Reorient at the Venice Biennale of Architecture was a big success, alreday got further invitations.
Our project, “re:orient – migrating architectures” explores the local aspects of China’s global significance and increasing influence. The project seeks to forecast possibilities which are now detectable only in connection with retail, but which will, in all likelihood, determine the built environment, which transforms under the pressure of ever-cheaper products. The project follows up these ideas with the presentation of spaces, architectural devices and materials that create new contents, and indicate ways of turning these constraints of the market to our benefit, show how to infuse the mass products, which are designed to have a short life-span, with lasting cultural values.
Reorient was created by: Anna Baróthy, Balázs Bodó, Attila Bujdosó, Panni Dávidházy, Pierre Földes, Krisztián Kelner, Ida Kiss, Gergely Kovács, Melinda Matúz, Attila Nemes, Anita Pozna, Gergely Salát, Adam Somlai-Fischer, Barbara Sterk, Tamás Szakál, Samu Szemerey, Zsuzsanna Szvetelszky.
Some press reviews
Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times, Art & Design 12.9.2006
“[…] Hungarians, meanwhile, have managed to blend serious comment with an impeccable lightness of touch. The pavilion, possibly this year’s finest, is populated by kitsch toys bought from Budapest’s burgeoning Chinese flea-market and slyly comments on trade deficits, immigration and the country’s precarious boundary condition between east and west. […]”
Peter Cook: “on the stuff of architecture” Architectural Review, November 2006
„[…] But if the issue revolves around culture, analysis and response, surely it benefits from invention. From an unexpected corner – the Hungarian pavilion – came the most beautiful surprise. Entitled ’Re:orient – migrating architectures’, it reveals the fact that many Chinese have found their way to Budapest, with market stalls that sell cheap electronic and electric toys. In the pavilion the tin cars, the toy penguin walkie-talkies, the responsive lamp-trees, fences made of hundreds of small loudspeakers, are wired up, do their thing and create a further reminder of the wit of architects as well as their observational abilities. […]”
Cathy Lang Ho: “The China Syndrome” – in: The Architect’s Newspaper, October 2006
“[…] Hungary has a quirkier approach to the topic of as both a consequence and protagonist of globalization: Its pavilion was filled with artful installations made of cheap China-made toys – a canopy of chirping plastic penguins, a wall of plastic resin with repulsive furry toys imbedded within. The installation was part of a larger project, documented in a fine catalogue, investigating the impact of Chinese immigrants on the world’s cities and of Chinese-made goods on life everywhere. It was one of the few projects that conveyed what i wish the Biennale accomplished more: how globalization and urbanization has affected people’s lives. […]”
Publicity
English
Peter Cook: “On the stuff of architecture” – in: Architectural Review, November 2006
