Exhibition | 29/08/10-21/11/10

Thousands of buildings in the Netherlands lie vacant. Some of them for a week or a few months, many even for years. During the twelfth Venice Architecture Biennale, the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and Rietveld Landscape will highlight the huge potential of all that temporarily unoccupied space. The exhibition Vacant NL, where architecture meets ideas is on show from 29 August 29 to 21 November 2010 in the Dutch pavilion.

Built in 1954, the Dutch Pavilion on the biennale grounds in Venice has been empty for over 39 years. After all, it is in use for just three months each year. That makes it one of the thousands of unoccupied government buildings on Dutch soil.

Rietveld Landscape, the office appointed by the NAI to curate the Dutch presentation in Venice, decided to emphasize the vacancy of the pavilion during the architecture biennale. The experience of the empty space will sink into visitors, and only then will they discover the hidden installation; a landscape of thousands empty buildings, cut out of blue foam. The Dutch Atlas of Vacancy, designed by Joost Grootens highlights the potential of all those buildings. The art piece, made by visual artist Barbara Visser, shows the connections between excisting architecture, professional expertise and social issues.

Vacant NL, where architecture meets ideas is not only an appeal to creative talents to exploit the value hidden in society but also unsolicited advice to countries who want to advance up the table of global knowledge economies but don’t know where they can find the hidden strengths. The transition to a creative knowledge economy demands specific spatial conditions. Offering young talents from the creative, technology and science sectors an affordable place where they can share their knowledge, creativity and networks is a way of promoting mutual influences, enterprise and innovation. Vacant NL, where architecture meets ideas shows how architecture can contribute to tackling major social problems. The exhibition is therefore fully in line with the NAI innovation agenda called Architecture of Consequence.

Team
Curator Rietveld Landscape worked with a multidisciplinary team on the exhibition design. The team consists of Jurgen Bey (designer), Joost Grootens (graphic designer), Ronald Rietveld (landscape architect), Erik Rietveld (philosopher/economist), Saskia van Stein (NAI curator), Barbara Visser (visual artist).

The Venice Architecture Biennale takes place from 29 August 29 to 21 November 2010. See also: www.labiennale.org.