In response to the competition brief, the team found itself speculating on the general ways in which a building could exhibit architecture (whether in or of itself) - a rather ambiguous prospect. On further examination, the team encountered an additional layer of ambiguity: the ambition for the Venice pavilion to be Canadian in some explicit way. The response to this doubly ambiguous set of intentions is to change the scale of the enterprise. They proposed to create an open-ended series of sites.
Pilings, manufactured in Canada from a variety of primary materials (wood, steel, and pre-cast concrete) will be shipped to Venice and installed according to a large-scale ordonnance which they propose to be laid over the physical fabric of the city. Ancillary components such as platforms, bridges and canopies constitute a network of temporary structures and associated open spaces. These would be, collectively, "the pavilion" and would evolve as integral parts of future Biennale participation by Canada and other countries. These new "pile territories" and associated pieces, because of the extent of their potential site(s), could generate alternate pedestrian routes, links, bridges, and islands.
In this way, it would be possible to construct an entity that is, as required by the competition brief, "suitable for the exhibition of architecture". But this new ordonnance might do much more: it could precipitate a new and radically different Venice during Biennale events and beyond.
(From competitor's text)
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