Giuseppe Burdo

The venue "La Biennale di Architettura" is held one every two years in venice and it is aimed to showcase the most intersting works in the field at a global scale. Every country has its own pavillon and I was involved in two of them: Canada and Hong Kong. In the first as volounteer and the second one as Assistant Exhibition Design.

Clad, David C. Erdman Davidclovers, Hong Kong

Clad collects three full scale prototypes for Lunar House, a 2500 square foot speculative home davidclovers designed for Hometta Inc. Working with artist Casey Reas over two years, each is an exploration in how the texture generated by Reas’ line work integrates with or deviates from the architecture.

During my summer at IUAV University in Venice I have been asked from David Erdman and Clover Lee to provide some help in the exhibition setup of their work clad in collaboration with Casey Reas. This work was of my interest because of the involvement with Casey Reas on generative lines towards a compromise between the digital and physical, the math in Processing and the wax mold for real. David and Clover were based in Hong Kong and coming in Venice only few days before the opening. In this case, all design decisions were already made, meanwhile I had to facilitate all technical aspects. Such duties included to de-crate goods upon arrival, Photo documentation in all relevant steps, coordination with the architects and Pavillon staff to approve receipt of materials and assess any damage, repair and patch any damage as per our instruction, level and install pieces and bring any equipment and tools necessary for the installation. Since the pieces were quite heavy, I was in charge to hire other three colleagues to get everything up and running for the exhibition.

Hylozoic Ground, Philip Beesley, Toronto

Interactive immersive environment by cutting edge architect/sculptor Philip Beesley in collaboration with mechatronics engineer Rob Gorbet and experimental designer Rachel Armstrong.

Meanwhile working for Hong Kong Pavilion at Venice Biennale, I had the opportunity to volunteer at Canadian Pavilion for Philip Beesley and all his staff. The fascinating part was to be involved in the preparation of a complex and interactive exhibition from the very beginning to the end, and later in the maintenance of physical and electronic components. The work was done with an overall international team of around 50 people. My duties were to assist and to provide help in all stages inside the pavilion and sometimes providing materials in Venice, since most of the staff involved was from abroad. The preparation of the pavilion was brilliantly managed by Pernilla Ohrstedt. My work was to help preparing the staging area, ceiling and the installations rigging points, then to assembly the physical parts. The last phase was to make it interactive with more than 40 arduino microcontrollers connected to each other with air valves, infrared sensors, memory alloys and biocells.