Other Awards at the Venice Biennale

John Hill

9. June 2014

Sales Oddity at Monditalia. All photos by John Hill/World-Architects, unless noted otherwise

In addition to the Gold and Silver Lion awards for National Participation, the jury of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition has awarded a Silver Lion best Monditalia research project and special mentions in all categories.

As part of the Monditalia component of the Biennale, the jury* awarded the Silver Lion for best research project to "Sales Oddity. Milano 2 and the Politics of Direct-to-home TV Urbanism" by Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation. The multimedia piece examines the overlap of media in social spaces, both physically and politically, through surveys and interviews with planners and residents of Milano 2, a 1970s residential area outside Milan that was designed and marketed to entice affluent residents away from the city.

The jury's three special mentions for Monditalia research projects:

"Radical Pedagogies: ACTION-REACTION-INTERACTION"
Beatriz Colomina, Britt Eversole, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister, Federica Vannucchi, Amunátegui Valdés Architects, Smog.tv

"Intermundia"
Ana Dana Beroš

"Italian Limes"
Folder

Radical Pedagogies: "The project illustrates how Italian Architectural thinking was disseminated and impacted in different parts of the world. It highlights the emergence of new poles of architectural thinking in the current world and makes these accessible as a living archive."

Intermundia: "Echoing the ongoing tragedy of Lampedusa, the project evokes, with new documentation and through an immersive experience (inside the box in the photo above), the reality of migration and border-crossing from the South to the North as a defining element of today's European societies."

Italian Limes: "The project deals with the question of borders in the European context. By showing how climate change and new technologies impact on territorial delimitation in the North of Italy, it demonstrates how intra-European borders move, revealing tensions between self-protection and free-circulation."

And the jury's three special mentions for National Participations**:

Canada
"Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15"
Curators: Lola Sheppard, Matthew Spremulli, Mason White (Lateral Office)

France
"Modernity: promise or menace?"
Curator: Jean Louis Cohen

Russia
"Fair Enough: Russia’s past our Present"
Curators: Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design (Anton Kalgaev, Brendan McGetrick, Daria Paramonova)

Special mention to Canada "for its in-depth study of how modernity adapts to a unique climatic condition and a local minority culture."

Special mention to France "for addressing the successes and the traumas embedded in its utopian visions of modernity."

Special mention to Russia "for showcasing the contemporary language of commercialization of architecture."

*The Jury, selected by Director Rem Koolhaas, is composed of Francesco Bandarin (President, Italy), Kunlé Adeyemi (Nigeria), Bregtje van der Haak (The Netherlands), Hou Hanru (China), and Mitra Khoubrou (United Arab Emirates).

**To see Korea's Golden Lion award for National Participation click here, and to see Chile's Silver Lion award for National Participation click here.