Venice, Italy
Designed by Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, “American Framing,” the title of this year’s U.S. Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, reinvents the 1930’s U.S. Pavilion by completing Delano and Aldrich’s aspirational American Palladian project with a work of ubiquitous domestic architecture.
Paul Andersen is director of Independent Architecture and Clinical Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Paul Preissner is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago and runs Paul Preissner Architects.
The pavilion explores the history of softwood as a building material in America.
Andersen and Preissner built traditional features of American houses, such as dormers, gables and a porch, into a 12-meter-tall wooden skeleton made from pine sourced from Austria.
Originating in the early 19th-Century, softwood construction was a pragmatic solution to a need for an accessible building system among settlers with limited wealth, technical skills, and building traditions.
Early examples, like George Washington Snow’s balloon framed warehouse, paved the way for churches, barns, stores, and the most common wood-framed building type, the American house.
An abundance of Southern Pine and Douglas Fir forests, simplicity and speed of construction, and an ability to be built by low or unskilled workers made wood framing a perfect fit for the growing economies and populations of the American Midwest.
It has been the dominant construction system ever since—more than 90% of new homes in the U.S. today are wood framed.
The accessibility that shaped its early development continues to influence contemporary life and reflect democratic ideals in subtle, but powerful ways.
For instance, softwood construction is exceptionally egalitarian.
No amount of money can buy you a better 2×4 than the 2x4s in the poorest neighborhood in town.
This fundamental sameness paradoxically underlies the American culture of individuality, unifying all superficial differences. Buildings of every size and style are made of wood framing.
The exhibition presents the subject of wood framing in a collection of works throughout the galleries and grounds of the U.S. Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
A four-story installation forms a new façade for the historic pavilion—a half-section of a wood-framed house through which visitors enter the exhibition.
This open-air wood structure encloses the courtyard to provide space for reflection and conversation.
It also introduces the world of wood framing as directly as possible by allowing people to experience its spaces, forms, and techniques firsthand.
The full-scale work expresses the sublime and profound aesthetic power of a structural method that underlies most buildings in the United States.
Two types of works are exhibited within the galleries.
Newly commissioned photographs from Daniel Shea and Chris Strong address the labor, culture, and materials of softwood construction.
A collection of scale models, researched and designed by students at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, presents the history of wood framing.
Two sets of furniture by Ania Jaworska and Norman Kelley are installed outside in the courtyard and fullscale wood structure, both reviving historic pieces and producing them out of common dimensional lumber.
The 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia comes at a time when national cultural practices are struggling with their histories.
How do we come to terms with our past choices? What kinds of futures can we create?
American Framing examines the improbably overlooked and familiar architecture of the country’s most common construction system and argues that a profound and powerful future for design can be conceived out of an ordinary past.
The works within the exhibition tell the story of an American architectural project that is bored with tradition, eager to choose economy over technical skill, and accepting of a relaxed idea of craft in the pursuit of something useful and new.
Project: U.S. Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale
Architects: Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner
Project Architect: Drew Stanley
Executive Architect in Venice: Giacomo Di Thiene
Structural Engineers: Goodfriend Magruder Structure, LLC.
Construction Services: Impresa Edile Francesco Minto S.n.c.and Grosso srl.
Client: The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Photographers: Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner