Very happy to announce, after several months of discussions, that our work on evaporative cooling, heat and pollution in Athens, will be exhibited at this year’s Venice Biennale.
The curator Carlo Ratti has set the theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., which connects well with the ‘eco-mental’ and semiotic framing I have given our broader urban evaporative cooling research…
The curators asked if it was possible to construct a full scale tower, which would have been amazing, but which would not have worked well without complete reimagining, as Venice is already evaporatively cooled by the canals and lagoon!
Instead, we are enjoying working on a two screen film installation piece which will be presented in the ‘Artificial Intelligens’ section, in the Corderie building of the Arsenale, in one of the curator Carlo Ratti’s main curated spaces on ‘Intelligens’.
The core project team is myself as Project Lead and P-I (at both RCA and Rheomode, where Dimitra Vlami is helping to project manage), Aran Chadwick from Atelier One structural engineers, Flora McLean, also from RCA (Fashion and textiles), and Rosa Schiano-Phan and Juan Vallejo from University of Westminster. In addition we are working collaboratively with the filmmakers Gemma Riggs and Linn Phyllis Seeger on producing material for the installation and online.
Many thanks to the Royal College of Art – both the Research Office and the School of Architecture in particular – for supporting this project, and to the University of Westminster and Atelier One for additional support.
Many thanks also to the support of local allies such as Latraac Skate Bar and Urban Garden and Zachos Varfis, artist-writer James Bridle, the Municipality of Athen Heat Officer Elissavet Bargianni and UN Habitat Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili.
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