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Description: The Montenegro Pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale
Andrew Ayers
“The Montenegrin Pavilion has a wonderful feeling of being a ‘fringe’ or ‘off’ event, not only because of its location far from the official hubbub of the Giardini, but also because of the fresh approach that this ‘marginal’ location has allowed. First one must find the pavilion, a process akin to a treasure hunt, as one negotiates a maze of silent Venetian alleys in a scenario straight out of Invisible Cities . The ancient ground-floor spaces, disposed around a classic Venetian courtyard, are splendidly at
The Montenegrin Pavilion is also interesting in the way it deals with Rem Koolhaas’s theme of ‘absorbing modernity.’ As Jean Prouvé tells us in the French Pavilion, ‘modern’ is a problematic term that is perhaps best avoided. Many of the national pavilions get round it by interpreting modernity as Modernism, and at first glance the Montenegrin Pavilion appears to do the same. But if one considers the original meaning of modern—late Latin modernus , from modo , ‘just now’—one can see the implication that to
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