When Niklas Bildstein Zaar learned that his architecture studio, Sub, had been hired to design the main show at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, he knew it was a strange choice. In the past decade, his Berlin-based firm has made a name for itself designing elaborate stage sets, for rappers like Travis Scott and Ye, and for Balenciaga’s buzzy fashion shows.
Along the way, the firm has helped establish an austere postindustrial visual language that has become pervasive online: apocalyptic but glossy, with dark colors and a lot of concrete. “Our palette came from worlds where some counterculture had manifested itself,” Bildstein Zaar said in an interview. “We’re working with materials that have a kind of attitude.”
On a recent visit to the firm’s studio, in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, the décor was a funereal blend of goth and high-tech. Paintings in shades of black and gray hung on the walls, and a frightening rubber mask decorated a counter. In Bildstein Zaar’s office, a sculpture of a Grim Reaper-like figure sat ominously in a corner.
For the Venice job, Sub is having to reinvent its approach for a less flashy context. The Biennale, which opens on May 10, is the world’s most prestigious architecture exhibition, and Bildstein Zaar said he hoped his firm’s experience in fashion and art would make the event appealing to a new kind of visitor. “If it managed to dress itself slightly different,” Bildstein Zaar said, “it could get a much bigger audience.”
Columns in Sub’s studio that will be used for the main exhibition design at the Venice Architecture Biennale.Credit…Gordon Welters for The New York Times
Like its art counterpart, which took place last year, the Venice Architecture Biennale features a large-scale central exhibition, plus individual pavilions that exhibiting nations organize separately. For the main show, Sub has designed a system for presenting the exhibits, which have been selected separately by the event’s curatorial team, and for guiding visitors through the show.
