 2,3 meters, which they couldn’t leave until the end of the residency. While having almost identical architectural features, each room was equipped with only one piece of furniture, which the authors couldn’t choose but had to work upon: a bed, a dining table, a toilet… The unique protocol of the residency, which resulted from the match of an eccentric setting, current travel and sanitary restrictions, and the compulsory legal obligations contained in the contract stipulated with the owners of the House, put the temporary residents in extremely tough (but very inspiring) conditions. The works that they created as a result, turned out to be equally unique.
THE AUTHORS
An international ensemble of twelve teams of architects and scholars have been invited to take part in the 2020 iteration of the Unfolding Pavilion. They are:
(ab)Normal; Bart Lootsma; James Taylor-Foster + Anton Valek; Fala Atelier; WAI Architecture Think Tank; Microcities + Giaime Meloni; Fosbury Architecture; Shumi Bose + Space Popular; Salottobuono; Aristide Antonas; MAIO; Traumnovelle.
THE TEAM
Curators: Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Davide Tommaso Ferrando
Web Design & Graphic Design: Hund (Ernesto Bellei, Federico Bergonzini, Antonio Alessandro Di Cicco, Simone S. Melis)
Illustration: Giovanni Benedetti, Marialuisa Montanari
Model: ErranteArchitetture (Sarah Becchio & Paolo Borghino)
Production: Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Davide Tommaso Ferrando
Poster: Magda Vieriu & Octavian Hrebenciuc
INFO
Name: Unfolding Pavilion / Rituals of Solitude
Curators: Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Davide Tommaso Ferrando
Location: https://www.ritualsofsolitude.com/
Dates: from Dec 17th, 2020 to May 30th, 2021
Opening: Dec 17th, 2020, at 18:00 (CET)
UNFOLDING PAVILION
The ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ is an exhibition and editorial project by Daniel Tudor Munteanu and Davide Tommaso Ferrando that pops up at major architecture events in previously inaccessible but architecturally significant buildings.
On each occasion the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ features a different theme inspired by the space it occupies, by means of commissioned original works that react to it and to its wider cultural-historic background. The ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ doesn’t necessarily care about the hosting event’s theme. It lets its occupied space inspire its own theme. Without a good exhibition space (of the finest architectural making), the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ doesn’t have any reason to exist.
Like any pop-up, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ only lasts for a short but intense period of time. After closing its doors, its activity unfolds online with a continuously updated stream of content.
In its first edition, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ entered Ignazio Gardella’s Casa alle Zattere between the 26th and the 31st of May 2016, on the occasion of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia, transforming one of its apartments in a temporary gallery of installations made by some of the most unique authors of architecture-related curated archives. The exhibition took advantage of the availability of a cheap AirBnb apartment inside of the Casa alle Zattere, which was opened to the public during daytime, and then reconverted in a sleeping space at night.
In its second edition, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ entered Gino Valle’s Giudecca Social Housing from the 25th to the 30th of May 2018, on the occasion of the vernissage of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia. In order to do so, it refurbished one of its empty dwellings to convert it into a temporary gallery of works, and use the common spaces of the complex as the poetic backdrop for a three days-long program of public events. After the end of the exhibition, the temporary gallery was converted once again in one of the available social housing units of the complex, after five years of being unoccupied, and finally returned to the citizens of Venice. All the contributions to the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ 2018 were produced and/or organized by the members of the Little Italy project: a proactive research on Italian architects who were born in the 1980s.
In 2018, the ‘Unfolding Pavilion’ was recognized by the international magazines Dezeen, Metropolis or The Architectural Review, as one of the top venues of the past Biennale. During the three days of its opening, it brought around 1000 visitors to the Giudecca island. Before, during and after its closure, it has been reviewed and positively criticised by art and architecture magazines from the UK, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Chile, Austria, The Netherlands and the US.
WEBSITE
https://www.ritualsofsolitude.com/
Supporters:
Sponsored by: Italien Zentrum / Innsbruck University Department of Architectural Theory / Innsbruck University Dean’s Office / Innsbruck University Office of the Vice Rector for Research / Innsbruck University Faculty of Design and Art / Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.