The Lebanese Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

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The LAccolade Foundation is contributing to the Lebanese Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Hala Wardé, the architect and founder of HW Architecture, who realized the Louvre Abu Dhabi with Jean Nouvel, presents A Roof for Silence at the Magazzino del Sale (Zattere), from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021.

Selected in the rst public competition launched by the Lebanese authorities to represent Lebanon, Hala Wardé's proposal was chosen on October 16, 2019 by a committee of experts appointed by the Ministry of Culture and the Federation of Lebanese Engineers and Architects.

Echoing the question « How will we live together? » as raised by Hashim Sarkis, curator of this 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Hala Wardé tackles the issue of coexistence through a questioning of the spaces of silence, and by putting into dialogue architecture, painting, music, poetry, video and photography.

« Why not think about places in relation to their potential as voids rather than as solids? How can we ght fear of emptiness in architecture? How can we imagine forms that generate places of silence and contemplation?” » Hala Wardé

The Lebanese Pavilion is conceived as a musical score, resonating disciplines, shapes and periods to provoke the sensory experience of a thought, articulated around the notions of emptiness and silence, as temporal and spatial conditions of architecture. A «Revelationary» installation as per Paul Virilio's de nition, in tribute to the renowned thinker and urbanist.

Treated as a manifesto for a new form of architecture, Hala Wardé's project is based on the cryptic shapes of a group of sixteen olive trees that are a thousand years old in Lebanon. These legendary trees, whose hollowed forms are home to various species, are the tutelary gure of the Lebanese Pavilion. They are places of recollection or gathering, where peasants have convened for generations to decide on village a airs or to celebrate weddings.