Warm and Fuzzy

Thinking big: A huge orange polar fleece is the centrepiece of SweaterLodge, the Canadian exhibit on display at the Venice Architecture Biennale. (Pechet and Robb)

If Vancouver design team Pechet and Robb get their way, the polar fleece sweater may soon join Mounties, the maple leaf and the beaver in the hallowed hall of Canadian icons. Renowned for their cross-disciplinary work in art, design and architecture, Stephanie Robb and Bill Pechet are the creators of SweaterLodge, the Canadian selection at this year’s International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the most prestigious architecture and design show in the world.

The biennale theme this year is cities and how people live in them. With strong direction from its curator, Richard Burdett, the result has been the most exciting and relevant architecture exhibition in years, tackling issues like unprecedented urbanization, swelling poverty, cultural upheaval and environmental exhaustion. Gone are the abstruse models and blueprints of towering skyscrapers or futuristic airports by big-name architectural firms that have characterized biennales of the past. In their place are, for the most part, engaging exhibits that push beyond the traditional understanding of architecture into the realm of art, urban planning and, most centrally, how city space shapes our everyday lives.

Canada’s SweaterLodge — a bright orange polar fleece sweater 20 times human scale made from more than 3,000 recycled plastic bottles — would seem a natural fit for the architecture-as-more-than-buildings approach of this year’s exhibition. Yet despite its grandiose size, SweaterLodge falls puzzlingly short in communicating its messages, both big and small. 

The installation is intended to be a local or national pun — something “generous,” according to its creators — that captures the Canadian spirit of being clever, witty and resourceful.

“We wanted to play up on Canadian stereotypes, which is why we chose polar fleece and a jacket,” explains Pechet, a white-haired but youthful-looking man in his early 50s, standing outside the exhibit on the morning of the press opening in Venice. “It’s not a power image, a symbol of clothing and embrace, and that’s a national identity we think is fine to project.… [It’s] a kind of a reflection of that; it’s soft and pliable and isn’t celebrating an icon.”

Getting cozy: Stephanie Robb and Bill Pechet, creators of the SweaterLodge exhibit. (Pechet and Robb)

Pechet says the piece includes architectural references as well — specifically to the work of Frank Gehry, the Toronto-born international architecture star renowned for his billowy, curved metallic and glass constructions. “It’s a little bit of a pun on Gehry’s work. He makes his models out of fabric, so this is a Canadian version of that. We didn’t have the budget to use titanium,” Pechet laughs, “so we used polar fleece donated by Mountain Equipment Co-op.”

The enormous fleece sweater is the dominant component of SweaterLodge, though not the sole one. Throughout the exhibit, light bulbs hang inside coloured plastic bottles, casting a warm light that complements the fleece’s orange glow. A small speaker hangs near the entrance playing a curious soundtrack of Robb and Pechet repeatedly whispering “sweaterlodge,” mixed with random sounds from urban life.

In the middle of the space under the hanging sweater sit three stationary bikes, which double as digital video projectors. When you get on to pedal, vignettes of life in Vancouver are projected onto the inside of the sweater in front of you. You can speed up or reverse the film by pedalling. Superimposed over shots of Stanley Park or a stuffed raccoon driving a Skytrain are moving plastic water bottles, recycling boxes and an orange fleece-clad giant, stepping Godzilla-like across the cityscape.

SweaterLodge is billed as a warm and witty commentary on Vancouver life, where urban meets nature, yet as much as I wanted to be transported inside the fuzzy fun of a hugely oversized garment, I left feeling mainly underwhelmed.

To my mind, there are several problems with SweaterLodge — and not all the fault of its designers. The permanent Canadian pavilion for the art and the architecture biennales is a cramped afterthought to the regal spreads that house the exhibits of most of the other several dozen nations represented. Squeezed in among a stand of trees between England’s colonial brick structure and Germany’s towering fascist-style edifice, the Canadian exhibiting space is a diminutive, tepee-like, steel-and-glass structure with trees growing through it.

At first glance, the themes and structural flexibility of SweaterLodge make for an almost organic fit. The enormous fleece top hangs tent-like from pegs along the ceiling, creating peaks and valleys of fabric that visually echo Vancouver’s mountainous backdrop. Robb and Pechet have curved the sleeves of the sweater to follow the horizontal V-shape of the Canadian pavilion so that they form a kind of hunched embrace. While artists in past biennales have chosen to cover the windows to render the space more neutral, Robb and Pechet wisely leave it exposed, allowing visitors to see not only the trees growing through the pavilion, but also surrounding it. For their wilderness-meets-urban theme, Robb and Pechet use the setting to maximum effect.

Despite Robb and Pechet’s best efforts, in lieu of a big enough space to allow people to visually absorb the enormity of the sweater — or conversely, to get close enough to romp around inside or walk along its edges — the dimension-play gets lost. If it weren’t for the bird’s-eye photo and explanation poster at the pavilion’s exit, you’d likely think you’d just walked through some kind of newfangled tent display, as indeed many visitors did on the days I was there. Robb and Pechet chose not to inform visitors that the orange fabric is in fact a sweater until the end of exhibit. While the punch line doesn’t fall flat, it droops considerably.

Biking through Van City: SweaterLodge includes stationary bikes that power digital video projectors displaying scenes of Vancouver. (Pechet and Robb)

Part of the letdown comes from the fact that SweaterLodge is at once overwrought with national signifiers and highly abstract. The work is busting with Canadian double entendres and puns: there’s the title, which plays on the sweatlodge, the sauna-like space used by the First Nations people for spiritual and physical cleansing; then there’s the orange fleece, which broadcasts Canadians’ penchant for both safety and comfort; there’s the bike-powered video that rides through an outdoorsy Vancouver featuring plastic water bottles and stuffed raccoons; finally, there’s the conscientious notice by the door informing visitors that the huge swath of material is not only made from recycled plastic bottles, but when the installation completes the display rounds, it will be cut into scarves and tuques as part a community sewing bee.

With so many “I am Canadian” proclamations throughout, SweaterLodge struck me as too crowded with clever connections to allow people the space to glean their own meaning from it.

I needn’t have worried. Not only were the Canadianisms lost on the mainly European and Asian visitors in Venice, but few even understood the connection between the water bottles and the polar fleece. SweaterLodge purportedly aims to celebrate and critique West Coast Canadians’ environmentally aware choices such as cycling and recycling alongside their continued over-consumption, clear-cutting of forests and adoption of outdoor gear as a leisure fashion statement. Yet, at the exit, I chatted with people from various countries and none could even name the city the installation was about. As far as humour went, the main joke people got was unintentional. With the 30-degree, late-summer Venetian weather, the title slid back to its original meaning. As one visitor put it, “Yes, SweaterLodge — because I sweat a lot in there!”

This disconnect with a wider audience raises a larger question. Namely, why Canada chose such a self-referential and safe piece — that’s ultimately an inside joke — to exhibit at Venice. SweaterLodge displays an inward-turning Canada; it’s an exhibit that, to those in the know, transmits a comforting image of us as warm, bland and only mildly irreverent. Is this the best Canada can do in showing off its national fabric?

The 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale runs until Nov. 19.

Megan Williams is a Canadian writer living in Rome and the author of the short-story collection Saving Rome.

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