V&A to Debut Applied Arts Pavilion at 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale

The Victoria and Albert Museum will present its first pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Brendan Cormier. Titled "A World of Fragile Parts," the exhibition in the Arsenale's Sale d'Armi explores how copying—from plaster casts to digital scanning—can aid cultural heritage preservation. It addresses questions of authenticity, natural disasters, terrorism, and tourism. The pavilion continues the Biennale's focus on applied arts, initiated last year with Aldo Cibic's "Digitale – non solo digitale." Concurrently, the Biennale hosts two other special interventions: "Report from Cities: Conflicts of an Urban Age" by LSE Cities, anticipating the UN Habitat III conference in October 2016, and "Reporting from Marghera and Other Waterfronts" curated by Stefano Recalcati at Forte Marghera. The former analyzes urbanization in 12 global cities, including Kinshasa (215% growth since 1990), Lagos (176%), Delhi (164%), and Dhaka (166%). The latter examines industrial port regeneration over the last 30 years, focusing on Porto Marghera.