By definition architecture has always aspired to be universal, yet it is grounded in specific environments and cultures, it pertains therefore to the local sphere, with buildings representing living organisms, adapting, changing, and collecting the stories of the people who live or work inside them. As cities expand, new areas are planned and added, but, quite often, they turn into soulless outskirts, anonymous peripheries with no identity that struggle to be human and friendly, revealing themselves as unreal villages that isolate and trap people. There is a place, though, that, thanks to architecture and to new scientific revelations and discoveries, can be turned from local and unfriendly into universal and friendly - space. This is also the main theme of the Slovenian Pavilion at the 14th Venice International Architecture Biennale.
Entitled "The Problem of Space Travel - Supre: Architecture", the pavilion is curated by the Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies (KSEVT, currently directed by Miha Turšič, one of the commissioners of the Slovenian Pavilion) in collaboration with the Yuri A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC), Star City, Moscow. The title of the pavilion is inspired by the book The Problem of Space Travel (1928) written by Slovene engineer and astronautics pioneer Herman Potočnik under the pseudonym Hermann Noordung.
Born in Pola in 1892 (part of Austria-Hungary, nowadays Pula, in the Republic of Croatia), Potočnik studied at the technical military academy near Vienna and, after the First World War, he continued his education specialising in electrical engineering. He prematurely died in 1929 from tuberculosis, shortly aterwards The Problem of Space Travel was published.
Though some of his ideas derived from articles, essays and books published between the 1890s and the early decades of the 1900s, Potočnik was the first researcher who actually presented a concrete project for a space station (his volume was also the first one to feature coloured illustrations about space), while highlighting key points regarding space biology and medicine in dangerous conditions of zero gravity and guessing more practical issues regarding daily life in space such as washing and bathing.
His book was soon translated into other languages becoming pat of the cosmic literature canon and the basis for many other researches and publications. Capturing the imagination of space constructors and creative minds alike, Potočnik became indeed a pioneer of space architecture with futuristic designs such as the inhabitable wheel that in later decades influenced not only technicians and researchers, but also writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and directors like Stanley Kubrick.
As architect Jurij Krpan, curator of the Slovenian Pavilion, states, the main point of the project presented in Venice, is inspiring visitors to turn from "homo sapiens" into "cosmo sapiens", that is human beings with a cosmic and freer perspective, while tackling the space experience from the points of view of art, architecture and culture.
Though small, the space occupied by the Slovenian Pavilion prompts visitors to embark on a wider exploration of the cosmos at different levels, focusing on the possibility of inhabiting space by designing an environment for humans, but also on the opportunity to look at space in connection with the performing arts as Potočnik's work also echoes that of the Constructivist and of modern avant-gardist such as theatre director Dragan Živadinov, the creator of retro-gardism and of post-gravity art.
When visitors enter the space capsule-like environment of the compact Slovenian Pavilion they are first confronted by a Constructivist ambient, can you tell us more about it?
Jurij Krpan: This environment refers to a project launched in 1927 when a group of Slovenian avant-garde artists - Edvard Stepančič, Avgust Černigoj, Giorgio Carmelich, and Josip Vlah - conceived an installation in a group exhibition. It was called the Trieste Constructivist Cabinet and featured a series of sculptures suspended in space to symbolise the fact that the objects had lost their earth-bound gravity. The cabinet was an extraordinary work of art because the artists built an environment with a levitational construction and tried to give viewers a cosmic perspective on objects. Space and the cosmic perspective are rooted in the history of Slovenian arts and culture: the Constructivist Cabinet was dated 1927, while Potočnik published his book about the problems of travelling in space in the following year. All of them were therefore interested in the latest discoveries as science was considered at the time like a new religion.
In which ways can the cosmic perspective inspire the visitors of the pavilion?
Jurij Krpan: The cosmic perspective isn't about travelling and dwelling in space, but about going to space, looking at Earth and seeing things in a completely different way. Miha Turšič, the director of the Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies (KSEVT) talks about the cosmo sapiens as opposed to the homo sapiens, that is a human being with a cosmic perspective on who they are, where they are coming from and where they are going. From the point of view of the cosmo sapiens, national divides are ridiculous and anachronistic: deep sea, the Arctic and the Antarctic are transnational, but so is space, as it doesn't belong to anybody. Visitors can therefore interpret the pavilion as a metaphor to look at things in a different way, from a cosmic point of view.
In which ways do Potočnik's explorations go well with the theme of this year's Biennale?
Jurij Krpan: The theme of this year's event, "Fundamentals", is about re-reading the legacy of modern architecture, and Rem Koolhaas used the tactic of post-modernism to re-introduce us to specific architectural elements. He isolated these archetypes, altered and fetishised them, turning them into symbols. For example, he took the Armstrong ceiling, this low ceiling behind which you hide parts like electricity wires, ventilation pipes, tubes and so on, and turned it into an element on which you can build upon. John Cage did the same in music when he introduced silence not as the condition for doing music, but as a part of the music, as an element of the composition. In architecture the void can be considered as an object, a contribution, it is indeed called "negative space". In our pavilion outer space is an archetype of negative space and when we introduce the space as a negative entity it becomes easier to understand the concept of void as an elementary concept. Besides, Koolhaas broke the Central Pavilion in the Giardini into sections that explore various parts, from ceiling to windows, ramps, roofs and so on; Potočnik studied space structures through detailed drawings and sketches that analysed staircases, walls, doors, windows etc, and the cosmonaut featured in the video screened inside the pavilion is reading from Potočnik's book extracts about these elements.
In the pavilion there is a strong link with the art and space and with the performing arts via the work of Dragan Živadinov - is this a way to show how in space there are no national boundaries, but there are also no barriers between different disciplines?
Jurij Krpan: Contemporary artists do not see themselves as guilds and we don't tend to pigeonhole anymore a painter, an architect or a musician into rigid categories. But people who harbour an interest in space – any kind of interest, be it more technological, architectural or artistic – have a lot in common. Živadinov is a great example. Fed up with conventional and constricting theatrical stages, Živadinov devised an entirely new perspective and, in the '80s, he started investigating the possibilities that innovative stages with the audience under the floor with their heads sticking out could give him. In 1995 he started an epic project entitled Noordung 1995-2045, consisting in a piece which is going to be repeated every ten years. The first show featuring fourteen actresses and actors took place in Ljubljana and was an experiment of weightless theatre with the audience lying on the floor looking up at suspended actors. The second instalment was presented in 2005 inside the model of the International Space Station (ISS) in the hydro-laboratory at Star City, Moscow, with the international space station emerging out of the water and creating an emotional moment for the audience.
The Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies (KSEVT) is one of the curators of the pavilion, what's the aim of this institution?
Jurij Krpan: This centre was built two years ago after Živadinov and his team managed to persuade the mayor of Vitanje, a Slovenian village located near the town where Potočnik's mother was born, to tear down their cultural centre and build a new one. The aim of this centre is to become a residential space for cosmonauts and astronauts who can go there for residency before they leave earth and learn about the literature, poetry, painting, music and architecture created by people inspired by space.
Is this the first time Slovenia gets a pavilion inside the main Biennale space?
Jurij Krpan: Yes, it is. This was a strategic move as, in the past, we used to exhibit at the A plus A Slovenian Exhibition Centre in Venice, but we were further away from the main spaces of the Biennale. Though small, this space in the Arsenale set up at the passage inside the Corderie and the Artiglierie is functional and serves well to the main themes of this year's pavilion, it looks indeed like a space capsule and it seems to be an apt reference to the Trieste Constructivist Cabinet that was set up inside a sort of cupboard-like ambient.
Image credits for this post
1. Herman Potočnik Noordung, The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor, 1928, Figure 84 - The Habitat Wheel. Left: Axial cross section. Right: View of the side constantly facing the sun, without a concave mirror, partially in cross section, Copyright © KSEVT - Treasury of Modernity
2. Herman Potočnik Noordung, The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor, 1928, Figure 88 - Well of the habitable wheel staircase, Copyright © KSEVT - Treasury of Modernity
3. Herman Potočnik Noordung, The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor, 1928, Figure 60 - A room of the space station in the state of weightlessness and which is being furnished; Figure 61 - Writing in the state of weightlessness: for this purpose, we have to be strapped to the tabletop, for example, by means of leather straps in order to remain at the table at all. A man floats in from the next room through the door opening, bringing something with him, Copyright © KSEVT - Treasury of Modernity
4, 5, 6. "The Problem of Space Travel", The Slovenian Pavilion at the 14th Venice International Architecture Biennale. Copyright © KSEVT
11. Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies (KSEVT); Matija Bevk, Aljoša Dekleva, Tina Gregorič, Rok Oman, Vasa J. Perović, Jurij Sadar, Špela Videčnik, Boštjan Vuga, 2012, Photographer: Tomaž Maček, Copyright © KSEVT
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