Karin Sander and Philip Ursprung: Neighbours

Karin Sander and Philip Ursprung are to represent Switzerland at the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale.

Two national pavilions and a wall that connects as well as separates, are the focus of Karin Sander’s and Philip Ursprung’s project Neighbours for the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale. By turning the architecture itself into the exhibit, the artist and the architecture historian introduce the audience to new perspectives on the territorial relations within the Giardini of La Biennale.

After an open call, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia has chosen to entrust the exhibition of the Swiss Pavilion for the Biennale Architettura 2023 to the artist Karin Sander and the architecture historian Philip Ursprung. Their project Neighbours highlights both the spatial and structural proximity of the Swiss Pavilion to its Venezuelan neighbour and the professional bond of the two architects: the Swiss Bruno Giacometti (1907–2012) and the Italian Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978).

The Swiss Pavilion designed by Bruno Giacometti opened just over 70 years ago, in June 1952. In immediate vicinity, the Venezuelan Pavilion designed by Carlo Scarpa took shape four years later. Since the old plane trees on either lot weren’t allowed to be felled, the architects designed their buildings around the protected trees. The walls, roofs, and exterior areas of their buildings meet at the closest distance.

Karin Sander and Philip Ursprung bring out the pavilions’ interconnected ground plans, in which the structural neighbourship of the two close architects condenses: “The Swiss and the Venezuelan Pavilion form an ensemble of exceptional architectural and sculptural quality. Despite this, they are conceived as separate because of their representative function, and thus, are staged accordingly. We are rethinking the functions of the two pavilions and their surroundings in a new light and are dissolving their borders with artistic means. In that, we question the spatial, cultural, and political demarcations as well as the conventions of national representation. In a utopian gesture, we are confronting the location with a poetic reality that momentarily gives room to a new point of view.”

Philippe Bischof, director of Pro Helvetia, about the project: “By invoking Bruno Giacometti's and Carlo Scarpa’s architectural heritage and the structural history of the Biennale, Karin Sander and Philip Ursprung are exploring architecture as its own form of relationship work. Their artistic intervention offers a new way of exhibiting architecture.”

Project team
Karin Sander is an artist and professor of Art and Architecture, and Philip Ursprung is professor of History of Art and Architecture, both at ETH Zurich. For their project Neighbours, Sander and Ursprung are assisted by curatorial manager Sassa Trülzsch, project leader Tobias Becker and researcher Berit Seidel.

Publication
The exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion will be accompanied by a book with essays and photographs, published by Park Books, Zurich.

Supporting events
The exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion will be complemented by a side programme of panel discussions at the Swiss Pavilion and at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi. The illustrious panels of speakers will be discussing questions such as future exhibition formats for architecture, the future of architecture photography, or the biodiversity at the Giardini of La Biennale. Further in-depth conversations will be held about the friendship between Bruno Giacometti and Carlo Scarpa, and the neighbourly relations between their national pavilions.

Further information is available in the press kit.

Press requests
Switzerland: Ursula Pfander, upfander [​at​] prohelvetia.ch

International: Zeynep Seyhun, Pickles PR, zeynep [​at​] picklespr.com (email to RSVP for media moment) and Benedetta di Costanzo, Pickles PR,  benedetta [​at​] picklespr.com.