Nicholas de Monchaux Presents Exhibit at the Venice Biennale, US Architecture Pavilion
Nicholas de Monchaux
Local Code Venice / Ecology of Strangers
The 13th Venice Architecture Biennale US Pavilion
September 21-23, 2012
BCNM Executive Committee member, Nicholas de Monchaux will be participating in the 13th Venice Biennale as part of the US Architecture Pavilion exhibit titled Spontaneous Interventions : Design Actions for the Common Good. The exhibit won a special mention from the Golden Lion Jury. De Monchaux is also leading a workshop, seminar and design charrette, Local Code Venice / Ecology of Strangers, that focuses on the relationship between the city of Venice and its lagoons.
De Monchaux seeks to re-engage the historic interdependence between the city of Venice and the greater Venetian lagoon, through proposing a programmed, ecological re-development of the many dozens of abandoned islands that litter the lagoon’s outer horizon. Such work may be essential to Venice’s future, even as it mirror’s the city, and the lagoon’s historic interdependence.
From the workshop website:
Up to 20 participants will join Nicholas de Monchaux, a featured exhibitor in Spontaneous Interventions, workshop co-director Sandro Bisa, and a range of local architects, landscape ecologists, and urbanists for three days together in the lagoon. As well as background information on the lagoon, its changing ecology, and landscape of abandoned territory, the workshop will involve an introduction to the parametric urban design software —Local Code and the Finches plug-in for Rhino/Grasshopper — developed by de Monchaux and his collaborators at UC Berkeley (the use of this software by participants is encouraged, but by no means required). Participants will have the opportunity to have design work leading from the workshop exhibited at the pavilion, (as part of a rotating display) from October 25 until November 25.
Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect, urban designer, and theorist. As well as directing his Oakland-based design practice, he is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves on the executive committee of the the Berkeley Center for New Media. He is the author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT Press, 2011), an architectural history of the Apollo spacesuit, as well as related themes of mid-century media, fashion, technology, and nature.