Trajectories of Elements – The exhibition of Japan at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021

The exhibition of Japan at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, installation view; photo © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit.

Trajectories of Elements – The exhibition of Japan at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021

Entitled “Co-ownership of Action: Trajectories of Elements” and curated by architect and educator Kozo Kadowaki, the exhibition of Japan at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale consists of an entire old wooden house which has been disassembled and moved into Japan’s pavilion at the Giardini della Biennale in Venice.

Named Takamizawa House after its original owner, once in Venice the building was not reassembled; at the contrary, some of its elements have been used to create various objects, such as wooden benches, installed in the small garden of the Japanese Pavilion, while others have been scrupulously arranged inside the pavilion to present the articulated architectural history of the house, and that of its inhabitants (and, at large, of Japan) from 1954, when the house was originally built, to 2019, when it was dismantled.

Along with featuring the physical essence of a building, the exhibition engages with more general and subtle concepts, such as the cycle of time and the philosophical relationship between we humans and the objects we create and utilize during our existence.

As the exhibition curator writes: “The trajectory that Takamizawa House has taken in its long journey through time and space to arrive at this place is proof of how our actions are ineluctably rooted in the past and linked to the future. Over the arc of this trajectory, “Takamizawa House” exists as nothing more or less than a set of elements undergoing repeated cycles of aggregation and dispersion. (…) It is in this sense that architecture exists amid a vast space-time continuum, one in which the actions of countless people are constantly appearing and disappearing. “

Co-ownership of Action: Trajectories of Elements
The Japan Pavilion – The 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
Commissioner: The Japan Foundation
Curator: Kozo Kadowaki
Exhibitors: Jo Nagasaka, Ryoko Iwase, Toshikatsu Kiuchi, Taichi Sunayama, Daisuke Motogi, Rikako Nagashima

The small joiner’s workshop in the pavilion basement and one of the wooden benches made from the Takamizawa House remains; photos © Riccardo Bianchini and Federica Lusiardi / Inexhibit.

The exhibition also includes photos, objects, and documents of the house’s former inhabitants that help to contextualize its history; photos © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit.