Review: John Wardle installation in Venice

By Penny Craswell

If the purpose of architectural installations is to explore ideas, experiment with new materials and test new forms, then the installation “Somewhere Other” currently on show in Venice has well and truly achieved its brief. John Wardle Architects was one of only two Australian architecture studios (along with Room 11) selected to show as part of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and worked with a range of collaborators on this work.

Somewhere Other by John Wardle Architects and collaborators. Image: Peter Bennetts

The exhibition theme this year, across both this exhibition and the whole biennale, is “Freespace”, through which curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Irish studio Grafton Architects raise questions about how people relate to buildings and vice versa, what is private and what is public space, and what is the architect’s role in this equation.  Read more