Unveiling Sami’s Bedouin Library as a Social Space at the Venice Biennale
The Scandinavian Pavilion brought a nomadic library to this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.
which houses a 15-year archive of books and materials focusing on issues related to Aboriginal architecture.
The exhibition, titled Girjegumpi: The Sámi Architecture Library,
was curated by architect and artist Joar Nango.
Together with collaborators at the Museum of Finnish Architecture,
the National Museum of Norway, and ArkDes – the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design.
The ArkDes team includes curators Carlos Ménguez Carrasco and James Taylor Foster,
project manager Luba Kozovnikova, with support from Elisabeth Noren, Stefan Mosfeldt and Jonah Vogel.
The Scandinavian Pavilion officially represents Finland,
Norway and Sweden and installs the Sami Architectural Library as a “structure,
social space and source of knowledge shaped around Sapmi’s architecture.”
Design features
The expression representing the word Girjegumpi, is derived from two Northern Sami words: “girji”, meaning book,
and a “gumpi” – a small cabin for reindeer herders on sleds, often pulled by a snowmobile.
In the pavilion, Girjegumpi is revealed as a spatial identification of talks and research initiated by Joar Nango to showcase his two decades of practice research at the intersection of architecture and art.
Described as a replication of a Bedouin library, the project evolved as a collective library and expanded with site-specific modifications as it traveled to various sites in Sapmi and the wider North region.
The pavilion translates this journey into different dimensions organized by multiple collaborations.
Including artists and artisans such as Katarina Speke-Skomm, Anders Sona, Ken Ari Bongo, and Anders Rempe.
The pavilion is an archive to contain and share, from rare titles to contemporary books.
It contains a collection of more than 500 publications.
Topics deal with various issues, including Semitic architecture and design,
traditional knowledge and ancestral building, activism, and decolonization.
Along with other issues, this archive also includes artwork, materials,
design details, and found items. The pavilion sets up a gathering place, hosting large groups of people.
For example, her reading room provides an environment for individual study and reflection.
Nomadic
is a living project that addresses the importance of Aboriginal culture in architectural and building discourse today:
the importance of collaborative work, construction techniques and resource use in rapidly changing climatic conditions,
Flowing materials use local and sensitive approaches to landscapes and nature.
It highlights the architect’s attitude towards a more polyphonic understanding of the world.
