Walking into the
first Antarctica Pavilion in the 14th International Architecture Biennale Venice, waterproof flight cases
display models of visionary Antarctic projects many considering the challenge
of designing for an environment that is still so new and uninhabited. For a Curator
Nadim Samman writing about towards the Antarctica Biennale says, ‘no ring for
it on the Olympic flag and no pavilion in the Giardini. The only continent
without a biennale. Has its art history been written? It is only a matter of
time’[1].
Writer Gabrielle Walker calls Antarctica, ‘the living metaphor’ where, ‘the
continent lacks most of the normal ways that we interact in human societies.
There is no need for money; everyone wears the same clothes and has the same
kind of lodging’[2].
So Samman’s question about the role of art practice and by association the role
of the architect is relevant, as concepts of home are not obvious, yet each of
the exhibits are some type of dwelling, where as Shane McCorristine states,
‘homeliness was performed through winter rituals of comfort-eating and
snugness. It was by these means that physical spaces of inhabitation were
transformed into homes – that is filled with narratives, memories.’ For
McCorristine, Cape Evans site of the last Christmas Feast of Robert F Scott in
1911 on his fateful last expedition is, ‘by virtue of Scott’s uncanny absence /
presence, has become the primal Antarctic home’, as the, ‘signs of absent
inhabitants have been preserved and this has transformed the hut into a site of
pilgrimage and commemoration – becoming a symbol of Antarctic homeliness, but
not somewhere one can live’[3]
[1] Samman, N. “Antarctopia”
(Ocean Fund Projects AVC Charity Foundation 2014)
[2] Walker, G. “Antarctica An Intimate
Portrait of the World’s Most Mysterious Continent” (Bloomsbury 2012)
[3] McCorristine, S. “What
Shall We Call it?: Performing Home in Antarctica” (Ocean Fund Projects AVC
Charity Foundation 2014)
