Hyper Drawings and Super Models at The Venice Architecture Biennale 2016

Two threads stand out at this years Venice Architecture Biennale, the desire to put on show hyper-drawings and super-models. Many pavilions and exhibitors developed enormous super-detailed physical models at 1:5 or 1:10 and filled them with a full narrative of space use, furniture and scraps of everyday life. We see a direct link back to the work of Thomas Demand, especially for the models in the Japan Pavilion.

This same effort was invested in countless drawings, many by hand, to create a fresh narrative tool for documenting and explaining the live and vision of the architecture. Of course this trend to design comic-book style or narrative action in architectural renderings and imagery has been a strong trend in the past years. However, many projects this year eschew a data-driven visual information approach to a project and rather focus on an artistic language to explain and visualise a project. There is an implicit rejection of generic rendering and photoshop atmospherics to reimagine what the hand-and-eye can create in 2D. Some of the best work came from students, who tend to no longer learn significant drawing skills within the profession.

Many of the pavilions had super-sized physical models between the scales of 1:1 and 1:25. The Japanese pavilion had some fantastic examples. The swiss pavilion had an exciting full-scale grotto space where you could climb inside and explore. It’s not uncommon to find 1:1 scale models or 1:100+ at the Biennale, but the 1:5–1:25 is in some ways a harder scale, you need to design and customize the interior space objects entirely, as best seen in the Japanese pavilion and their post-Demand spaces. What’s strong about this form of representation is that it forces you to think through real space-use within the building. If the model is big enough, you have to programme all the spaces and detail them with your imagination and assumed occupation. It forces one to imagine the messy reality of space.