FOUR "cutting edge and maverick" design practices are to represent an alternative view of Scottish design at the world's biggest architecture festival.
Instead of a formal Scottish pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, featuring well-known architects, four small companies, all based in Glasgow, will represent Scotland by engaging in various projects in the famous canal city, the results of which will be presented at an exhibition this weekend at an "open studio", the Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, a former convent.
With a downturn in the construction economy, making buildings is increasingly hard for young architecture firms, but with the chance to make their names known on the world stage, Scotland's appearance at the Biennale – organised and funded by the British Council, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government – has been designed to showcase the emerging companies instead of better-known peers.
DO Architecture, GRAS, Pidgin Perfect and Stone Opera are this week enacting projects involving the life of the city and its citizens, the results of which will also be shown at an exhibition at the Lighthouse in Glasgow in early 2013.
This Saturday, the exhibition detailing the company's work will open in Venice followed by a reception expected to be attended by leading lights at the festival as well as figures from Scottish design and architecture.
Amanda Catto, international portfolio manager for Creative Scotland, said: "The intention is quite deliberate: to show some emerging practices from a city like Glasgow, which is like much of the world in that there is not much building going on, to study a new way of practising and sharing ideas. It is important that Scotland is there to be part of the discussions for the way forward."
DO Architecture, was founded in 2005 by Adrian Stewart, who trained at Strathclyde University and also teaches at the Glasgow School of Art, and their project involves mapping Venice using a three-foot helium balloon fixed with cameras to reveal a "never before seen" portrait of the city.
GRAS, set up in 2006 by Stuart Falconer, Gunnar Groves-Raines and Steven Orr are moving a mobile gallery around Venice focusing on its many "vera da pozzo" or wellheads, many of which are now out of use. They hope the exhibition will generate a debate over their future use and significance.
Pidgin Perfect, which was founded in 2010 by Dele Adeyemo and Marc Cairns, whose work is against "the marginalisation of Glasgow's low-income citizens" is organising a Banchetto or banquet for people living in the Castello Alto-Basso area of the city to discuss how the Biennale affects their lives, while Stone Opera, set up in 2009 and led by Hanneke Scott-Van Wel and Kathy Li, are to engage children with their "playarchitecture" kit. These life-size building blocks will give children and young Venetians the chance to build their own "mini-Biennale" in a walled garden in the Canaregio area of the city.
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