The Unfrozen crew hit the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale with all the furious energy our 100th episode deserved. A rollicking roundup of robots, pans, picks, porches and pavilions, with special guest interviews: Michele Champagne, Kate Wagner, Marisa Moran Jahn, Bekim Ramku, Rafi Segal, Jeanne Gang, and Mark Cavagnero. And finally, while Rome picked a pontiff, we had our own mini-conclave in Venice and humbly offered up our picks for the 20th Biennale curator. Join us for this extra special centenary episode.
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Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure,” by The Cooper Vane
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Discussed:
- Olly Wainwright: Can robots make the perfect Aperol spritz? – Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 review | Architecture | The Guardian
- Rowan Moore: Venice Architecture Biennale review: ‘a hot mess of pretension’ | The Observer
- The New York Architecture Review crew: Nicolas, Chloe and Sammy
- International Exhibition in the Arsenale
o Robots, hemp, bio-concrete, 8-point font with AI-assisted summaries
o Kate Crawford and Vladan Joier’s megascale text: Calculating Empires
o Bjarke Ingels Group’s entry: Ancient Future, with Bhutanese carvers paced by an ABB robot
o Christopher Hawthorne’s Speaker’s Corner
o Shades of Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Fundamentals edition
- Kate Wagner’s review:
o Dated techno-optimism
o Cannibalism of architecture by art and exhibition design
- National Pavilions:
o Austria: “Agency for Better Living”
o Canada: “Picoplanktonics” by The Living Room Collective
o Denmark: “Build of Site”
o Estonia: “Let Me Warm You”
o Romania: “Human Scale”
o Saudi Arabia: “The Um Slaim School: An Architecture of Connection”
o Slovenia: “Master Builders”
o South Korea: “Little Toad, Little Toad”, but mainly this cat
o Spain: “Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium”
o UAE: “Pressure Cooker”
o USA: “Porch: An Architecture of Generosity”
§ Curators:
· Peter MacKeith, Fay Jones School of Architecture, University of Arkansas
· Rod Bigelow, Executive Director, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art
· Marlon Blackwell, Marlon Blackwell Architects
· Susan Chin, Design Connects
§ Shades of the timber-themed 2021 exhibit, but with a twist
§ Interview with Mark Cavagnero, Mark Cavagnero Associates, on participation in Porch and his work
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