Statement in English | Verena Konrad

→ The Austrian contribution to Biennale Architettura 2018 is a plea for an
approach to design that understands itself as the formulation of ideas. Architecture
as a cultural activity is based on content rather than the physical
realisation of functional diagrams: content that is a vision of living together and
the ability to question and reinvent existing rules. This search for continuous
contextual reinvention enables things of importance to emerge. Large and
small. In relationship with the existing. Things that look back upon and forwards
to all that we can imagine.
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Today, architecture is a broad field with links to many other disciplines. The
complexity of the requirements facing today’s architects and designers means
that permanent, intellectual reassurance is required if architecture and design
are not to dwindle to pragmatism or merge into a neoliberal logic that is dominated
by moments of rationalisation and a search for efficiency in which architecture
finds its niche as a servant of an aesthetic economy. Designers need
theories, concepts, a formulated approach in order to be able to critically reflect
upon the political, social and cultural implications of their own actions. LAAC,
Henke Schreieck and Sagmeister & Walsh describe their work as an abstract
thought-process that seeks a concrete form in which aesthetic, function and
construction are in equilibrium. The basis of this is always an analysis of the task
in its widest social context and of the production conditions which are equally
part of this cultural setting.
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The contribution “Thoughts Form Matter” draws attention to this complexity.
To this end, the three invited teams have addressed the spatial and the historic
context of La Biennale di Venezia, the general subject of “Freespace”, the location
and its references, La Biennale di Venezia as a significant institution and the
pavilion as a setting to which visitors also respond. In three installations, which
overlap and interact both spatially and contentually, LAAC, Henke Schreieck and
Sagmeister & Walsh approach the principle of architecture and design as the
creation of a new context and as a relational dimension. Thereby we interpret
“Freespace” as a spatial and spiritual construct, a complex dynamic system, a
versatile realm, characterised by coexistence. Three spatial installations, which
partly merge into each other, materialise and visualise concepts such as “deviation”,
“atmosphere” and “beauty“ as formulations of this set of ideas that invites
visitors to position themselves as actors in this structure and to adopt their own
approach.