Vittorio Romieri




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The curatorial team ARCH+ / SUMMACUMFEMMER / BURO JULIANE GREB “squats and maintains the German Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2023. The project is not an exhibition but rather an action framework for a new building culture, transforming the pavilion into a productive infrastructure using leftover material and “spolia” from over 40 national pavilions and exhibitions of the Biennale Arte 2022 (Maria Eichorn’s contribution Relocating a Structure for the Biennale Arte 2022, too). The architectural interventions are oriented toward local needs: a ramp for accessibility, a material repository, a workshop, a space for meetings, a kitchenette, and an ecological bathroom. In collaboration with a broad network of Venetian and German activist groups, the contribution renders visible processes of spatial and social care work which afre usually kept hidden.

Open for Maintenance repairs the existing built fabric as a chance for a structural and ideological correction centering the needs of marginalized and disadvantaged groups. The temporary remodeling of the entrance adds a semicircular access ramp, facilitating access to visitors with reduced mobility, but also to cleaning personnel, guards, and technicians with heavy equipment. The ramp frames a new, public podium, which will be activated by several actors during the whole duration of the Biennale.

Taking over M. Eichorn’s contribution at the 2022 Art Biennale directly following the closing of the exhibition enabled immediate access to the pavilion and utilizing it as a material repository. Materials gathered from over 40 pavilions and exhibitions were saved from the landfill and moved to the pavilion in a physically demanding process in collaboration with R3B. These “spolia” have become part of the structural interventions, all built from left-behind materials. For the duration of the 2023 Arch. Biennale the materials are inventoried and made available for further processing in the Maintenance 1:1 workshop program attended by university students, trades apprentices, and organizations from civil society, who will help to maintain, repair and care for social infrastrucures across Venice.


The Pavilion’s interior has been adopted as found. Maria Eichorn’s work Relocating a Structure was not, as is customary, dismantled after the end of the 2022 Art Biennale. The spatial interventions and interactions with Maria Eichorn’s work are limited to the strictly necessary. For example, two bridges span the cut-out in the central room’s floor, so as to make the adjoining rooms accessible again. They are infrastructural elements pragmatically dealing with what already exists, enabling new uses.


In the future, practicing architecture will mean repairing that which already exists. To repair, one needs a set of tools, knowledge, and techniques, which will be at the disposal of all visitors in an openly accessible workshop in the German Pavilion. The central idea is to empower people to maintain their (built) environment. A workshop program with grassroots organizations from various countries, universities, and apprenticeship providers will make these aspirations become a practical reality well beyond the limits of the Biennale itself: Collaborative projects will lead to small reapir works across and around Venice. Based on actual interventions, participants will learn that thew (re)production of space is inextricably linked to both the social and the ecological issue.

The transformation of the German Pavilion into a living site of (re)productive work will encompass the integration of missing sanitary infrastructure into the building. Beyond an answer to practical concerns, the bathroom also materializes a response to several topical issues surrounding a necessary “sanitary revolution”: From an ecological perspective, a water-based sanitary network is increasingly untenable. Open for Maintenance features an accessible prototypefor a urine-separating dry toilet and a unisex urinal combined with a urine treatment reactor. Working with a local organic farm, human waste is composted and then reused as fertilizer. 
On a sociopolitical level, such basic needs as using the toilet and personal hygiene, as wel as infrastructure of maintenance and cleaning, are linked to questions of justice in terms of gender, disability, race, and class. The role of care work is further addressed by the incorporation of tools for changing diapers, washing, and cleaning.

(Text by ARCH+ / ph curatorial team)

also see: https://summacumfemmer.com/summacumfemmer_041_menu
                 https://julianegreb.com