La Biennale di Venezia announces the 9th International Architecture Exhibition - METAMORPH directed by Kurt W. Forster.

The Biennale di Venezia's 9th International Architecture Exhibition, METAMORPH, will explore the fundamental changes under way in contemporary architecture, both in the theoretical and practical design field, and in the use of new building technologies.

The layout of the METAMORPH exhibition hypothesises the visitor as a witness of these changes which, avoiding the traditional perspectives of interpretation, justify in an increasingly evident manner an open, innovative comparison with the evolution of the living organisms and their capacity for transformation.

Architecture today is required to show new commitment and has broadened its range of disciplines in a significant manner. Its new role is that of catalysing great social and cultural experiences on an international scale; experiences which are above all revealed in the modifications to urban structures and landscape. Architectural space is thus seen in terms of its capacity to live today's changes; the new materials receive and stress atmospheric effects, and the perception of architecture opens itself to a dynamic conception of time. Public life in the buildings takes on characters that are more centred upon the evolution of the setting.

Thanks to research into materials possessing variable, reactive qualities, much architecture is changing its nature. It assumes curvilinear forms and draws the functions of their shells closer to those of living membranes. There are already many architects who seek to confer organic qualities upon their constructions, no longer in metaphoric terms, but in metabolic ones. Today, architecture becomes liveable only when it establishes its limits and conditions its interiors in just the same way as the primary components of life, cells.

These produce a membrane to show themselves as organisms and stay alive. This new morphology of living spaces is definitively taking over "the era of Vitruvian architecture", and so opening new scenarios of research and construction of spaces for today's world.

The programme of METAMORPH, the 9th International Architecture Exhibition organised by La Biennale di Venezia, is divided into two settings.

The Corderie in the Venice Arsenale will be the venue for works that have literally transformed the discipline of architecture since the 1970s, from those of Peter Eisenman (with his terrestrial automatisms), Frank O. Gehry (with buildings that transform themselves into fish), Aldo Rossi (architecture as memory), and James Stirling (the constructivist collage) to the latest trends and projects built. A historical perspective is presented here which is fundamental to the exhibition's aims: to investigate the means by which architecture has modified the processes of its own invention and execution, thereby acquiring the ability to operate in radically new circumstances.

Starting with the transformation (TRANSFORMATIONS) of existing buildings and broadening out to include the new topography (TOPOGRAPHY), the spaces of the Corderie will also host the sections dedicated to surfaces (SURFACES), atmosphere (ATMOSPHERE) and hyper-projects (HYPER-PROJECTS). Step by step, their succession will trace the rapid evolution of architecture, which is acquiring new dimensions and presenting increasingly specific qualities. Hyper-projects represent the greatest complexity yet reached, both for their internal organisation and for their extension and ramifications in the surrounding area.

The Italian Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale will present installations commissioned from various designers, offering specific examples of how the various epochal changes have led to the recent transformations in architecture. These installations will reveal the bonds that exist between metamorphoses in the organisation of the profession, the new types of building, the materials, construction systems and innovations in the forms of depictions and realisation of architecture.

With METAMORPH, the future arrives in Venice through, for example, a series of 40 concert halls: buildings with folded and curved surfaces and megastructures of great impact.

Distributed around the various venues of the Biennale di Venezia's 9th International Architecture Exhibition, the photographic section, entitled Morphing Lights, Floating Shadows, and curated by Nanni Baltzer, presents the works of over 60 photographers divided into three areas, each associated with one of the exhibition's themes.

For a century, the role of photography as regards architecture has been almost exclusively associated with the execution of accurate documentation or, in some particularly interesting cases, of the distribution of an architect's point of view about his own work via publications. However, in recent years, photographers have awoken the fleeting yet latent qualities of the buildings. Today, exchanges and collaboration between photographers and architects are increasingly frequent. Often, the former are able to reveal atmospheric, ephemeral but significant aspects in their images, providing architects with new stimuli for expression in their various projects.

Within the Italian Pavilion, the section entitled News from the Interior, curated by Mirko Zardini, groups together architecture for interiors realised recently in Italy. On show will be the latest transformations of interiors - home and work, institutions and commerce - showing the work of almost 40 architects who work in a sector that confirms and increasingly renews the typical forms of Italian tradition in this field.

Under the direction of Rinio Bruttomesso (director of the Centro Internazionale Citt?d'Acqua di Venezia), about 20 towns that share an important relationship with the sea, lakes and rivers - from Bilbao to Buenos Aires, Lyons to Seoul - will present their respective reviews of the metamorphoses undergone by their respective urban waterfronts. The layout of the Cities on Water section will take the form of a floating pavilion, a sort of large 'ship' anchored in the Arsenale basin in the shadow of the Gaggiandre. It will offer visitors a broad survey of the projects of "water cities" in one of the historically most significant locations for an understanding of the relationship between Venice and the Mediterranean.

METAMORPH will dedicate particular attention also to the theme of training future architects.

The head of the faculty of Design and Arts of the IUAV, Marco De Michelis, will be directing a workshop with tutor and students from six international architecture schools (ETH of Zurich, AA of London, IUAV of Venice, Tongji University of Shanghai, Columbia University of New York, Universidad Catolica of Santiago in Chile) which will exhibit the results of their teaching programmes.

The Biennale di Venezia's 9th International Architecture Exhibition will present the work of over 170 architecture studios, including more than 200 projects, over 150 photographs, numerous videos and large images of natural metamorphoses created by photographer Armin Linke. There will also be eight special installations by architects such as Ben van Berkel, Peter Eisenman, Kengo Kuma, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Massimo Scolari, Ron Arad, Wilkinson - Eyre, Sauerbruch + Hutton and others.

The exhibition layout, graphic design and three books/catalogues that explore the themes in greater depth, are the work of one of the most avant-garde teams in the field, the Asymptote (Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture) and Omnivore team from New York. The aim of the exhibition is to set up a close dialogue with the perspective spaces of the Arsenale and, within the Italian Pavilion, to give life to a series of stages for the various events that will make METAMORPH into an unmissable project for all those who believe in the importance of beauty in the buildings in which we live.