Greek Tourism Creations Go To Venice Architecture Biennale

1962 Xenia Hotel, Spetses | Philippos Vokos
Source: Photographic Archives of Benaki Museum / www.tourismlandscapes.gr

Greek tourism’s history of architecture of the last 100 years will be presented at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, which opens on 7 June. This will be Greece’s 10th participation in the architecture exhibition in Venice.

This year’s La Biennale di Venezia exhibition is curated by Rem Koolhaas and is titled “Fundamentals.”

Greece will engage the single theme “Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014” and show the process of the erasure of national characteristics in favor of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language and a single repertoire of typologies.

Landscape | Photo: Yiorgis Yerolympos / www.tourismlandscapes.gr

The Greek participation in the exhibition is directed and curated by the National Commissioner architect and professor Yannis Aesopos, under the title “Tourism Landscapes: Remaking Greece.”

It explores the role of tourism as a vehicle of modernization of Greece through the emergence of constructed tourism landscapes: hotels and resorts, organized beaches, archaeological sites and museums, public space designs and infrastructure facilities.

1962 Megali Akti Beach, Vouliagmeni, Attica | P. Vassiliadis, E.Vourekas, P. Sakellarios
Source: Κ. Megalokonomou Archive / www.tourismlandscapes.gr

Moreover, it focuses on the concurrent (re)shaping of Greek national identity that is enhanced through the contact of the “other,” the foreign, new and global element, which the activity of tourism presupposes.

The exhibition examines and presents –through examples of both built and unrealized projects as well as through new designs developed for the exhibition by Greek and foreign architects– architectures of tourism as tools for the modernization of the country and the shaping of its identity.

Photo © www.tourismlandscapes.gr

The exhibition “Tourism Landscapes: Remaking Greece” presented in the Greek pavilion consists of two parts:

The archival part presents the architectural production of tourism landscapes in Greece in the last 100 years. It is presented as a continuous surface of images placed on the surrounding walls of the Greek Pavilion’s interior. It is made of three sub-parts: photos of landscapes are placed on the lower part of the walls’ surfaces; they are topped with photos and drawings of tourism architecture and punctured by photos of “identity elements” which introduce the anthropological dimension.

The New Projects part is placed in the center of the Pavilion and presents the proposals of 15 Greek and foreign architects for a tourism inhabitation in a Greek sea-side landscape. These projects – produced specifically for the Biennale exhibition – are presented through models on identical stands of various heights that create an interior geometric “island landscape.” The coexistence of Greek and foreign architects refers to the interaction between local and foreign that tourism presupposes.

Venue: Greek Pavilion, Giardini Ca’ Giustinian, San Marco 1364/A, 30124 Venezia
Hours of Operation: 09:00 – 18:00

The 14th International Architecture Exhibition will run until 23 November 2014.

For further information, press here.