Easy to spot from the Grand Canal, the building where the "Antarctopia" exhibition is based is actually quite difficult to find (Calle dei Garzoni, San Marco 3415, but get a detailed map). Still, this is an exhibition to recommend to all those people interested in extreme and utopian projects. "Antarctopia" also represents the first representation of the Earth's southernmost continent at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Architects have always been inspired by visionary projects: at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale selected researchers came up with projects and ideas surrounding buildings, structures or research centres designed with extremely cold climates in mind and Ukraine presented in that occasion the "Mirage Architecture Project". Inspired to Alexander Ponomarev by an expedition to the Ukrainian Academician Vernadsky research station in the Antarctic, and designed by architects Alexey Kozyr and Ilya Babak, the project consisted in two mobile structures, the Floating Personal Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art for Polar Zones.
Ponomarev is still attracted by inaccessible regions, alien-like frozen wastelands and extremely harsh climates: he is indeed "Antarctopia"'s commissioner, and he has selected, together with the pavilion curator Nadim Samman, a group of international architects and artists who have come up with a series of fascinating projects, displayed on plinths made with the same kind of flight-cases used to transport scientific equipment.
While research stations for scientists are usually rather minimalist as they serve as temporary shelters and they are therefore not extremely exciting from an architectural point of view, "Antarctopia" suggests a series of utopian, futuristic buildings or structures that may turn Antarctica into a desirable location to live in.
The project is also an attempt at creating a trans-national pavilion: though colonised by international explorers, Antarctica is indeed not owned, so it does not fall under the strict national boundaries in which pavilions are divided at the Venice Biennale.
Some of the projects included look at Antarctica as a cultural space that may be occupied by imaginative structures with an arty twist about them.
Alexander Brodsky's "Chess Pavilion" suggests for example Antarctica as the ideal place to play chess surrounded by a contemplative silence and quiet.
Yury Grigoryan explored instead noise in his bell-shaped structure capable of amplifying the subtle movements of ice, snow and wind, and conceiving this capsule (that entirely reveals its architectural form in Summer, but is completely hidden away by ice in Winter) as a shelter where its temporary residents may stop and listen to infinite musical possibilities and soundscapes created by nature.
There is something slightly Constructivist about Alexandr Zelikin's formal exercise, an abstract composition of metal rods, made by the orthogonal projections of three existing drifting ice floes.
Yuri Avvakumov (with Michael Belov)'s "Polar Axis" is a model of a structure composed by two mirrors and a series of ladders, forming an imaginary Constructivist axis of infinite length and symbolising the fight of people striving for the ideal but perceiving the real.
While Jürgen Mayer H. created new architectural landscapes melted into unsettled grounds, Liza Vintova focused on the possibility of creating exterior designs for Antarctic cities by installing objects in the icy landscape that can help triggering positive memories and recollections of one's home.
Futuristic forms and shapes are favoured by many architects involved in "Antarctopia": the transformable Antarctic research facility by Studio Zaha Hadid Vienna moves from biomimicry, bionics and biomorphic design.
The structure is designed to host not just research units, but also permanent and temporary accomodation, public exhibitions, leisure and training spaces, conference halls and observation decks, docking stations, helipads and runways.
Inspired by Captain Nemo's Nautilus, Swift's Laputa, and Verne's Standard Island, Sergey Skuratov proposes a floating lens-liked island rising above the water with an entry bay shaped like a yin sign supported by a submerged tentacular structure.
Alex Schweder took floating to the next level with his "Out of Building Structure" (OBA), an edifice suspended above the ground and hovering above it thanks to the magnetic forces of the South pole.
Hovering in the sky seems to be an option also for Veech Media Architecture (VMA). VMA's "Migrating Cities" project is inspired by migrating penguin groups and consists in a fascinating urban conglomerate resembling a spaceship powered by Space-based Solar Power plants.
The structure is free from fixed foundations and rigid network systems since it flies around but, if need be, it can stop and agglomerate with other communities, adapting to the environments surrounding them.
Among the stand out stations there is definitely the snowflake-shaped solar-powered and wind-driven Arctic Poppy Orangery by Alexey Kozyr and Ilya Babak, a poetic building where researchers could grow plants that need extra low temperatures for development.
Yet Antarctopia is not just about fantasy: the best piece remains the British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI research station, a machine for living in. The physical representation of Archigram's "Walking City", this is the world’s first modular research station.
The first structure built on Antarctica was an Australian base that opened in 1911; more than 50 scientific research stations were set up between July 1957 and December 1958 - the International Geophysical Year. As the years passed, stations become more and more technological.
Designed by Hugh Broughton Architects and engineered by AECOM (UK), Halley VI is the first fully movable and relocatable polar research station in the world. One of the buildings analysed during last year's "Ice Lab" exhibition, the structure is supported on giant skis that call to mind the ski house built in 1991 by Richard Horden Associates. Yet Halley VI is not a small capsule, but a series of interconnected buildings that feature warm and functional interiors like bedrooms with programmable lights to simulate the day and boost the production of serotonin among the residents.
Inspired by Broughton's project, Mariele Neudecker developed a new tank work piece that includes a (3D computer-generated) scale model of the structure submerged in a cloudy Antarctic landscape.
There is one final project that actually has some connections with the current problems Venice is facing - Totan Kuzembaev's "Anti-Briccole". The latter consists in raising the Antarctic pavilion above the sea level through a stilt-like structure. If the Antarctic ice melts down, the world ocean level will indeed rise and all the Biennale pavilions will be submerged, but in this way the building representing the Antarctic would still be visible. Indirectly, the project makes visitors ponder about the damages caused to the foundations of Venice by the monstrous cruise ships passing close to St Mark's Square (an alternative route is currently being developed for the ships), threatening its safety.
At present nobody can say if the future of the Antarctic is a city carved from ice or a spaceship silently floating in the sky. But, for the time being, you can visit "Antarctopia" and try to guess and dream. As an alternative, grab the catalogue accompanying the exhibition: it features a series of exciting essays, one of them also focusing on the floating Museum of Contemporary Art, and a particularly interesting piece by Shane McCorristine about early expeditions in Antarctica and the importance for explorers of recreating a home-like environment at least during Christmas celebrations. Because that's the very final point of all these structures: they may resemble a robotic octopus, an abstract cell-like capsule or a Constructivist module, but providing a shelter and a home for human beings remains their first and foremost goal.
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