A piece of green island is situated at the centre of a room at the Australian Pavilion to address to the repair of grasslands and endangered plant community by considering the pre-settlement conditions in architecture. The exhibition will run from May 26 to November 25, 2018 at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Titled Grasslands Repair, the Australian Pavilion is curated by Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright of Baracco+Wright Architects, in collaboration with artist Linda Tegg, the team have curated a multi-sensory living installation, which is intentionally designed to disrupt the viewing conditions through which architecture is usually understood.

The curators used 10,000 plants inside and outside of the Pavilion, including 65 species of Western Plains Grasslands. Envisioned as the most important component of the exhibition, the Grasslands Repair will serve as a reminder of what is at stake when we occupy land – just one per cent of these threatened species are left in their native ecosystem. 

The curators transformed this fact into a field of vegetation, allowing visitors to enter a physical dialogue between architecture and the endangered plant community.

"We have often struggled with our relationship as architects when considering the use of land – it’s no small act. We believe there is a role for architecture to actively engage with the repair of the places it is part of, which our exhibition will communicate. We hope the discussion we’re presenting will engage the profession and initiate a legacy of the Biennale Architettura 2018," said Curators Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright.

Image © Italo Rondinella, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

Alongside this, Linda Tegg and Baracco+Wright Architects have made an experimental video series, entitled Ground, showcasing 15 Australian projects that unpack diverse iterations of repair, which is being projected inside the Pavilion. 

The Pavilion also includes the third installation, called Skylight, it incorporates lighting to simulate the sun’s energy required to sustain the plants inside the Pavilion. Through each of these works, the curators aim to provoke a rethinking of how we value and therefore create the built environment.

Addressing the theme of Freespace set by curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, Repair will address the call "to stimulate discussion on core architectural values’ and validate the ‘relevance of architecture on this dynamic planet". 

"It will focus on architecture that integrates built and natural systems to effect repair of the environment, and in so doing, mend or improve other societal, economic and cultural conditions. Through this lens, this exhibition will provoke new relevance and roles for architecture," stated in the Pavilion's manifesto.

The Pavilion also focuses on Australia’s buildings and cityscapes as they have largely been constructed to separate people from the natural environment. 

"Consequences of this disregard are now being felt, resulting in a shift in thinking amongst built environment disciplines, towards repairing the natural environment as a framework for urban form. Repair aims to advocate a role for architecture among the many players it takes to restore something."

The curators invited a team of local experts to reflect on architecture from unconventional positions so that the theme could be more deeply explored. The wider team supporting the creative directors includes architect and anthropologist Paul Memmott, landscape architect Chris Sawyer, landscape architect and urban designer Tim O’Loan, ecologist David Freudenberger, curatorial advisor Catherine Murphy, architects Lance van Maanen and Jonathan Ware.

Through the team’s expertise in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, ecology, indigenous culture and conceptual thinking, a diverse filter can be applied to the gaps, possibilities and issues facing Australian architects who work in one of the most diverse and ecologically and culturally sensitive landscapes in the world, to create architecture not yet fully imagined.

Repair is the seventh exhibition coordinated by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, will be on view from May 26th to November 25th, 2018 in the Giardini and the Arsenale, and around other venues in Venice.

All images © Rory Gardiner, unless otherwise stated.

> via Venice Architecture Biennale