The Venice Biennale of Architecture may have been a critical bust--both the Times' and the Guardian's people panned it, complaining that it's a book in exhibition format, or text and videos but no architecture--but I have to say, it works OK for me as a blog.
MoMA's A&D Dept. and some other folks--a lot of other folks, actually--have whipped together the Venice Super Blog, with a veritable DVD-ful of audio interviews, video clips, and Giardini gossip. It's a bit too inside football sometimes, and sometimes the posters are a bit too pleased with themselves for attending [gee, if the "entire Architecture World" really is under the stairs of the British Pavillion with you, who's supposed to be reading this?], but there's interesting enough content to make it worth reading/listening/watching.
Some personal picks: Olafur Eliasson talking about his collaboration with architects, including work on the Icelandic Concert and Conference Centre, and David Adjaye's pavillion for an OE installation. Here's a wrap-up of a panel discussion about the pavillion project, Your Black Horizon. And here's a photo of a 1:1 mockup of the IC&CC semi-reflective crystalline facade. [above]
Rem Koolhaas and his thinktank side, AMO, did a presentation on resort developments in Dubai--Olafur calls it "Rem talking about his golf course project in Dubai"--and the modernist building boom throughout the Persian Gulf. Here's a brief interview, and here's an even briefer recap.
Besides more useful tags or navigation, it's the one thing VeniceSuperBlog could've done better: raw, liveblogged info. Maybe it's a problem of too many chief curators and not enough interns.
