Venice Architecture Biennale 2010: two enormous girders slice through the Arsenale exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale thanks to Madrid architect Antón García-Abril of Ensamble Studio.

Above and top photographs are copyright Roland Halbe

Entitled Balancing Act, the installation comprises one girder balanced across the other, supported at one end by a metal spring.

A rock perched atop the other end acts as a counter-weight.

The installation forms part of the exhibition People Meet in Architecture, directed by Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA (see our earlier Dezeenwire story).

The Venice Architecture Biennale continues until 21 November. See all our stories about it in our special event category.

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See also: Trufa by Anton García-Abril, a house cast in the earth and hollowed out by a cow.

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The text that follows is from Ensamble Studio:

BALANCING ACT

Balancing Act is a play of balance. Two structural lines in the longitudinal space of the Arsenale buildings, which operate as a reagent to modify the original space.

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The interference caused by generating a diagonal incision, cuts on the bias the previous line marked by the old structure. The harmony between the two structures now contiguous forms a space from the two systems that meet, face and compare each other.

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Click above for larger image

The Arsenale will be a complex compositional series, an architectural “fugue”, in which different spaces follow one another, and in which the dissonant balance of the Balancing Act is just one chord.

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Click above for larger image

Project: Balancing Act
Location: Venice Biennale
End of building construction: August 2010
Author of the project: Antón García- Abril

Collaborators: Ensamble Studio:
Débora Mesa
Ricardo Sanz
Alba Cortes
Juan Ruiz
Tomaso Boano
Federico Letizia
Quantity surveyor: Javier Cuesta
Sponsor: Positive City Foundation