Jun 8, 2018 | By Thomas

The Croatian Pavilion has presented the world's largest and most complex 3D Printed installation at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. Titled “Cloud Pergola / The Architecture of Hospitality”, the Pavilion reflects on spaces of hospitality, the environment, automated design, and architecture's role in the 21st century.

The Pavilion is curated by architect Bruno Juričić, the founder of Atelier Bruno Juričić. Based on the traditional pergola, the pavilion comprises of three interplaying interventions. The main installation is “Cloud Drawing” by architect Alisa Andrašek in collaboration with Bruno Juričić. The Cloud Drawing installation uses computational models, robot fabrication and big data to create a new kind of spatial structure—an n-dimensional microstructure that brings into dynamic relation natural forces and human intervention. By mathematically capturing the complexity and beauty of cloud formation, the installation “integrates site-specific environmental data into a synthesis of form, figure, posture, tectonics, porosity, and light effect”.

"A winning bet, that has brought Bruno Juričić and the artists involved in the project to re-think the way we look at hospitality, climate change and sociability," stated in the Pavilion's statement.

The Cloud Drawing installation measures 3.3m in height and covers an area of 57.6sqm, making it one of the world’s largest and most complex structures to be 3D printed entirely by robots. Working with Arup and manufacturer Ai-Build, the structure was made from about 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of 3D printed bio-degradable plastic, the pavilion cloud-like structure is formed of voxels oriented along a field of vectors designed by using a multi-agent algorithm. Arup provided structural guidance throughout all phases of the design in the definition of the voxels and in the analysis of the complex structure made of more than 100,000 extruded elements. Arup collaborated with Ai-Build to develop a simple assembly sequence for the complex and delicate piece which is meant to be touring various exhibition spaces after its passage at the Venice Biennale 2018. Skira Architectural Lighiting developed a programmable dynamic light design.

Under the cloud, a wall-based work titled To Still the Eye by visual artist Vlatka Horvat explores “the notion of horizon as a physical manifestation of distance and as a metaphor for the future”. In the background, “Ephemeral Garden” by transdisciplinary artist Maja Kuzmanović is an audio installation where murmurs of conversation are complemented by the sounds of animate matter, “producing a space where human and non-human voices intermingle”.

"The Croatian Pavilion stands at the forefront of computing and robotics in architecture," wrote architecture critic Bart Lootsma. "It is admired beyond technological innovation, offering an elegant, ephemeral and poetic experience. Isn’t a pergola, in its function of filtering the sun, ideally a simulation of clouds anyway? I hope I may encounter such a breezy structure or maybe even a bigger one on a hot day on the Croatian coast one day."

The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara under the title of Freespace, is on view from May 26th to November 25th, 2018 in the Giardini and the Arsenale, and around other venues in Venice.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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