The Palaver Tree – Venice Architecture Biennale

Location: Venice (Italy)
Collaboration: youfeel.org
Area: 49 m² (527 SF)
Date: 2016
Status: Built
Photography: Patricia Parinejad
Sponsor: Battaglia S.R.L.

Migration, physical or cultural, has come to define us all. In a global context of ever transforming processes, environments and economies, added layers of complexity force us to constantly adapt and seek new equilibrium.

Our primeval generational connections are diluted, at times lost as fewer and fewer people live where they were born. Grounding becomes central. Our cultural and ancestral markers face the evolution of a fast paced world, creating the need to seek refuge and find meaning within ourselves.

So that “battles are won” our claim is that people’s quality of life cannot affect the quality of the built environment, rather than the opposite. Frontal confrontation will not win this battle, bypassing challenges will. Perspectives are to be found, territories defined by shifting attention to our inner selves.

Let us offer a different relationship to architecture. Let us transition from the notion of inhabitant to in-habited where the end user is considered knowledgeable enough and the architect becomes a facilitator. Contributing to re-building a social link that relies on affect rather than effect.

Let us implement the ancestral rite of the Palaver Tree to bring about a cultural referent that captures our modern customs and our buried senses. An interface to architecture which fosters new
conditions to build habitat by calling on our emotions.

The Palaver Tree is the creative methodology which leads to a new focal point, a place where stories and identities are transmitted, a place of exchange and wellness. A place of conversations that leads to criteria beyond esthetics, beyond building and energy codes. A collection of stories to be told, of feelings and senses to be shared and desires brought to the surface; materialized as built space. The Palaver Tree as catalyst for an architecture from within.

The two projects shown at the 2016 Biennale are the outcome of this research, Reported from the Frontline.