La biennale di Venezia 1980

First international architecture exhibition
“The Presence of the Past”

Michael Graves, Hans Hollein, Léon Krier, Charles Moore, Robert Stern, Robert Venturi, Ricardo Boffil … all the ‘masters’ were present with their recent work. All of them designed and facade for “La Strada Novissima” an idea by architect Paolo Portoghesi who was also director of the exhibition.

With an 150 number gives slides Marc Dubois, our speaker, some reservations about this exhibition and the latest work of Aldo Rossi in Italy and R. Boffil in Paris. First we learn how the idea was born for this biennale that took place in the “Arsenale” (rope factory). The slides give us an overview of the exhibited works and contributions.

On several architects were asked to design a façade for an internal street (the central axis of the exhibition center). The slides of the Biennale and other projects such as designing R. Bofill, brought kontroversiële viewpoints to which provoked an interesting discussion about forms and its necessity. At what cost and limits such architectural approaches justified or not?

There was a fascinating and soothing contribution over Scarpa with a design for a cemetery or rather resting place, because there will die a very different dimension, a different reality, strong and poignant expressed with concrete. Here nature preserves its rights.