In 2008 I was a former member of the collective L.U.P. (political urbanism laboratory) from where we develop a serie of activities in relation with the participation of Uruguay in the XI International architecture exhibition of Venice Biennale. As a curatorial team we choose to develop a open call to proposals for being showed at the biennale. Then we present all the proposed project in a laboratory held in the national museum of visual art (MNAV). This laboratory was also a kind of intervention in the place (view the case). But instead of selecting just a few projects for representing Uruguay in this prestigious international exhibition, we choose to present all the projects inside a big book launched in this exhibition. So the core of this laboratory was to talk about uruguayan architecture and architects, a debate from historical point of views and also contemporary, using all the presented projects.

The first day of this laboratory we use it as a meeting point to open dialogues between the participants (mostly architects and students, but also artist and designers) and to give to them a brief info of all the project presented. The museum was closed so we just could use one small área upstairs. So, I suggest to develop a kind of situations to help to “brake the ice”.

Outside the museum one person stop the participants and give them the materials for the laboratory (accreditation, projects documents, paper, etc.).
The participants could enter then one by one, to the museum. There, was the same white table with 6 chairs of all the visual communication of the laboratory (view LUPs visual communication) and one computer. In it screen it was a short sentence saying “please read aloud and fill in the blanks. We will record the audio.” the text was: “My name is ___ . But people call me ___ . I am (in the sense of “find oneself”) ___ . I am (In the sense of being) ___ . I identifies with the architecture ___ . Uruguayan architecture today ___. A project not build is ___ . My home is ___.”
After answering they went upstairs and they found a surprising table full of glasses with wine and a projection+audio of the next person who was entering to the museum…
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Photos: Miguel Fascioli and Felipe Ridao

In the Biennale we showed all this presentations in small frames, and also some pictures with the text were included in the book presented in that exhibition