TIRANA, Nov. 26 – Albania has selected a group of foreign designers for its fourth participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale which will represent the country with the “I have left you the mountain,” a project featuring singing in company, migration and the architecture of displacement.
The project led by Simon Battisti, Leah Whitman-Salkin and Abake is a clear proposal with strong capacity to evoke places and loss through polyphonic singing, or multi part lyric, said the international jury which included renowned names such as Italian architect Elisabetta Terragni and Albanian-French contemporary artist Anri Sala.
“The theme of displacement and migration anchors by its roots deep into Albania’s remote past and also reverberates, bouncing back the recent European history. This pavilion, through its minimalist installation, will try to make people thinking and fill the space with personal and unspoken memories silence and music,” the jury said.
The program for this laboratory will also be articulated with performances, lectures a book and a record.
The 15th International Architecture exhibition scheduled for May to November 2016 will focus on “Reporting from the front” which will be about bringing to a broader audience, what is it like to improve the quality of life while working on the margins, under tough circumstances, facing pressing challenges, says curator Alejandro Aravena.
“The 15th International Architecture Exhibition will be about focusing and learning from architectures that by balancing intelligence and intuition are able to escape the status quo,” he says.
Albania made its first-ever participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010 with the “Beyond Color” exhibition.
