The Changing Room, Venice Biennale of Architecture

Venice, Italy

Photo © Christian Richters

Architects: UNStudio

Location: Biennale of Architecture , Venice, Italy
Year: 2008

For this year's international architecture biennale in Venice UNStudio has produced ‘The Changing Room’ as part of the exhibition 'out there: architecture beyond building' curated by Aaron Betsky

The UNStudio installation in the Arsenale explores the transformative potential of the material world. Just like clothes designers, architects offer alternate looks and identities, age and income-appropriate shells. These constructions consist of a miscellaneous package of endogenous and exogenous values; things and ideas that inherently belong to architecture and its traditions, and things and ideas that do not, but that nevertheless profoundly influence architecture. How to deal with this? Can architecture still have autonomy? According to UNStudio the lesson is to ‘switch it on, switch it off’… to find autonomy in brief moments of liberation.

The installation structure shows an architecture that is as supple as textile, in which floors, walls and ceilings flow into each other. On the inside, the visitor encounters a kaleidoscopic world of people posing, inviting voyeurism, and seeking transformation in their own conceptualizations of the changing room.