Of the pavilions that I’ve visited so far during this biennale, the American pavilion is the best. I am aware that, as an American – however far removed from my home country – I may maintain some unnoticed bias, but I’ve made this assertion with care and am prepared to defend it. The German pavilion, for example, is impressive, but it is not the best. When you enter Germany, the large main hall is empty of furniture, but not of sound. In fact, it is the sound that greets you before you ever navigate around the large black wall that divides the inside from the doorway. It’s a sound that reminded me of generic-hollywood-big-budget sci-fi film, that sort of vibrating bass note which indicates that whatever space-related high-tech mechanism that will momentarily be shown with sweeping drone photography is very large and very important indeed.
Apt, I felt, for the scene on the interior. The three large walls are completely illuminated with shifting vibrant orange and red maps and scenes from world cities, showing the tremendous amount of heat generated and experienced there. If that were not enough, the wing to the right contains a furnace and a heat-sensitive camera where you can take a selfie of your heat-mapped self in a very hot room.
The left wing, on the other hand, shows what mitigating effects that trees have on excess heat in a very physical manner; they installed three of them in the space. The adjoining room is rather like a large closet, and covered floor-to-ceiling in charts and information. It’s still all about heat and global warming, and has a whole section about trees producing oxygen, sequestering carbon dioxide, releasing humidity and cooling their surroundings.
The German pavilion is certainly impressive, but in the way an infographic is impressive. They succeeded in sharing both in-depth knowledge and making it concrete enough to be easily understood and shared. It lacks something, however. It lacks something that is perhaps even more noticeable if you have attended the Biennale regularly for a few years, as I have. When I enter Germany, I expect it to be transformed. The floors torn out. Walls removed. Chain link fences. Or maybe it’s a factory, a warehouse, and there are workers and machines. Or there’s a functioning bar on the roof with views of the lagoon and respite from the crowds. There’s life and movement and something unexpected built or building or being built in the space. This is the Biennale of Architecture after all, but the only constructed thing in the pavilion was, as near as I could tell, the boring black wall blocking the light from the doors so that the ominous projections would function.
Contrast this with the American pavilion. Like Germany, it has a singular focus: the porch as an architectural element. Unlike Germany, there is everything else, but to understand this, let me tell you about porches. In the United States, most people live in detached houses, and many houses, particularly in the south-east, have a front porch. Even the most modest of homes can have a small covered terrace around the front door with space for a chair or two, and even the most modest of homes is made more welcoming and somehow-at-the-same-time more grandiose by its porch. It’s certainly not an architectural element unique to the United States, in fact a part of the information found inside the pavilion traces its roots throughout history and includes examples like classical colonnades and porticos and even the inuit antechambers found outside the buried entrance of cold weather homes. But there are also many examples deeply embedded in American cultural history, like the endless porches of mid-century board-walk hotels and an entire section devoted to Sergio Leone and his instant western towns. (A false front and a porch is enough to make Cinecittà recognizeably American.)
There are future porches as well, in diagrams and models and research studies, like one which asks whether a porch would make a temporary mass-produced dwelling, such as used for disaster relief, more acceptable and comfortable. There are large magnificent porches, like one that is nearly a public park, and humble-yet-important ideas such as the porch included in plans for a new type of homeless shelter which gives residents private safe-zones for sleep and the keeping of belongings. These are just a few examples of the seemingly hundreds. There are so many iterations examined at such depth that the pavilion ‘reads’ like an unpublished chapter from Rem Koolhaas’s famous Elements of Architecture. In many of these studies, the porch is presented as a transitional zone: between the public street and the private dwelling, between the inside and the outside, between conditioned and un-conditioned. It is a place where the resident, no matter if they are king or accountant, can present themself to and interact with the population on the street. It is where, as one of the architects said, you can enjoy the changing seasons in tea-mug and sofa comfort. It is where shade is used to encourage the house’s ventilation.
Best of all the examples given, though, is the very real one constructed on the front of the pavilion itself. The entire neo-classical facade has been buried behind a jutting angular wooden covered porch, upon which the team has left cushioned chairs and swings. It functions in exactly the way the literature on the inside of the pavilion predicts. I enjoyed the shade, chatted with strangers, listened to music, and just, frankly, hung out on the porch. And I wasn’t alone. It was difficult to get pictures, actually, through the crowds that were just there. Just hanging out there, just like me.
So, like the German pavilion, the American’s built a place with tangible evidence of their theme, and like Germany, there is available a large amount of in-depth information. (Actually, a larger amount and deeper. You could spend days there just studying the material.)
Unlike Germany, however, the American pavilion is comfortable and inviting. It’s imposing and also somehow social and practical, because it’s a porch.
