The 11th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture

Venice Biennale of architecture

Mostra di Architettura di Venezia, the Architecture section of the Venice Biennale, was established in 1980, although architecture had been a part of the art biennale since 1968....

, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, was held at the Arsenale and Giardini exhibition venues. It took place from September 14 to Sunday, November 23, 2008, and was directed by Aaron Betsky

Aaron Betsky

Aaron Betsky is an architect, critic, curator, educator, lecturer, and writer on architecture and design, who since August 2006 has been the director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. From 2001 to 2006 Betsky served as director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands....

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Awards

The recipients of the prestigious Lion Awards were:

• Golden Lion - Best National Participation: Nicolas Grospierre and Kobas Laksa of the Polish pavilion with Hotel Polonia - The afterlife of buildings, a witty and polemic vision of the probable future of buildings
• Golden Lion - Best Installation Project: Greg Lynn
  Greg Lynn
  Greg Lynn is owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. Univ. Professor of architecture at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a studio professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the winner of the Golden...
  
   for his experimental recycled-toys furniture that according to the jury "best embodied the Biennale theme."
• Silver Lion for a Promising Young Architect: Elemental of Chile for the expert architectural intelligence applied to the context of low cost housing.
• Special Golden Lion for lifetime achievement: James S. Ackerman
  James S. Ackerman
  James Sloss Ackerman is a prominent American architectural historian, a major scholar of Michelangelo's architecture, of Palladio and of Italian Renaissance architectural theory.-Biography:...
  
  , the first historian of Architecture to receive this award.

United States Pavilion

Into the Open: Positioning Practice: 16 architectural groups focus on the increasing interest in civic engagement in American architectural practice, and examines the means by which a new generation is reclaiming a role in shaping community and the built environment. Curated by William Menking, Aaron Levy, and Andrew Sturm.