Asplund Pavilion - Vatican Chapels - Venice Architectural Biennale 2018

Venice, Italy

Photo © Federico Cedrone

Drawing © MAP Studio

Exhibition Halls

Architects: MAP Studio

Location: Venice, Italy
Year: 2018
Client: Pontificium Consilium de Cultura
Team: MAP – Studio Magnani Pelzel Architetti Associati, Francesco Magnani, Traudy Pelzel
Assistant: Matteo Sirinati
Assistant: Chiara Dalla Valle
Assistant (model): Alberto Zago
Consultant: Luigi Cocco
Builder: Alpi Spa

The temporary pavilion aims to exhibit the drawings by architect Gunnar Asplund (1885-1940) for the chapel in the Skogskyrkogården cemetery in Stockholm, which is the theme of the Vatican Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The pavilion will be the only non-religious artifact to exhibit Asplund’s drawings.

The element in its absolutism, is intended to refer both to the stereometry of the supporting buildings (EKONOMIBYGGNAD) designed by Asplund and Lewerentz for the Skogskyrkogården cemetery and to the theme and spatiality of the hut - shelter in nature. A sort of domesticated absolute which borrows from traditional Nordic woodwork and in particular to the Stavkirke, a reinterpreted vernacular lexicon.

The artefact - about 11.00 m long, 8.00 m high, supported by eleven lamellar wood portals that define ten bays - is basically configured as a pitched roof with an emphasized vertical proportion, characterized by a continuous cladding in wooden shingles interrupted only by the presence of a series of symmetrical triangular skylights placed on both long sides.

It is imagined that the exhibition space is defined by the strong chromatic contrast between the dark wooden material of the external shingles made in reconstituted wood by ALPI and the light decorative surfaces in reconstituted wood veneer of the internal cladding also by ALPI, suitably illuminated by zenithal light made softer through a counter-shell shielding.

The exhibition is integrated into the structure of the pavilion itself: a unicum defines the entire interior space and hosts, in the articulation of the thickness of the walls, the reproductions of the design drawings by Gunnar Asplund for the Skogskapellet, the texts and the models.