Russia to build a railway station in Venice

The main topic of the forthcoming 2018 architectural biennale in Venice is Freespace. So what can be associated more with free space than Russia? The Russian pavilion will be rebuilt as a railway station under concept of a project called "Station 'Russia'."

"For us free space is a natural condition, because we have huge distances and lots of empty territories," head of the Russian pavilion and project curator, Semyon Mikhailovsky, told The Art Newspaper Russia. "The problem is how to connect them; you always travel across this endless land and see the country from a train's window."

Russia is crisscrossed with railways and the life of a traveler is connected with railway stations, which are not only places of arrival and departure but also, in Russian art and literature, a philosophical symbol of stop, pause and rest on your life's journey.

"This will be a very emotional project, as the image of the railway is connected with meetings and partings," Mikhailovsky said.

For now it's only reported that the project will be created through a combination of art and architecture, but the creative team is yet to be named. Project chiefs do not rule out the use of futuristic avant-garde elements.

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