Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which a spoken word or phrase temporarily sounds meaningless to the listener due to a steady stream of repetition. Kind of like when your dear old grandmother (bless her heart), compliments your good looks on repeat. While well-intentioned, the broken record reiteration starts to sound a little hollow. Thankfully this strange occurrence only happens in semantics, because the highly methodical repetition seen in Luigi Bonaventura‘s photographs feels anything but meaningless.

In fact, it is the hyper-repetition of pastel walls, closed windows, and not-so-private balconies that makes Bonaventura’s latest series ”Behind the Edge Jesolo Beach, Venice“ so enchanting. His images of vacant hotel façades embrace the unexpected power in redundancy. Bonaventura tells us that his photos are in no way a critique of uniformity; rather the homogeneity frees the artist to translate his passion for architecture into a captivating aesthetic. Click through to see more!

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It’s the post (gram?) seen around the world. (I guess you could say the same about every blog post, but you know what we mean.) Photographer/professional journeyer Murad Osman probably has A LOT more Instagram followers than he did at the beginning of the week. If you missed them, Osman’s travel photos feature his girlfriend, Nataly Zakharova, leading him by the hand from Venice to Singapore, Berlin to Moscow, and everywhere in between. The pictures, which combine wanderlust, buildings, exotic locales, and Zakharova’s sartorial flair, soon went viral and, needless to say, have already generated a load of parodies on Reddit.

The couple are seen advancing toward the Brandenburg Gate, gondoling through Venice, and navigating Red Square, among encountering many more sights and vistas. The architecture, just like IRL, recedes into the background, an avatar that suggests “place” and substantiates the cultural and geographical transition from city to city (or gram to gram). Click through to see more!

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Fashion designer Pierre Cardin’s proposed Palais Lumière, a residential, hospitality, and shopping emporium planned for Venice (left) and a tiered skirt from Cardin’s collection. Right photo: Associated Press

In his 75-plus years in the fashion industry, the 90-year-old couturier Pierre Cardin has molded silhouettes, cinched panstuits, and stretched and shortened hemlines. More recently he has sent his sights on shaping the Venice skyline. His proposed Palais Lumière—a dizzying 60-story pirouette of glass and steel—represents either economic salvation for a faded corner of Venice or a grandiose fetish worthy of Dubai, depending on whom you ask. Continue.

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Image: AP Photo/Luigi Costantini

Over the weekend, Italy experienced heavy storms that swept through Venice and westward through Tuscany. The latter bore the worst of the storm, while the former, the perennial “City of Water”, experienced extensive flooding. Venetians have long grown used to annual flooding, named the acqua alta. In response, most strap on rubber boots to wade through the waters on their way to work or the market, while other, more opportunistic souls fetch their bathing suits for a dip in what we’re claiming as the world’s greatest swimming pool: the Piazza Piscina San Marco. Click through for more!

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Carefully toeing the line between installation and photography, Norwegian artist Rune Guneriussen meticulously photographs ordinary, household items in extraordinary environments. His staged photos, taken throughout the Norwegian countryside, capture dense enchanted forests and spare winter wonderlands populated with such objects as chairs, books, lamps, oh, and more lamps (did we mention he uses a lot of lamps?).

Hardly any of Guneriussen’s scenes continue to exist as live installations, but you can catch his photographs in two places this fall. Rheingalerie Bonn, in Bonn, Germany, is currently exhibiting the artist’s work through November 10. Guneriussen will also be a part of a group show this month at Bugno Art Gallery in Venice, Italy.

Click through for selected works from Rune Guneriussen’s solo exhibition at Rheingalerie Bonn!

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Photography: Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil

As if taken directly from a scene in a David Lynch film, the images of the Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil artwork presented at last year’s Venice Biennale would warm any surrealist fan’s already melting heart. Entitled Le Cercle Fermé (Closed Circle) and curated by René Kockelkorn, the installation—which hasn’t received much exposure—explores the central theme of space while playing with the physiological limitations of perception. Read more.

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Against all Rules from Thilo Brethauer on Vimeo.

Look up ‘architect’ in the glossary of images, and you’d see Ole Scheeren–or some form of him–who, with his movie-star looks (and movie-star partners), impressive portfolio of work, and enterprising manner, commands a cultural influence unmatched by any architect since the Metabolist Kisho Kurokawa, or, to a lesser extent, Philip Johnson. Best known for his involvement in the design of OMA’s CCTV Tower, Scheeren subsequently broke with his partner and mentor Rem Koolhaas to forge his own path. Since then, he’s lined up several large projects in Asia, but has built little, save for the “Archipelago Cinema“, a floating movie theater that Scheeren first premiered in a beatific bay in Thailand. He’s sailed the pontoon structure halfway across the world to Venice, where it was anchored outside the Arsenale, just a short way from the Biennale spectacle of this past week. Read more.

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Wolf D. Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au; Photo: Elfie Semotan

Wolf D. Prix isn’t afraid to speak his mind. The celebrated architect and erstwhile avant-guardist formulated his thoughts of the just-opened Venice Architecture Biennale in a scathing 570-word statement that’s more than a little tedious. The document, entitled (!) “The Banal”, voices Prix’s dissatisfaction with the Biennale’s “vanity” and the “boring” exhibitions that litter its grounds. He decries the event as an “expensive danse macabre” that doesn’t, and perhaps, never has fulfilled its founding purpose: to host and provoke “lively discussion and criticism of topics in contemporary architecture”. Read More.

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Contemporary architecture set amongst the remnants of the Venetian Arsenale. Superb juxtaposition. @la_biennale #architecture #architizer

The Golden Lion winners of the 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice were announced this morning, but there’s still plenty of biennale action left to be had. Our correspondent Greta Hansen reported earlier about the prevalence of pomo (post-modernism to the uninitiated) at the this year’s exhibitions–the latest post in her week-long coverage of the event. It’s also @marchitizer, Architizer CEO’s Marc Kushner’s last day in Venice, but he’s made sure to make the rounds before he sets off for home. He sent over a flurry of Instagrams documenting the most interesting beats, including Zaha’s icy models and yonic ‘Arum’ sculpture, the Spanish pavilion’s pulchritudinous servers/performers, and the sandy, fun-in-the-simulated sun at the Arsenale’s indoor micro-beach.

Be sure to follow the @architizer Instagram to get the best coverage of the biennale and all things architecture and design. Click for more.

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Entrance to the main pavilion in the Giardini

Before I arrived in Venice, I visited an exhibit at the Pompidou Centre on the La Tedenza (La Tendenza, Italian Architectures, 1965-1985, a very rich exhibition if you are in Paris before September 10^th).  On my way I also visited Montpellier, France—the self-proclaimed second city of architecture in France—where I walked through Antigone, an enormous development designed by Ricardo Bofill in the 1980s. Continue.

A Field of Diagrams by Eisenman Architects

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