14. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura – Interiors. Notes and Figures

Il Belgio partecipa alla Biennale di Architettura con il progetto Interiors. Notes and Figures.

Comunicato stampa

Curators: Sébastien Martinez Barat, Bernard Dubois, Sarah Levy, Judith Wielander
Photography: Maxime Delvaux
Collaborators: Benjamin Lafore, Sophie Dars, Mathieu Berger
Graphic design: Gregory Dapra, Laure Giletti

The concept of the interior is fundamental in architectural design. Yet there are very few studies that approach it as a separate field of inquiry. Behind the permanence of buildings’ façades, all sorts of transformations, adjustments and modifications are carried out by successive owners and occupants. Counter to the notion of modernity as an all-consuming phenomenon, a study of our everyday interiors reveals a vernacular architecture in which it seems that modernity itself is being consumed and absorbed.

Focusing on the home, the book Interiors. Notes and Figures records and analyzes the domestic landscapes that result from this process of modification. Based on the documentary evidence of thousands of photographs of home interiors throughout Belgium, it names and identifies the elements of a culture that is specific to these transformations. Photographs, texts, and diagrams pinpoint the ways in which an interior metabolism engenders and correlates forms of life and the life of forms.

Presented in the Belgian Pavilion, the exhibition Interiors. Notes and Figures comprises a series of architectural interpretations of the study’s significant figures in the form of models, treatments of surfaces, and attitudes. Each intervention is accompanied by the pages from the book that locate its point of emergence. Bringing these figures together traces out, beyond their domestic origin, a project landscape that is walkable and reflexive. Interiors. Notes and Figures is envisaged as an operational study that considers the inhabiting practices of built space as potential project resources.

The study Interiors. Notes and Figures, released as a book and exhibition taking place at the Belgian Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale of Venice, is an initiative of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Architecture Unit, in collaboration with Wallonia-Brussels International.