CON-NECT-ED-NESS: the Danish Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2021

CONN-ECT-ED-NESS, Danish Pavilion @ Venice Biennale 2021 - Photo by Hampus Berndtson.

CONN-ECT-ED-NESS, Danish Pavilion @ Venice Biennale 2021 – Photos by Hampus Berndtson.

Architecture – Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects, and curator Marianne Krogh, have created CON-NECT-ED-NESS, a total installation at the Danish pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 consisting of a giant cyclic system of water collected locally in Venice.

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The pavilion’s architecture is an integrated part of the exhibition. Pipes and streams of water run throughout the building while water collection tanks sit outside in plain sight. “The visible water cycling system helps us begin to understand ourselves as part of something bigger, that we are all connected and live in reciprocity,” explains Lene Tranberg, co-founding partner and architect at Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects.

While exploring the various spaces, visitors can become part of the cyclic system by drinking a cup of tea brewed with leaves from the lemon verbena trees planted in the pavilion – trees that also absorb water from the extensive cyclic system.

In the pavilion’s large hall, floor-to-ceiling textiles add contrast and tactility to the simple raw structures, while a recycled floor from a former gymnasium has been transformed into a giant floating platform.

Water in the pavilion is collected on-site. Climatic fluctuations continuously shape the look and feel of the exhibition – for example, parts of the pavilion are flooded to illustrate that water is at once life-giving, poetic, powerful and uncontrollable.

“We are living in a time where we clearly experience the climate-related consequences of people having divided the world into separate units for centuries, without understanding that our actions have consequences many thousands of miles away. For better and for worse, with the current pandemic as a disturbing example.” Says the curator Marianne Krogh.