If you've already visited the Venice Superblog, you probably know too much. No intention to describe the Venice Biennial here, just to post some nice things I saw along the way, like this photo as a representation of Los Angeles, in the Arsenale.
As has been written all over the place, this was not the most fascinating exhibition, as the main part consisted of facts prettily illustrated to look a bit like contemporary art, a bit like science,
a bit like wacky corporate info and a whole lot like Koolhaas' WIRED issue of a couple years ago. I'm more interested in proposals than facts so I'll concentrate more on the pavilions that didn't take the main theme too seriously.
First off the ultra fabulous and supremely weird Japanese pavilion which featured
the work
and inspirations of architect Terunobu Fujimori. Not only is his work , umm,
particular, 
but what can I say about carving an architectural model AND it's base
out of a single tree trunk? The only place I'd seen his work in the past was of course Casa Vogue...
The Austrian Pavilion featured an exhibitit called Rock over Barock (!) and featured 2 Hans Hollein and one Frederic Kiesler project from the 60's and some contemporary works inspired by these. Holleins' Superbuilding is propably the single most inspiring image in the biennale...
The Korean Pavilion featured a show on Housing: how it gets chosen, built, placed in the city etc. Apparently housing gets built by catalogues; you draw the building, a pamphlet gets published, people choose and buy from the catalogue and from 1-1 mock ups, and the thing gets built if it sells well enough.
Also apparently they are running out of "last homes" or graves,
and they have to invent new techniques
to properly bury their own.
The French pavilion featured Daniel Buren's fantastic striped cylinders on the facade, something I seem to have subconciously reffered to in the Cloud House, though I'd never actually seen them.
Inside the pavilion had been turned into a squat with 20 young architects DJs artists bla bla living and rotating for the duration of the biennale.
The idea is great and fresh etc but I found the scaffolding thing kind of ugly and borng and even passe, if I may say so. Other things to check out are the Cypriot participation which featured projects about the "green line",
and I particularly liked this inhabitable frame that could be transfered and transformed into many differered buildings. The idea is not new
but the result was super interesting. The Dutch pavilion featured a historical exhibition of utopian projects for cities,
like Constants' bridges etc. Not a challenging or attention grabbing show but definetly full of great encyclopedic content,
and the set-up was hip as usual.
Finally the Americal pavilion focused on the destruction from Hurricane Katrina, and projects
that propose solutions for the flood striken area.
According to Rafael who made this with Nikola, this is a website for an ad agency, and probably it's the coolest ad agency website ever. 
You take objects from the screen (a shark, a stereo, a shirt or a shoe ?) and you throw them in the pot, choosing your desired cooking level and/or result. 
Then you get an animation where the shark eats the stereo which eats the shirt which eats the shoe, looped for ever and ever until you decide to share it with your friends.
or you get a Dreamburger, of course.
Yes it's saturday so it must be Book Day. I've had this book for quite a while, seems like a super nice collection. Have a look:
Cedric Price: from the Generator: White Oak, Florida series, 1978-80
Massimo Scolari's total Pink Floyd metaphysical fantasy Addio Melampo,1975
Ettore Sottsass' The Planet as Festival: Gigantic Work, Panoramic Road with View on the Irrawaddy Rivel and the Jungle 1972-73
and The Planet as Festival: Study for Design of a Stadium to Watch the Stars 1972-73
Superstudio's super Continuous Monument: New York Extrusion, 1969
Paul Rudolph's Elements of the Vertical City, Rome 1965-67
My initial statement is focused on the architecture of schools, one I've always been fascinated by. Greek schools are for the most part based on a pre-fabricated concrete system that I first wrote about 10 years ago in a piece called Alt:Pre-Fab published in 
For that piece I went back and photographed my old highschool, 
during summer time when kids where just hanging around. 
This was from an advertisement about something that doesnt matter too much, but looks promising, maybe for a rustic version of another neen world.
I saw this tree early one sunday morning on my bike ride. Looks kind of like a dick I guess.
A deer scared by a pack of wolves. 
Escimoe life in the deep of winter. 
Somebody flying his carpet over Baghdad.
It's London fashion week, and like every season there's a few outfits inspired by the late great Leigh Bowery. 
This time it's a 
Mr Gareth Pugh does a fantastic job of channeling the post human Mr Bowery. Even though the outfits are fantabulous the checkerboard patern has been around the TopShops and the H&Ms for ages now, so we cannot really consider it a fashion statement, just a solution. Maybe it's time to check the calendar, or maybe it's time to head for Hollywood:
Most action/science fiction movies would look soooo much better costumed by Mr Pugh.
This is an utterly fabulous never-used-and-abandoned beachside resort in Taiwan.
Once again I was browsing the 
and also some interesting info in the comments. Now if only these pictures were in color...
If you use Google Earth, try 
This was done by logging onto SL with the two separate accounts on two computers side by side and reading the body data on the 1st account and manually imputting on the second. It was definetly sinister copying your self. Then when the security drama happened (on September 11 no less) they had to reactivate all accounts. I log onto the Habsburg account and I am not myself anymore. 
Instead I see a young, boy-band cute boy with strange hair and naive smile, while getting a "failed to locate body part in database" message. How boring I think, I have re-do myself all over again, but anyway the Habsburg account is the secondary one so it's not really necesary. I turn to the other PC and og onto the "onlyone" only to get the same message but this time I look like a badly tanned and older and more middle-eastern guy with, umm, tits. 
very scary indeed, and I fire away help messages to the support team. After a while I log back on and I am finally myself with only the skin color to adjust, as I am now rather purple. 
The composite city made from projects by 20 young italian offices, in the Italian Pavilion at corderie. Each office did a part of this city, such as the cemetery by DOGMA office and 
this brigde by Menegati Nencini.
This was in a way the most ambitious project in the biennale, with mixed results, as it ended up looking a little like Brasilia. Still it wholy embraced the notion of fantasy utopia, and we always like that.
This was a COUNTRY as a ROOM and a CITY at the same time. There were many doors, and you entered through a hyper-real mirror and fluorecent light corridor. The room took the shape of Belgium, a country that can easily be described as a city or a fuzzy border between countries with more defined identities.
This was a utopia in the main pavilion that is Italia but not about Italy. Looks like a video game city, but I'm just imagining this, since in all the Biennale I didnt see a single mention of video games. And to think that a major part of the kids growing up today spent 1/3 of their time in cities inside video games like Half Life and Grand Theft Auto. Just goes to show that the next biennale should be curated by someone MUCH younger.
This is a city inside a aquarium size snow globe in the Russian Pav. You turn the handle and some romantic nostalgic music plays and snow erupts inside the post-industrial whateverville.
Magic Mountain "city" inside the curious Danish Pavilion, which pretented to look like a chinese pavilion when in fact it looked like a pavilion by the now defunct Danish firm Plot, which now is BIG and JDS. 
Aldo Rossi's Citta Analoga, 1976
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