Fundamentalists and Other Arab Modernisms
Kingdom of Bahrain’s National Participation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition
La Biennale de Venezia – Arsenale
7th June – 23th November 2014
Fundamentalists and Other Arab Modernisms is the Kingdom of Bahrain’s National Participation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition- La Biennale de Venezia. The pavilion, located at the Arsenale Artiglierie in Venice, was commissioned by Her Excellency Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, Minister of Culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Exhibition
At a moment when the Arab world is in turmoil, it seems relevant, from Bahrain to assess what remains of the pan-Arab project; a transnational political and cultural project, born in the early 20th century, coinciding with the birth of modernism in the region. Under the Ottoman rule, European colonial forces inscribed the beginning of a modernist project, first through an infrastructure of rail lines and then with more pronounced colonial ambitions that were translated through a territorial project of modernization at both the urban and architectural scale. As the political situation continued to evolve, the colonial map was slowly replaced by the real estate developer’s model as neo-liberal ideals were loosely adopted and generally accepted as the new modus operandi. The exhibition is conceived as a subjective, non-exhaustive and sometimes fictional reading of the architectural legacy of the last 100 years across the Arab World, initiated as a first attempt to safeguard the archival architectural heritage of this region. It includes a selection of a hundred buildings, laid out flat without any pretention of qualitative architectural judgment that will join the archives of the Arab Center for Architecture.
Curator
George Arbid
George Arbid is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at the American University of Beirut. He received his Doctor of Design degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and his Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures en Architecture from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts. Prior to his stay at Harvard, he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the History, Theory and Criticism Program at MIT. His area of interest covers mostly modern architecture in Lebanon and the region. Among his writings is “Beirut: the Phoenix and the Reconstruction Predicament”, an essay that he wrote for Urbanization and the Changing Character of the Arab City published by ESCWA in 2005. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Karol Schayer architect, a Pole in Beirut. Arbid is the co-founder and current director of the Arab Center for Architecture located in Beirut, and the founding member of Docomomo Lebanon. His published architecture practice includes the Shabb and Salem residences, the latter having been nominated for the Aga Khan Award in 1998.
