The eleventh Venice Architecture Biennale is currently in full swing, with installations from a variety of architects, designers and studios ranging from the US's Rural Studio to Zaha Hadid (pictured right). As I am currently nowhere near Italy I am content to tour the pavillions virtually via David Levene's excellent photographs. If you had been hoping to see a naked man performing with a musical saw, look no further. Truthfully I was more struck by a picture of a pencil drawing from the wall of the Japanese pavillion, in which a cross-section of an apartment coexists next to a delicately-rendered fern frond. In his review of the Biennale Jonathan Glancey says that Japanese architecture students drew right onto the walls over the course of 20 days, concocting their own answer to the exhibition's directive to propose ideas for new, sensuous buildings:
Idealistic yes, but it seems like the most perfectly minimalist way of looking to nature for inspiration in architecture. Even just the description makes me happy.