Cincinnati to Venice

 

An award-winning UC installation will soon go on display in Venice, Italy, in an exhibition coinciding with what is arguably the world’s most important architectural event, the Venice Architecture Biennale.

By M.B. Reilly
513-556-1824

Photos: Provided

May 9, 2018

Location. Location. Location.

When it comes to architecture, the city of Venice, Italy, has leverage that is unequaled anywhere else.

It’s not because of the city’s storied canals and architectural history that encompasses a wide range of influences from Byzantine to Baroque — but rather because the Floating City plays host every two years to what is known as the Venice Architecture Biennale. It’s an exhibition of architecture that draws highly respected practitioners — sometimes known as “starchitects” — along with the world’s art and design lovers who simply enjoy the critical mass of design sophistication, education and entertainment all gathered in one place.

And this year, a group of 14 University of Cincinnati students led by Terry Boling, associate professor of architecture in the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), will be in Venice ahead of the May 26-Nov. 11 run of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition (titled FREESPACE) to install their own work in Venice’s Giardino della Marinaressa, a garden spot located along the city’s monumental waterfront. While the Cincinnati work (titled "Alchemy") is not among those of the official Biennale, the exhibition of this UC work in this overall context provides the students an opportunity to publicly display their work to an international audience that will number 500,000 or more during the run of events there.

“Alchemy reflects not only our university but also the city and region. It has a strong ‘Cincinnati ethic’ representing how we teach architecture here but also how we as a school and region bring unlikely elements together to create something beautiful,” said Boling of the work that has already earned a Cincinnati Design Award and was previously exhibited by invitation at the 2017 Architecture Biennial in Columbus, Indiana.

Just as the term alchemy signifies the medieval process of transmuting base matters into gold, UC’s “Alchemy” was first conceived as a student-centered Spring 2017 studio project and process to provide undergraduate and graduate students the chance to transform industrial scraps, left-overs, waste or rejected materials into an integrated whole. The experiential-learning project provided students the opportunity to manually construct an installation and to integrate community-based partnerships into the effort.

Rear view of the tiles used in the installation. Each tile, individually cast and glazed by hand, carries identifying Rookwood Pottery marks on the back.

“For me, the project was about things we are overlooking in our fast, technology-driven world. It's about incredible care - the care we take in first designing and constructing this installation, deconstructing it. Labeling and identifying every joist and finally re-assembling it in Venice. It's about a grounded education," said Robert Probst, DAAP dean, who initiated this interdisciplinary endeavor and served as the driving force behind broadening the project's reach in partnership with faculty members Boling; Joe Girandola, associate professor of fine art; and Matt Wizinsky, assistant professor of design. Providing mentorship were Danilo Palazzo, director, School of Planning, and Chris Auffrey, associate professor of planning.

Graduate student Andrew Campbell, 27, of Centerville, Ohio, who worked on the project as part of a Spring 2018 studio in preparation for its international debut, agreed, "There's something important and innately human about toiling away at something with your hands instead of at a computer. It's a different kind of work. It teaches you a different kind of persistence and a different kind of patience entirely."


Watch a 7-second time-lapse video depicting the laying of the floor. The floor depicts an outline of Cincinnati's 52 neighborhoods.

A 2:57 behind-the-scenes look at how UC architecture students created "Alchemy," soon to be on display in Venice, Italy.  

The woven wood wall displays geometric patterns designed and imprinted by middle school students. Area high school students contributed original poetry written about Cincinnati to the project. Portions of that poetry are also displayed on the wall.

The original floor of the installation was made of scraps of Indiana limestone. photo by Hadley Fruits

In Venice, a newly created floor will display an outline of Cincinnati's 52 neighborhoods as well as one-word descriptions of the city provided by members of the public.

The project makes use of forgotten and discarded materials such as reclaimed wood from a 150 year-old Cincinnati church, copper scraps, hundreds of handmade tiles rejected by a local tile manufacturer, fragments of decorative limestone from an Indiana stone quarry and more.

School children in Columbus, Indiana, helped transform the project’s century-old wood by imprinting it with geometric patterns by using pieces of copper — doing so thanks to a custom-made press crafted by the UC students. Moreover, poetry about living in Cincinnati is laser etched in this same wood — poetry written by local high-school students who have participated in “Louder Than A Bomb,” an annual poetry, spoken word, hip-hop competition.

The end result, according to graduate student Bailey Stultz, 25, of Columbus, Indiana, is "focused on the combination of materials to make up two very distinct curved walls: one made of wood and the other made of tile." At the center is a sheltered and sheltering space where all the elements serve to guide attention to and frame a bejeweled tile room.

“As a deliberately designed human-scale space, that little tile room, it just feels good when you’re in it,” said Probst.

Graduate student Campbell added, "I would hope people who experience the project feel a sense of age, workmanship and treatment of the materials as well as a general inquisitiveness towards Cincinnati. After all, at it's most essential, this project is about locality and cooperation, between people and materials here in Cincinnati."

Explained Boling, “This project is like how your mom used to make soup from whatever was in the refrigerator. Take the left-overs and combine them into something new and delicious. I think it also reflects both our Cincinnati heritage and our sustainable, urban futures. After all, we’re the city where a commercial empire (consumer products giant P&G) was originally built from turning 18th-century waste pig fat into candles and soap. Our future will, by necessity, reflect that heritage and the need to creatively reuse what we have to hand.”

'Alchemy' reflects Cincy

The project makes use of waste materials from Rookwood Pottery Company and Formica Corporation as well as product from The Gorilla Glue Company. And community members have contributed.

Indiana limestone is used to fashion a map of Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods on the installation’s floor along with one-word descriptions of those neighborhoods, provided by local residents.

Taking its place on that map is UC's logo, marking the location of the  Uptown campus. That logo will serve as one of nine trigger points integrated into the installation. At these trigger points, installation visitors will be able to view video of Cincinnati neighborhoods, iconic locales and city scenes via an app loaded to their cell phones or iPads.