Modernism’s dreams – and nightmares – at the Venice Architectural Biennale

An eccentric English aristocrat who constructed a 20-mile network of underground corridors to avoid coming into contact with his fellow humans on his country estate; a Japanese dentist who has amassed an enormous collection of decorative details from buildings spanning a century, retrieved from Tokyo demolition sites; the German inventor of ‘Scalology’, who has spent 60 years studying staircases; and Inuit soapstone carvings of a Cold War early-warning station and of an airport terminal are among the surprises offered by the 14th Venice International Architecture Biennale.

The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is this year’s artistic director. With his team of researchers, he has not only composed a fascinating show — Elements of Architecture in the Central Pavilion at the Biennale Gardens — but by insisting on the announcement further in advance than usual of the theme to be tackled by the national pavilions (Absorbing Modernity: 1914–2014) he has also shaped a more co-ordinated overall view of the chosen subject than ever before. The theme has given rise to a variety of thought-provoking reflections on both Architectural Modernism and its impact on those who have lived with the results.

The Architecture Biennale was launched in 1980 and, since 2000, has expanded rapidly and fruitfully, alternating regularly with the Venice Art Biennale. There are 65 national pavilions this year, with ten countries — Costa Rica,  Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, New Zealand and Turkey — participating for the first time, 22 official collateral events and scores of other fringe displays. For the first time it will have the same duration as the Art Biennale, continuing until 13 November.

Elements of Architecture has developed out of a two-year research programme, involving a host of experts from academia and industry, at the Harvard School of Design. This back-to-basics display and commentary is historical, contemporary and sometimes futuristic in its examination of the primary components of building: ceiling, window, corridor, floor, balcony, fireplace, façade, roof, door, wall, stair, ramp, toilet, escalator and elevator.

The oldest exhibit here is in the ‘fireplace’ section, a detached piece of a Neanderthal cave floor, from Spain, dating back 228,000 years, and among the newest are an ‘intelligent’ toilet that can measure glucose and hormone levels in urine (useful for diabetics and for women trying to conceive, respectively) and prototypes of elevators that travel not only up and down but also sideways.