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DESIGN OF THE WEEK: Renowned South African architect Peter Rich was invited to exhibit some of his drawings at the prestigious Venice Biennale this year. He speaks to #Trending about his work.
Multiple award-winning Johannesburg-based architect Peter Rich is being celebrated this year at the 18th annual Venice Biennale, the world’s most important art and design exhibition and considered the Olympics of the art world.
Seen by tens of thousands of people from around the world, Rich is showcasing 15 drawings of eight selected projects, work that ties in beautifully to this year’s theme of “free space”.
Called Landscape Architecture, Architecture Landscape, the exhibition was curated by curator and author Garreth van Niekerk, and comprises sketches of projects like the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, and Rich’s latest project in China called Stone House.
If you’re yet to visit the Mapungubwe Centre, you should do so soon, not only for the cultural and historical richness of the place, but also to see Rich’s architectural designs. His drawings of the centre are a true demonstration of organic architecture. The structure fits the surrounds perfectly without the encroaching feel that some buildings possess. For Rich, these are essential elements to doing good work.
He explains: “Scale and proportion are key as this is all in the name of human use. Any good architecture has an ease and tranquillity to it, almost like a beautiful face.”
Chatting in his multitiered back garden in Parktown, the sage architect likens the work he did in Mapungubwe to planting a seed and letting it grow.
“That happens through divine mathematics. It isn’t about style or fashion. It’s about working with the forces that are there as everything is governed by order.”
For this exhibition at the Arsenale (a cluster of old shipyards and armories) in Venice, they’ve cleverly reproduced these designs and others on a monumental scale and then printed them on canvas and transparent textile sheets.
Rich assembled his drawings in the warehouse setting and, using a window, created a temple of light. The mobile structure was designed and built in Joburg and made from South African Kiaat hardwood and aluminium.
The curators of the biennale had seen Rich lecture and are said to have found him to be a breath of fresh air.
“They found that my drawings and architecture are seamless. What I put down on paper becomes real,” he says.
They chose Rich as one of 71 people in the world to show off his flair for the organic and his natural take on the idea of “free space” in an exhibition that has been hailed as a success and is exceeding his own expectations.
Rich says he was tasked with a complex request by the Biennale curators: “Through my drawings they wanted me to show how I enter through the subconscious, and through the dream state my drawings end up becoming real.”
Through his studies of African architecture he became fascinated with how the human body informs access, duality and symmetry.
“This is why I called the exhibition Landscape Architecture, Architecture Landscape, because there’s a point when the two fuse,” he explains.
One need only visit his home to get a visual understanding of this principle in action. His home meets his criteria for good architecture: tranquil and at ease.
. The exhibition runs until the end of November in the Arsenale
