In collaboration with Etel Adnan and Fouad Elkoury
With the participation of Alain Fleischer – Le Fresnoy and Soundwalk Collective
In tribute to Paul Virilio
In the context of the Lebanese Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Hala Wardé, the architect and founder of HW Architecture, who realized the Louvre Abu Dhabi with Jean Nouvel, presents A Roof for Silence at the Magazzino del Sale (Zattere), from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021.
Selected in the first public competition launched by the Lebanese authorities to represent Lebanon, Hala Wardé’s proposal was chosen on October 16, 2019 by a committee of experts appointed by the Ministry of Culture and the Federation of Lebanese Engineers and Architects.
Echoing the question « How will we live together? » as raised by Hashim Sarkis, curator of this 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Hala Wardé tackles the issue of coexistence through a questioning of the spaces of silence, and by putting into dialogue architecture, painting, music, poetry, video and photography.
“Why not think about places in relation to their potential as voids rather than as solids?
How can we fight fear of emptiness in architecture?
How can we imagine forms that generate places of silence and contemplation?”
Hala Wardé
The Lebanese Pavilion is conceived as a musical score, resonating disciplines, shapes and periods to provoke the sensory experience of a thought, articulated around the notions of emptiness and silence, as temporal and spatial conditions of architecture. A « Revelationary » installation as per Paul Virilio’s definition, in tribute to the renowned thinker and urbanist.
Treated as a manifesto for a new form of architecture, Hala Wardé’s project is based on the cryptic shapes of a group of sixteen olive trees that are a thousand years old in Lebanon. These legendary trees, whose hollowed forms are home to various species, are the tutelary figure of the Lebanese Pavilion. They are places of recollection or gathering, where peasants have convened for generations to decide on village affairs or to celebrate weddings.
“The project affirms the need for empty space and for life that might inhabit it as a form of
silence.”
Hala Wardé
Questioning the territorial and urbanistic approach to emptiness, Hala Wardé’s architectural project starts off with the « Antiforms » of Paul Virilio, theorist of the acceleration of time and the disintegration of territories. It resonates with Paul Virilio’s « Antiforms » paintings, spaces of in-between figure and ground with the graphic representation of the olive trees, as well as with that of the imprint of the sudden Port of Beirut explosion, on August 4th 2020. It finds its centerpiece in a central room, the highest point of the experience, conceived around an artwork by the poet and artist Etel Adnan: a set of sixteen canvases entitled « Olivéa, Hommage à la déesse de l’olivier ».
“Where there is a sentient object, being or thing, the space is no more, we take away a volume
from it, by this very act we give it a shape: the Antiform.”
Paul Virilio
A Roof for Silence, which will be unveiled for the first time at the Biennale Architettura 2021 in Venice, will continue its cultural itinerary in different cities around the world. As a first step, it will be the subject of a temporary exhibition at the National Museum of Beirut, during the inauguration of its new wing built by the Fondation Nationale du Patrimoine for the promotion of architectural and artistic heritage. It will then be presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Finally, the project has a social and heritage dimension. Initiatives and mobilization campaigns will be organized within the context of the Biennale to raise awareness among the public and the international community of experts and architects about the rehabilitation of the damaged architectural and cultural heritage of the city of Beirut.
The Lebanese Pavilion will thus offer its platform to the Beirut Heritage Initiative, an independent and inclusive collective created after the Beirut blast of the 4th of August 2020, to restore the built and cultural heritage of the city.
Scenography
The architectural arrangement of the Lebanese Pavilion is integrated into the space of the Magazzino del Sale following a rigorous geometry and rhythm. It unfolds in four stages:
• On an introductory wall, Paul Virilio’s « Antiforms », an exploration of space and absent matter, are set against photogrammetric records of thousand-year-old trees and black and white photographic prints of olive trees in Lebanon by Lebanese photographer Fouad Elkoury.
• On the ground, a trail of glass. Imprints or fractal traces of various forms: that of the impact of the Beirut blast in August 2020, a form of emptiness that joins that of the Antiforms or the large-scale graphic prints of the trees’ cavities.
• As the visitors move through the exhibition, they are led to a triptych projection of 16 olive trees of Lebanon that are a thousand years old. Filmed in the darkness of the night by Alain Fleischer, filmmaker, photographer and visual artist, these olive trees offer a sensory experience of emptiness and light, accompanied by a musical creation by the sound artists Soundwalk Collective.
• Walking through these images, visitors are led into the central room: an octagonal floor plan, but with a cylindrical interior space, where the 16 canvases of Etel Adnan’s poem-in-painting « Olivéa : Hommage à la déesse de l’olivier » are on display. The artist does not show a particular olive tree but rather the feeling inspired by this legendary tree that has accompanied the Mediterranean civilizations. Crowned with a semi-spherical roof bordered by light, this space embodies the possibility of an « essential » place: a « Roof for Silence ».
” There is this silence that is part of the aesthetics of things. For example, in painting. To paint
only landscapes implies silence. And in poetry, silence takes the form of spaces. “
” There are spaces like breaths. As with the life of trees, we sometimes feel like eavesdropping
and listening to them “
” There are voids and silences that are an integral part of poetry and thus part of the poetic
experience. Silence is also part of the music, for it weighs, it is obvious, we hear it. I was about
to say “one sees it”.
Etel Adnan
Acknowledgments
With the participation of:
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne
RSC Bucintoro
Galerie Lelong
Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains
The Vinyl Factory
Bits to Atoms
With the support of:
Fondation Ardian
Fondation Dauphin
Fondation LAccolade – Institut de France
CMA CGM
Nasco
And the partnership of:
Fondation pour le Liban – Institut de France
Credits
Commissioner: Jad Tabet
Architect and curator: Hala Wardé
With:
Etel Adnan – « Olivéa: Hommage à la déesse de l’olivier » Artwork
Paul Virilio – « Antiformes » Painting
Fouad Elkoury – “Olivier de Bchaaleh » 16 Photographies
Alain Fleischer – « Les oliviers, piliers du Temps » Film
Soundwalk Collective – “Falling into time”, Sound composition performed by Lucy Railton on cello and Daisuke Tadokoro on piano.
Biography – Hala Wardé
Born in Lebanon in 1965, Hala Wardé trained as an architect at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris where she studied with Paul Virilio, Bernard Tschumi and Jean Nouvel, with whom she worked for over 20 years. In 2008, she established HW architecture, her own architectural practice, and continued collaborating with Ateliers Jean Nouvel in the framework of a privileged partnership. Hala Wardé was in charge of the One New Change office and retail project in London, delivered in 2010, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi landmark museum which she led from inception in 2006 through to delivery in 2017. In 2016, Hala Wardé won the architectural competition for BeMA (Beirut Museum of Art), a future landmark museum in the Lebanese capital. In 2018, her studio was selected to design “Le Mirabeau” in the maritime quarter of Marseille, currently under construction. In 2019, she won, together with Jean Nouvel, the competition for the «Sharaan resort” located near by the historical site of Al Ula in Saudi Arabia. In parallel, Hala Wardé collaborates regularly with artists, for site-specific interventions in relation to the built environments, such as Guiseppe Penone, Nan Goldin or Etel Adnan.
Practical Information
Lebanese Pavilion
17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Maggazino del Sale 5 (Zattere)
Dorsoduro, 263, 30123 Venezia
22nd May – 21st November 2021
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