Displaying items by tag: giardini

This year’s 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, which closed yesterday, was the most controversial architecture iteration of the festival in recent memory — and the most popular, according to statistics released by the Biennale over the weekend. A record number of visitors made their way through the Giardini and Arsenale from June 7 through November 23: 228,000 according to a statement released by the exhibition.

The expanded audience comes in response both to director Rem Koolhaas’s monumental presence in contemporary architectural discourse, but also to this year’s expanded length. In previous years, the Architecture Biennale only ran for three months; Koolhaas doubled that to six months, making 2014 the first year that the architecture display and art display have had equal run times.

The Venice Biennale, a major contemporary art fair that takes place every two years, has welcomed its 400,000^th visitor, marking a major attendance milestone for the event, which is in its 55^th year. The fair’s turnout was up 18% from its last iteration in 2011. The Biennale still has until November 24 to rack up new attendance.

In addition to the particularly high visitor numbers, this year’s Venice Biennale set a single-day attendance record on November 2 when 7,331 people made their rounds at Venice’s Giardini and Arsenale, where the fair is held.