Architectural Laboratories

Together with a select group of international students from Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, highly respected architects and architectural theoreticians Hani Rashid and Greg Lynn transformed the United States Pavilion during the Venice Biennale 2000 into a four-week workshop and forum for architectural discourse: a laboratory. Investigating, producing, and reviewing a variety of architectural schemes, the participants demonstrated the practice and direction of a new generation of architects. Architectural Laboratories presents the results of this workshop through 10 projects that focus on the themes "The Embryologic House" and "Augmented Architecture." Guest critiques of the students' designs are offered by philosopher and cultural critic Mark C. Taylor, ZKM chairman Peter Weibel, and Max Hollein, the United States Commissioner for the biennale.

"Max Hollein is the director of the Schirn Kunstahalle, Germany, and was the United States Commissioner to the 7th Venice Architecture Biennale."

"Hani Rashid is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia University in New York, and has taught architecture and lectured throughout Europe and the United States. In 1989, along with partner Lise Anne Couture, he formed Asymptote in New York City. Their repertoire ranges from experimental installations and computer-generated environments to building designs and urban planning. Most recently Rashid and Couture designed a large-scale computer-generated environment for the New York Stock Exchange and an accompanying ""Theater of Operations"" now installed on the floor of the NYSE. Asymptote is also designing the Guggenheim Virtual Museum as a fully interactive multidimensional web-based environment, as well as building projects in San Francisco, New York, and Kyoto."

"Greg Lynn has been an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University since 1990. He is presently the professor of spatial conception and exploration at the ETH in Zurich, the Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale University, and a studio professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. His office, Greg Lynn FORM, is working in collaborative partnerships with a variety of architects on a range of projects, including a line of international showrooms for PGLIFE.COM; the Cincinnati Country Day School in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Vision Plan for Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey; the Ark of the World Museum in Costa Rica; and the recently completed Korean Presbyterian Church of New York."