“Weaving”
Proposal for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition: BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2023 – The Laboratory of the Future.
"Weaving" [collaborative team : Olga Venetsianou, Katerina Michalopoulou, Ioanna Barkouta, Konstantinos Bouras, Dimitris Agathopoulos], placed third in the evaluation for the assignment of the curation of the Greek Pavilion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale 2023.
The architectural proposal "Weaving" seeks to be a spatial reinterpretation of the collective. The design approach is both tactile and digital, as visitors are invited to participate in an installation that aims to approach the modern concept of the laboratory. Following the double interpretation of the laboratory, both as a research space and as a place for creative collective ventures (workshop), the project proposes a platform of actions functioning as a contemporary spatial weaving. Starting from the traditional process of weaving on the loom, "Weaving" transfers the knitting process to a spatial installation. Participation and collective effort form the core of the "Weaving" project, in both material and immaterial terms. The project aims to spatially represent the feeling of a modern laboratory by borrowing snapshots from modern Greek living at different scales. The weaving of different experiences and perspectives of daily life in Greek cities will be the material with which the project will be created.
This process will be presented on two levels, in a spatial installation and in a digital image "weave". At the entrance of the Pavilion, the visitor will be introduced to a spatial "fabric" with threads that cover the length and height of the central rectangular space. The weaving of the threads will be organized on surfaces between which the visitor will be able to move while observing the installation. Between the "woven" surfaces there will be light sources so that the final image of the installation is a composition of the threads woven in the space as well as the shadows projected on the walls of the pavilion. This composition is intended to create a high-level aesthetic result that will also be a spatial reinterpretation of weaving. The visitor will be able to choose either to remain a spectator of the installation, moving between the routes of the "Weaving" or to participate in the project. As the light sources between the "fabrics" are placed on rails, the project viewer, by moving the light position, participates in the project by drastically changing its final form, as the shadows of the weaving on the walls are modified. The participation of the visitors will create within the apparently static installation of the project the possibility of a constantly transforming result.
On a second level, at the end of the path of spatial weaving on the surface that is revealed upon entering the Hellenic Pavilion, a digital weaving of images of the Greek city and daily life will be presented, which will alternate at intervals. The digital collage of photographs will be bounded by the threads of the installation and capture a contemporary presentation of the urban "weave" of Greek cities at multiple scales. The concept of participation governs the entire "Weaving" project and remains pivotal even on the surface of "digital weaving": the photographs that will be presented compose an archive that will result from the input of residents of the Greek cities who will respond to the call of the project "Weaving" and will send snapshots of the modern urban weaving of everyday life in Greek cities. This event will also be the main element of communication with the public in Greece. The collective roots of digital weaving activate the concept of participation as a condition of a modern workshop.
The "Weaving" project seeks in both tangible and intangible, spatial and digital ways to highlight the importance of gesture and participation. The architectural proposal is based in the process of weaving and expands into the field of contemporary practices. Weaving is used as a process of composition of individual materials that produces through a creative process a spatial and architectural outcome. If the correlations, dynamics and contrasts of a contemporary Greek urban experience were transferred to the context of a workshop with participation as a prerequisite, how could we spatially weave the individual composition elements? The spatial weaving proposed by the project is a creative synthesis of individual elements in order to approach a spatial reinterpretation of contemporary Greek urban practices.
