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One of the continuing sponsor companies of
Australian participation in the Venice
Architecture Biennale is Austral Bricks.The
company’s technical and research manager,
Cathy Inglis, has been involved in two
previous Biennales and the 2012 exhibit. She
rates the existing Pavilion well as far as display
space is concerned.
It is to be replaced by a new building
designed by the Melbourne architectural
practice of Denton Corker Marshall. Elizabeth
Farrelly rates the DCM design highly (ranking
it potentially in the top four of the 29 pavilions
in the Venice Giadini with Takamasa
Yoshizaka’s 1956 Japan Pavilion, Sverre Fehn’s
1962 Nordic Pavilion and James Stirling’s 1991
Bookshop).Another little architectural gem is
the sculpture courtyard at the Italian Pavilion.
This was designed by Carlo Scarpa in 1952,
but fell into disrepair, and has been recently
restored; it is a beautiful essay in concrete
and brickwork.
2012 Biennale - FORMATIONS
The creative directors for Australia’s exhibit at
the 2012 Venice International Architecture
Biennale were Anthony Burke,Associate
Professor and Head of the School of
Architecture at the University of Technology
Sydney (UTS) and Gerard Reinmuth, director of
TERROIR Architects and 2010 Visiting Professor
at the Aarthus School of Architecture
(Copenhagen) and Professor in Practice at
UTS in 2011.
As a catalogue background for the Australian
exhibit, Burke and Reinmuth wrote ‘Formations:
the plasticity of practice,’ a manifesto that
would frighten Marx and Engels. But the
exhibit was not as daunting as the manifesto.
In basic terms it was an exposition presenting
the versatility and innovation of non-standard
architectural practices and their outputs that
demonstrate the possibilities of expanded
roles for architects.
To find restructured and broadened
architectural practices, Burke and Reinmuth
surveyed Australian architects. Reinmuth
explained that they “received 125 replies, of
which 32 were judged to be of a high
The 2012 Architecture and 2013 Art
Biennales will be the last uses for the
Cox-designed Australian Pavilion before
being demolished to make way for a new
permanent structure.The outgoing pavilion
has had critics; being labeled
“anachronistic”,“corrugated kangaroo
architecture”,“a backyard dunny”,“a
shed-house”, and a “difficult space” to
curate.These criticisms fail to acknowledge
the success of its Australian image in the
eyes of most international visitors over 25
years. Sydney Morning Herald architecture
critic, Elizabeth Farrelly, at least puts the Philip
Cox design into context as a “temporary
pavilion” and notes that it “is as bright as a
rosella on a handrail and as blithe as a
cresting wave”. Indeed the Australian
pavilion offers visual relief from the majority
of other pavilions, which because of their
windowless walls and over-scale entries, give
the impression of a jumble of electricity
substations from various decades.Within the
context of its design and construction time
and the generosity and rapid response of its
original sponsors, the existing Australian
pavilion represents a triumph.
