Non-Architects / Interviews
The architect Roberto Loeb will be the curator of the official Brazilian exhibition that will be held at this year's International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy (from 14 September until 23 November, 2008). This year's theme of the world's biggest and most important architecture exhibition is Out There: Architecture Beyond Building curated by North-American architect Aaron Betsky.
The idea of Out There: Architecture Beyond Building is to collect and encourage experimentation in architecture. According to Betsky, "architecture is not building.
Buildings are objects and the act of building leads to such objects, but architecture is something else. It is the way we think and talk about buildings, how we represent them, how we build them. This is architecture".
Brazilian official exhibition at the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice is traditionally organized by Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. According to the curator Roberto Loeb, the exhibition will present one hundred different personal statements, all of them from non-architects. In this way, both famous personalities and anonymous people, artists, doctors, designers, philosophers, diplomats, editors, teachers, politicians, singers, photographers, entrepreneurs, taxi drivers, butchers, builders and others will participate in this exhibition.
These personal statements will reflect the intimacy of these people with public and private spaces. A series of displays shown at the pavilion will bring some of these statements and a catalog that will be released during the exhibition will bring the whole series of interviews together with pictures, photos, drawings and manuscripts. The proposal of the project is to build a portrait of how architecture is perceived by each one of these people - their aspiration, dreams, experiences, memories and expectations: the house, the street, the city, the school, the object, the theater and many other spaces and places related to their personal lives.
The curator
Roberto Loeb graduated in 1965 from Universidade Mackenzie, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Among his most famous projects there are Natura's new factory building and the Centre for Jewish Culture, both in São Paulo State. Mr. Loeb's work has also been distinguished due its focus on social and community projects such as Projeto Social Oficina Boracéa that develops better working conditions to garbage-collectors of São Paulo, the recovering of EdifÃcio São Vito and Projeto Anchieta dedicated to children and families under social risk in São Paulo.
In 2003, Roberto Loeb was awarded with the 1° Criativity Prize by the National Union of Architects of Ucrane and in 2004 the prize "Arquiteto do Bem" conceived by São Paulo Minicipality due its achievements on social projects.
