Air/aria/aire by Olga Subirós, at 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, finalist for FAD Awards

Description of project by Olga Subirós

air/aria/aire
Venice Biennale 2021. Catalonia in Venice. Calle De Quintavale 40ª Venice (Italy). Finalist for the FAD International Awards 2022.

Jury’s remarks
We recognize the value of the architectural gesture in the context of a pavilion intervention, in which gesturality is often overused. Also noteworthy is the balance between essentiality and sophistication, and the relationship between the architecture and the visual display (management of time, sound, light and movement).

Together, they generate an intense sensory experience, more complex than what is offered by the architectural gesture in itself. We also consider the connection between the content and the formal and atmospheric characteristics of the pavilion to be very fitting.

Design description
The installation “Air” uses few and efficient spatial resources to communicate the public health crisis related to air pollution and the actions that are necessary and urgent for a just and healthy urban design.

It is the spatial formalization of the project curated by Olga Subirós for Catalonia’s participation in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. The proposal presents the results of the urban research commissioned to the team at 300,000 km/s (founded and directed by Pablo Martínez and Mar Santamaria) and the musical research commissioned to Maria Arnal and John Talabot.

It creates a muti-sensory experience centered on a device hung in the middle of the space, which acts as a catalyst for various experiences aimed at raising awareness. The device consists of two screens of unconventional sizes arranged in parallel forming a white, illuminated corridor.

This corridor displays the materiality of polluted air: a selection of air pollution filters from the air quality monitoring network run by the government Generalitat de Catalunya. Different content is projected onto the two screens: on the right, global air pollution and, on the left, air pollution in Barcelona and proposals for action.

The musical immersion in the space is broken up by three brief moments of silence when the screens turn entirely black, darkening the space; in red, creating a moment of alarm; and in white, flooding the space with light. The perception of the space changes radically as visitors begin to experience non-musical auditory sensations in the corridor.

The design of the space is also the design of the visitor’s path through the exhibition
The space is made available, and the visitor can choose between walking through the corridor or staying outside. Making the choice to enter already indicates a willingness to receive the content that is being presented: the particles that we inhale but can’t eliminate and that come from fossil fuels. On the other hand, the use of the corridor configuration leads visitors to perceive the audiovisuals not as an abstraction but as inhabited data.

The design of the space is also the design of the audiovisual content to impact the space
The space changes radically in color and in light intensity at three moments:

The design of the space is also the design of the soundscape
The installation offers several sound experiences organized in space and over time:

-Immersive sound: the music comes from the screens. 60 speakers are installed along the two 12 m screens. The screens themselves are like huge speakers with countless nuances, since the different sound channels offer different experiences depending on the visitors’ positions and movement through the space.
-Momentary sounds (corridor): in the corridor, visitors hear the sounds of breathing coming from the circular air pollution filters as they feel the vibrations from the sub-bass of the general soundtrack.
-Soundtrack with aria: Subirós commissioned Maria Arnal and John Talabot to create an eight-minute soundtrack divided into three parts. The first and second parts form an electronic crescendo in which vocal sounds intertwine with rhythms, some of which are based on databases of air pollution patterns. The crescendo culminates in the third part, which is a contemporary aria about air as a common good.