Australia 2018

Title: Repair
Commissioner: Janet Holmes à Court AC
Curators: Baracco+Wright Architects with Linda Tegg.
Exhibitors: Baracco+Wright Architects, Bower Studio, Collins and Turner, D-Lab, RMIT University, Gilby + Brewin Architecture, Iredale Pedersen Hook, James Mather Delaney, Kerstin Thompson Architects, MADA (Monash Architecture Laboratory), Neeson Murcutt Architects Pty Ltd with Sue Barnsley Design Landscape Architecture, NMBW Architecture Studio with Wil Goodsir, Robin Boyd, Woods Bagot with Renewal South Australia

Addressing the theme of Freespace set by curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara for the Biennale Architettura 2018, “Repair” addresses the call ‘to stimulate discussion on core architectural values’ and focuses on architecture that integrates built and natural systems to effect repair of the environment through three installation: the first is made of ten thousand plants inside and outside of the Pavilion, including 65 species of Western Plains Grasslands. This component of the exhibition, entitled Grasslands Repair, will serve as a reminder of what is at stake when we occupy land – just one per cent of these threatened species are left in their native ecosystem; an experimental video series, entitled Ground, showcasing fifteen Australian projects that unpack diverse iterations of repair, which will be projected inside the Pavilion. A third installation, Skylight, incorporates lighting to simulate the sun’s energy required to sustain the plants inside the Pavilion. Through each of these works, the curators aim to provoke a rethinking of how we value and therefore create the built environment.