Enjoy the View

Michael was invited together with the team of "Ebner and friends (EF)" to participate in the this years 12th Intl. Architecture Exhibition in Venice. The Biennale gives an overview about the status quo and work of contemporary Architecture  worldwide and exists out of several Pavillions and Areas in which around 200 Architects from all over the world present their entries. EF was invited

Biennale Awards

The international Jury or the 12th International Architecture Exhibition has decided to confer the official awards if the Architecture Biennale as follows:

Golden Lion for for the best National Participation to the Kingdom of Bahrain 
(Curators : Noura Al-Sayeh, Fuad Al-Ansari, 
 Commissioner : Ministry of Culture and Information, Bahrain)


The motivation of the International Jury :
Given the range of vast urban developments that Kingdom of Bahrain could have been tempted to include in this Exhibition, the jury was impressed by the choice, instead, of a lucid and forceful self-analysis of the nation’s relationship with its rapidly changing coastline. Here transient forms of architecture are presented as devices for reclaiming the sea as a form of public space: an exceptionally humble yet compelling response to People meet in architecture, the theme proposed by Exhibition Director Kazuyo Sejima.

This was the first year that Bahrain had participated in the affairs in Venice. In a statement, the nation’s culture minister, Mai Bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, said that the nation had hoped to "portray in an objective way a segment of our urban landscape, sharing with you the challenges, which lay ahead of us in the hope that a shared debate can be raised."

It was exciting to see, in a world of parametric architecture, a project which was very poetic by transferring history and culture from Bahrain to Venice. The Architects demounted the fisher-huts in bahrain, rebuilding them in Venice. Visitors can sit in the huts, a storyteller reports about the history and the present of Bahrain and the Gulf joining the guests in the huts. A really very impressing work. Congratulations to Noura, Fuad and their team.

Golden Lion for the best project :  junya.ishigami+associates, Japan
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement : Rem Koolhaas
Golden Lion in memoriam : Kazuo Shinohara