The Scotsman

The Venice Architecture Biennale is as close as the industry gets to the Edinburgh Festival. Split into separate sites but centred around one theme, it is huge, unwieldy and, often, a bit patchy. This year director Kurt W Forster's concept was Metamorphosis, his notion being that architecture is going through a period of revolutionary shifts in thought that have already opened up unexpected perspectives. So in one half of the show, at the city's Arsenale, Forster gets to play around with his ideas while, over at the Giardini, various nations from Argentina to Serbia and Montenegro via the US and Georgia attempt to interpret his intentions, while, at the same time, trying to outdo each other's pavilions. While Forster's Arsenale exhibition is well thought through and full of good intentions, it's too big and one-paced to sustain attention. Inevitably, it's at the Giardini where the real fun is to be had. It's impossible not to try and spot national stereotypes. Will the German Pavilion be ruthlessly efficient? Actually no, it was rather inventive and very charming. Can the Japanese do anything other than kooky? Well, not on this evidence. Proceedings, as ever, were dominated by the enormous Italian Pavilion (again curated by Forster) which was by turns fascinating, irritating and completely incoherent. And the UK can be proud of its contribution. Curated by former Archigram member Peter Cook, the pavilion showed the eclecticism of contemporary British architecture, from the almost-austere minimalism of John Pawson to the joyous 1960s-inspired retro-futurism of Future Systems, and it even managed to deliver a dash of genuine wit into the bargain.