House Tour: Views of the Unfurnished Interior

Der Schweizer Pavillon Svizzera 240 der Architekturbiennale Venedig 2018. Das Kuratoren Team Ani Vihervaara (Weisses Oberteil), Li Tavor (schwarz), Alessandro Bosshard (dunkelblaues Hemd) und Matthew van der Ploeg (hellblaues Hemd).

House Tour: Views of the Unfurnished Interior, Adam Jasper, ed., A project by Alessandro Bosshard, Li Tavor, Matthew van der Ploeg, Ani Vihervaara, Catalog, Swiss Pavilion, Svizzera 240 : House Tour, 16th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, 2018, Zurich, Park Books, 2018, including a text by Georges Teyssot, “Framing and Deframing”, pp. 64-73.

240cm is the standard distance between floor and ceiling in residential buildings: the height of the void we inhabit. In its precision, and its emptiness, the number reflects contemporary interior architecture’s condition. In a series of essays, House Tour explores an interior that is both familiar and seemingly uninhabited, critically celebrating a peculiar genre of representation, the architectural photography of an unfurnished interior. The authors – including anthropologists, architecture theorists and art historians – consider the ubiquitous contemporary apartment from an eye-level view, foregrounding the appearance and material presence of the architectural shell. They start out from photographs of unfurnished interiors found on the websites of leading Swiss architecture firms. They have a blank, labyrinthine appearance, with walls intersecting at oblique angles and exits seemingly leading nowhere, and show featureless rooms with seamless transitions between surfaces. House Tour offers answers to the quest for a new language that adequately describes this architecture.

Press release: House Tour, the Swiss pavilion: 2018 – Georges Teyssot, contribution, catalogue, Swiss Pavilion, Alessandro Bosshard, Li Tavor, Matthew van der Ploeg, Ani Vihervaara, (ETH), curators, House Tour, Svizzera 240, 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, May 2018, which received the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

Liens pour consulter les différents articles sur le sujet :

(Article LE MONDE | 2018/06/08) : Quatre jeunes architectes ont été récompensés par le Lion d’or pour leur installation épurée. Architecture _ à la Biennale de Venise, la Suisse sublime le vide

(Article LE MONDE | 2018/06/09) : Analyse. Habiter, ce n’est pas seulement mettre un toit sur sa tête. C’est nouer une relation avec un lieu. Encore faut-il que le lieu en question ait été conçu pour être habitable, rappelle Isabelle Regnier, journaliste au « Monde ». L’architecture revient aux fondamentaux