Armenia 2016

The exhibition titled “Independent Landscape” located at Holy Cross Church (Chiesa di Santa Croce degli Armeni) of the Armenian Mekhitarist Congregation located at Calle degli Armeni in Venice will be presented as a unique landscape mapping laboratory of post-independent Armenia.

The Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia will focus on study and re-interpretation of spatial transformations and its variations from 1991 to 2016. During the entire period of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, several multidisciplinary research teams working in the field will try to cover different aspects of the Armenian landscape.

The ongoing results of thematic research will be uploaded on www.independentlandscape.am website that will immediately appear on the screens of the pavilion, to highlight the importance of the process and in-progress work as the result itself.

“This pavilion comes to showcase that at this very day and every day human activities alter the landscape. This alteration has a great potential and ambition to be transformed again and later be recognized as cultural value, which will then require to be safeguarded by society and the state”, says Sarhat Petrosyan in his curatorial overview.

Particularly this became evident in 2000 with the European Landscape Convention that pushed conceptual limits of built environment and its consequences by collaborating with manmade and natural heritage with the current environmental discourse.

The Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Armenia, represented by Vartan Karapetian, curated by Yerevan-based architect and planner Sarhat Petrosyan.

The pavilion was realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Armenia, the Boghossian Foundation, Renco S.p.A., Vahe Gabrache and in partnership with the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, Mekhitarist Congregation, Embassy of Armenia to Italy and urbanlab Yerevan.