Orbit Venice Workshop

Davor Ereš is architect and researcher. He is active in the fields of architectural design, teaching, and research with special focus on the models of learning through architecture, (post)production of architecture and the questions of contemporaneity. His main professional drive is set around prospect of architecture as a strategy for critical practice and action. He was teaching assistant at the Faculty of Architecture – University of Belgrade in various courses on architectural design at the Bachelor and Master Studies from 2003 to 2015. Since 2015. he has been engaged as a lecturer at several international architectural workshops and schools of architecture. Since 2016. guest teacher at the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture – Lyon and Paris. He exhibited at Venice Biennale and Tallin Architectural Biennale. Founder of the architectural platform “Poligon” through which he is practicing architecture and developing independent research projects.

The architectural workshop "Orbit Venice" was created within the curriculum of the International School of Architecture - Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, Paris. The initiative to create the workshop is the result of the cooperation of several Universities with the organizational support of the Venice Biennale Sessions 2022 and the IUAV of the University of Venice. The main aim of the workshop was to construct ephemeral, large-scale light structures that should perform various temporary conditions. The students were expected to be involved in the entire process – from developing an idea, approach to the immediate context, constructing the structure, setting up the structure in the context and finally performing, exploring and documenting the effects. The workshop method was developed through various strategies for constructing structures, objects and effects that responded to the particularities of the public space. The result of this interaction with the place was documented in the form of a short video and a series of photographs showing the reality which is interspersed with the architectural object. The structure of the workshop was conceived as an open process of collaboration between the tutors and the participants, which was draw up in the context of the manifestation of the Venice Biennale as a gravitational field of different practices. The lagoon of Venice was accessed as a working space that situated between the realies of architecture, art production, exhibitions and exhibition space. Through the search for different positions of the students, through the construction of structures, the workshop aims to develop and articulate different architectural attitudes and strategies in relation to the spaces and dispersed meanings of the Biennale 2022 exhibition. The ambition of the workshop was to develop the ability to practice architecture HERE (in situ) and NOW (in actu - in this specific moment) as a set of spatial gestures that would illuminate the recognizable, distinctive, precise and bold position of each student. Various architectural strategies have been developed for the creation of transient objects. This position aimed to emphasize the architecture as knowledge and the ability to place the structure in the uniqueness of the site and the specificity of time, with the idea of creating an open interaction with the local community.