Venice Architecture Biennale 2012
Formations - 2012 Australian Exhibition
Healthabitat was one of six practices chosen to represent Australia at the Architecture Biennale in Venice. The exhibition was called "Formations" which aimed to give light to unique practice structures in Australian architecture.
The exhibiting practices were selected from results of a survey of Australian practises in 2011 which asked two key questions:
- As a way of working in architecture, what is unique about your particular practice form and the constellation of participants who comprise it?
- What is is about the type of work that you do, that is achievable only because of your unique 'formation' and that extends the idea of architectural production and agency in some way?
From 125 responses, 33 were selected as part of the Australian catalogue for the Biennale and 6 selected for the exhibition in Venice.
Healthabitat was generated through an Australian Indigenous health service ambition to improve the health of children aged zero to five years old. It is now run as a "social business" evolving over more than 25 years into a practice formation combining health, environment and design related to, but not focused on, architecture. Led by architect Paul Pholeros, medical director Dr Paul Torzillo and community director Stephan Rainow, this formation has shown the potential for architectural skills and methods to combine with a wide range of other professional and community groups. Its work has produced better living environments and proven health benefits for a broad range of non-traditional architectural clients, from the remote Central Australian desert communities, rural Nepalese villages, to urban Brooklyn, New York City.
Since the 1980s, Healthabitat has consistently used empirical evidence to debunk well established myths around housing and Indigenous people and challenged various state and national governments to improve the standard of Indigenous housing and health.
Improving complex health problems requires combined health, environment and design skills. By reforming a practice around the design, specification and maintenance of housing for the disadvantaged, Healthabitat shows architects can contribute to work for the 'other' 90 per cent of the world's population.
Linking Housing and Health - our formation
Healthabitat's 'biennale message' was about how architects can work with a network of professions and local communities to help improve health. Guided by health goals, projects work towards making better living conditions, employ and train local people and through detailed project data, debunk common myths about who is responsible for poor living conditions. The Healthy Living Practices that guide the work have proven universal as demonstrated in projects Nepal villages and a public housing estate in Brooklyn, New York.
Below is a tongue in cheek slideshow describing a conversation between two architects viewing the HH exhibition. One (THE LEFT HAND DIALOGUE) less enlightened to the ideas of linking health, people and architecture and the other (RIGHT HAND DIALOGUE) making the effort to grasp the HH exhibition. We hope this illustrates our exhibition being set up in and around the Australian Pavilion.
The Team in Venice - August 2012
Paul Pholeros, Greg Norman, Ebony James Chow and Adriano Pupilli from Healthabitat were our team on the ground in Venice. They set up, talked about the work of Healthabitat and it's unique 'formation'.
In Venice the HH team had great help from the Australian Institute of Architects staff, volunteers and in particular Diego and Roberto 'the Mr fixits' of the pavilion.
To reiterate the thanks given to the team during the Biennale Healthabitat would also like to thank those who do the work a long way from Venice...
...the very large team, of well over 1,000 people, who make Housing for Health projects successful. They have continued the daily, dirty, detailed and grinding work of fixing poor quality houses. They have worked with the challenges of poverty and political disinterest, to improve the health of over 45, 000 Indigenous Australians. Overseas, in Nepal and the USA, similar teams, now replicating the work, also deserve our thanks.
