When flying across the Alps that evening, I was seeing the beautiful snow caps and take with me a freeze frame in my mind, just how wonderful the world is. And that gives me a sense of awareness, how this journey to Venice would be a different experience than many others. The journey from Weimar took almost 12 hours by it self to reach Venice in the evening, but this time I would bring with me a moment of architect’s soul in me.

bienalle venice 2008

The site was the whole Venice island, and as I choose only to see the architecture exhibition (there were also art, music, dance, cinema, and theatre), we decided to go to Arsenale where the architecture exhibition is and then later on to Giardini, where the pavilions of many countries are.

This year’s Biennale is titled “Architecture Beyond Building”. And so as an entrance in Arsenale, was this area where words have no meaning, the sight was so overwhelmingly emotional that I felt a rush of love for architecture in my vein punctured my heart. The entrance area was a dark space, with calming music and two arched screen on which projections of forms in colors and light were mingled in harmony. It made me feel as if I’m in an architectural heaven and it was by far the most probable of how it would look like.

Each step after that was more spectacular, well if you see things on a website, you might only feel as it can be only 3d models, but being there and can actually touch and feel them, was a surreal thing. The place for this was an unused area of dock or may say docklands. It was already disheveling and bad in condition, but the space that was created in it would make us think, this is a sight you would never imagined to be in, when it was only old storage rooms. The ceilings of these spaces are high, which let the creativity of architects run free.

Ideas have no limits here; this time the essence of architecture is being recaptured. What each architect’s opinion is important to what the result of their creation, and mainly we are talking about space here, not form, not building, because that is where the term got mixed up. Architects stars such as; Zaha Hadid, Frank O Gehry, Coop Himmel Blau, An Te Liu and so many others are congregated in this event. It is of no surprise that the ambience of creativities is alarmingly high.

Another point that was also being presented there was the emergence of urban design and planning. Whether we like it or not, our actions as an architect give an influence to a higher level of planning. And that is where urban design is translated as beyond building, which is a branch of this architecture exposition.

In Giardini, many of the countries who are participating in this exhibition do use some famous architects, but mainly also from educational side (university levels). Therefore it was quite a contrast between these two, but both are equally mesmerizing and enchanting. In this area, each country has its own building; many European countries are participating, but some Asian countries have their pavilions near the Arsenale main building. May be it was due to site’s and space limitation, but all in all, it was a very big show of force in architecture creativity.

I particularly like the Italian pavilion; it was very large of course, since they are the host. It also presenting so many pixels of its new architecture feature embeds with the theme of this biennale. The Danish pavilion would be my second choice with the giant globe and interactive tools. After that comes the Belgian, even though the show case it self was empty. The title was “after the party” it lays the understanding of a space of fun, interpreted by the tons of this confetti on its floor. It brought up some marks for its visitor, a mark that we have visited the Belgian’s party. A sweet reminder; try to have as much fun as possible by throwing confetti in the air, and see how the effect clench your heart. The rest have lacked the positive energy one should try to put up on this type of exhibition.

The day ended in a flash of time, when the lights are lighted, the sun sets on the water edge, while a cup of hot vanilla latte was served. Resting on a bench and sip through the drink, my mind was captured in a zen state, absorbing the fantastic creativity environment. I am in love again with architecture for the millionth of times.