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Introduction

The First International Architecture Exhibit: The Presence of the Past (official name translated from the Italian, La presenza del passato), was an architecture exhibit held in Venice in 1980 at the Venice Biennale. It was the first time the Venice Biennale presented architecture in its own exhibit. The Biennale took place from July 27, 1980 to October 20, 1980.

The architecture exhibition was directed by the Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi. The main exhibit was a collection of twenty facades titled La Strada Novissima, held in the Corderie dell’Arsenale. In addition to La Strada Novissima, the exhibition included a show about architecture critics, an homage to the architects Ignazio Gardella, Mario Ridolfi, and Philip Johnson, along with several other smaller displays.

Content

Planning

The exhibition was planned by The Director of the Architectural Section along with the Advisory Commission and with assistance from Charles Jencks, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Vincent Scully. The Advisory Commission included Costantino Dardi, Rosario Giuffre, Udo Kultermann, Giuseppe Mazzariol, and Robert Stern.

Attractions

The main event was the Strada Novissima. It was a full scale street presenting facades by twenty different architects. There were meant to be twenty, but one did not display. The architects were selected by a panel consisting of Paulo Portoghesi, Charles Jencks, and Robert Stern. The entry façade was designed by Paulo Portoghesi. The architects of La Strada Novissima included: Constantino Dardi, Michael Graves, Frank Gehry, Oswald Mathias Unger, Robert Venturi, Leon Krier, Josef Paul Kleihues, Hans Hollein, Allen Greenberg, Rem Koolhaas, Ricardo Bofill, Charles Moore, Robert AM Stern, Franco Purini, Stanley Tigerman, Studio Grau, Thomas Gordon Smith, Arata Isozaki. Christian Portzamparc was selected for a façade but opted out. “The exhibition later traveled to Paris for the Festival d’Automne, in the ancient hospital of La Salpetrière, with the addition, this time, of the façade by Portzamparc and, was later taken to San Francisco, in the pavilion at Fort Mason, thanks to the generous support of a local association of the Friends of the Biennale, chaired at the time by Virginia Westhover.”

The facades were to be full scale (no scaled down or up models were permitted). The cost of each façade was to be approximately $4,000. The façade was to span the distance between two existing building columns, approximately 7 meters. The façade was to entirely cover the existing columns and was to be fixed to the structure above.

Upon entering a façade, visitors would be exposed to a display about the architects work.

Critics Exhibit

The critic exhibit was a display by architecture critics as a response to contemporary work. The centerpiece, by Charles Jencks, was a large six-sided leaning pencil and a large white book sunk partly into the ground with the text, “All the isms have become wasms.”

Catalog

A catalog was published as a supplement to the exhibition. As an introduction, the catalog starts with a series of essays by Paulo Portoghesi, Vincent Scully, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Charles Jencks; as well as a description of the formal requirements of La Strade Novissima. The catalog continues with an homage to Gardella, Johnson, and Ridolfi. The continuation and vast majority of the catalog displays the material that had been handed in by the exhibitors. The catalog does not include an index and the majority of images are monochromatic. The catalog does not include photographs of the built exhibition. Visitors

The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale was attended by approximately 40,000 people.

Citations