Why do we mob celebrities, but ignore those who create our environment? Why do so many people visit art galleries but so few go to architecture exhibitions? Gemma Tipton revels in urban innovation at the Venice Biennale.
Sometimes separate worlds slide by each other so quietly you mightn't even notice. On a Thursday night in Venice, Zaha Hadid leaves the five-star Hotel Danieli as Victoria and David Beckham arrive. The Beckhams are in town to launch their new perfume and aftershave; Hadid is here for the Venice Biennale 10th International Architecture Exhibition.
The paparazzi lurking by the bridges along the Grand Canal and clustering in front of a particularly sleek yacht aren't interested in the Iranian-born woman who in 2004 won architecture's most prestigious prize, the Pritzker, or indeed in any of the other men and women sweating their way through bellinis and canapes in the Danieli's hot ballroom. Perhaps, were they interested in the fact that these people are responsible for the changing shape of the streets we walk down, the buildings we work in and the rooms we sleep in, they might run off a snap or two. Instead they are waiting for a glimpse of a woman who these days is famous chiefly for being thin and for being married to a man who is famous for kicking a ball.
Ironically, a trip to the biennale's opening weekend propels you into a world of glamour not unlike the Beckhams', at least judging by the way it is portrayed in newspapers and magazines. With 49 countries launching their pavilions and exhibitions, you could easily coast through the next 72 hours on a diet of bellinis, canapes and Prosecco.
(As I discover, a diet of bellinis, canapes and Prosecco starts to skew your values a little - even to make you a little obnoxious. Perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on Victoria Beckham after all.) You go to Harry's Dolci, for the Venice SuperBlog party, because its sister Harry's Bar, across the water, is where the bellini, a mixture of peach juice and Prosecco, was invented. You start to compare your bellinis; those at the Danieli aren't as good as those at Harry's; the ones at the Hotel Gabrielli are a little better. You get up early the next day because Iceland has flown in a chef for a breakfast launch, and you get sniffy at the American party, held in the wonderful gardens of the Peggy Guggenheim museum, because they have flown in American wines and there is, as a result, no Prosecco.
And in between all this unreality you start to become aware of the purpose behind it all: the architecture. The main part of the biennale is held in the unrealest part of one of the unrealest places in the world: at the western tip of Venice - a city built on billions of little batons, which hold it above the lapping waters of the lagoon - in the Giardini della Biennale. Created from drained marshlands by Napoleon (who also used Piazza San Marco as stables for his horses), the gardens are home to a bizarre mixture of buildings, each one the national pavilion of a different country.
They reflect the balance of global power and prestige just before the first World War and just after the second, when most of them were built. As a result, they are an intriguing (and often ugly) blend of fascist, neoclassical, modernist and Gothic architecture, all nestling together under the trees.
Beyond the gardens, the other main part of the biennale is held in the Arsenale, a huge former boatyard where the Venetian military fleets were built. Walking past the old stone walls, and through the Arsenale's gates, you start to see the softening effect of time on architecture. Will today's military installations one day seem as benign as the Arsenale? Will the concrete bunkers and iron sheds acquire a romantic feel? Do we always have a problem with architectural progress; love the old, mistrust the new?
The theme of this year's biennale, whose title is Cities. Architecture and Society, contains an element of that concern: how will we meet the challenges of a world where, by 2050, more than eight billion people will be living in cities? What changes will we have to make? What will we have to let go of? What can architecture do?
The exhibition at the Arsenale tackles the issue with so much text and so many statistics that it could equally well have been a book. There are some surprisingly beautiful elements, however, one being a group of shining stalagmite-style models showing urban density. It demonstrates that Los Angeles, known for its suburban sprawl, is about as dense as London, and that Barcelona is the same as the incredibly congested Shanghai, proving that it's not the numbers of people but the planning that counts for a workable city.
In the Giardini della Biennale, some exhibitions are thought-provoking (Ireland's), some disturbing (Israel's), some fun (France's), some quirky and beautiful (Japan's) and some rather wonderful (South Korea's). The main Italian Pavilion, where Ireland's presentation is housed, is also showing a project from Massachusetts Institute of Technology that demonstrates the extent to which we can be tracked through our mobile-phone usage. Seductively beautiful moving maps lure you into fascination, and it was only when you leave that you become disturbed to realise how hard it is to be invisible any more.
Ireland's contribution, SubUrban to SuperRural, looks at how we might cope with an increasingly city-dependent and suburbanised Ireland. The architect and critic Shane O'Toole, who is Ireland's commissioner for the biennale, and FKL Architects, which is its curator, invited nine Irish practices to come up with ideas. These range from MacGabhann Architects' holiday homes that sink underground when not occupied, to Dominic Stevens's cities that float up our waterways, bringing cinemas, shops and restaurants to riverbank residents, to De Paor Architects' return to the Irish tower house. From the fantastical to the eminently buildable, the Irish pavilion captures the idea that makes the biennale so exciting: architecture is about not only what we build but also how we think about the way we live. Richard Burdett, the biennale's director, agrees when he speaks at the Ireland launch. It is one of the best explorations of the theme he has seen, he says.
And after that it is the Ireland party, with more bellinis, and pizza slices that are hard to eat without spoiling our elegant Venice clothes. And so we stand, chatting in the gardens at the Hotel Gabrielli, nibbling the difficult pizza and being nibbled by mosquitoes. As we leave, I wait for a while at the sleek yacht, wanting to see if Victoria Beckham looks like a Barbie doll in real life.
But then I change my mind and go off with the rest of the Irish contingent for dinner, which may well include some talk of cities, suburbs and sustainable development. And, following that, to a massive party behind the Arsenale, where the food is architecturally arranged in little plastic cubes and, as the night wore on, formerly stiff-looking architects roll up their sleeves and start to dance the conga.
Walking back through Venice's confusing streets at about 4am, I wonder why more non-architects don't go to the biennale. Why hasn't architecture caught up with art as being something you might go to an exhibition of for interest, for pleasure? You can take or leave most contemporary art, but we all have to live in and with the results of architecture. Perhaps one of the problems is that architecture doesn't explain itself very well. Many of the texts that accompany the exhibits are impenetrable at best and utterly off-putting at worst. But you should try not to let them put you off. Architecture is for looking at and being in, not reading about. And it's much more interesting than the Beckhams.