Teresa Moller's Catch the Landscape at Venice Architecture Biennale

At the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Chilean landscape architect Teresa Moller presented 'Catch the Landscape', an installation using discarded travertine blocks from a quarry in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The project occupied both the Corderie dell'Arsenale and outdoor spaces, arranging stone fragments rhythmically to create communal seating areas. Moller aimed to demonstrate that waste materials can enrich urban environments without extracting new resources. The installation invited visitors to pause and 'capture' views of the Venetian landscape, functioning as an interval in daily routine. Moller's studio emphasizes contamination—bringing materials with their own history into dialogue with a host site. She stated, 'I am interested in the process,' highlighting the contrast between architecture's fixed measurements and nature's variability. The project was part of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, curated by Alejandro Aravena, under the theme 'Reporting from the Front'. Moller's work addresses post-industrial processes and the measure between things, echoing Bernard Tschumi's critique of speed and telecommunications distorting architecture's ancient role of measuring time and space.