SWEATING ASSETS
Kingdom of Bahrain’s National Participation at the 18th
International Architecture Exhibition
La Biennale de Venezia- Arsenale
20 May – 26 November 2023
Sweating Assets is the Kingdom of Bahrain’s National Participation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition- La Biennale de Venezia. The pavilion, located at the Arsenale Artiglierie in Venice, was commissioned by His Excellency Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, President of the Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities.
Aeris Group had the great opportunity and the honor to contribute to the creation of the microclimate in the Bahrain pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. The project, born a few months ago, led Aeris to reinvent itself, to experiment and create an ad hoc product to obtain a result that fully reflected the objectives of the pavilion and the studies related to it. The custom-made humidification process aims to explore the unique climatic conditions of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Through the exploitation of resources, the pavilion delves into factors such as extreme heat and humidity and the current needs for comfort characteristic of the island. The exhibition, through the analysis of the typical territorial and domestic life, highlights the position of cooling infrastructures in relation to a wider ecosystem. Sweating Assets is an adaptive means of managing resources, which involves working with existing systems making the most of their best capabilities rather than starting over.
The project highlights how the environments are already built and how the infrastructure and relationships are a complex landscape, rich in resources. Sweating Assets, by not encouraging in any way the wasteful use of cooling systems, discovers the possibilities (rather than the solutions) obtained only through a necessary consumption. In the intense heat and humidity conditions of Bahrain, air conditioning produces proportionally high condensation. Using this unintentional byproduct of anthropogenic activity, the loose ends are bound, redirecting water to other parts within the wider ecology.
The microenvironment of the exhibition is a choreography of temperature, humidity and condensation that transmits the conditions and experiences of life on the island. Complementing the import of climate there is a call for the collection and redirection of accidental condensate reserves to wetlands and agricultural regions in need of supply. A landscape is located adjacent to a cold volume of condensation, demonstrating the dichotomy of industrial systems against transient ecological reasons.
This volume is an emblem of the constantly cooled and condensed dwellings. When the dense air of Venice comes into contact with the volume, at the temperature of the dew point, water constantly releases on its surface. Coatings, channels and grooves control condensation patterns along with water movement. Water, from the surface, is collected and brought to “storage” on a landscape of land. Deposits represent each scaled region based on the quantitative analysis of the cooling they consume and the subsequent condensation they produce.
The publication “Sweating Assets: On Climate Conditioning and Ecology” completes the exhibition by providing numerical analysis, speculation and qualitative writings. A national audit studies cooling infrastructure, its environmental implications and water offerings.
Find out more on the dedicated website: http://bahrainpavilion.bh/
The Bahrain pavilion awaits you at the Venice Biennale from 20 May to 26 November, do not miss it!
