New Australian Pavilion
John Hill
10. April 2015
Photo: John Gollings
The first 21st century pavilion in Venice’s Giardini della Biennale, the Australian Pavilion designed by Denton Corker Marshall, opens to the public next month when the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, takes place.
Denton Corker Marshall describe their design of the new Australian Pavilion as one "of the utmost simplicity, architecturally expressed as a white box within a black box." Granite panels cover the exterior, some of which swing open to bring daylight to the interior's white walls and polished concrete floors, or to open views to the surrounding gardens. The black mass boldly cantilevers over the edge of the canal that splits the Giardini and its 29 national pavilions into two halves.
The new Australian Pavilion will be inaugurated by artist Fiona Hall, whose multimedia installation, Wrong Way Time, will occupy the building from 9 May until November of this year.
Photo: John Gollings
Photo: John Gollings
Photo: John Gollings
Photo: John Gollings
Denton Corker Marshall won a 2011 competition for the Australian Pavilion. One of their renderings (below) humorously showed the pavilion being shipped to Venice, recalling Aldo Rossi's famous Teatro del Mondo built for the 1979 Venice Biennale, and referencing the previous Australian Pavilion that was designed as a temporary structure by Philip Cox and shipped to Venice in 1988.
