The Baltic Pavilion

Transformative efforts
Recent geopolitical developments around the Baltic States have created a sense of urgency for new spatial practices to be initiated, that both unite the region and underpin the foundations of the European Union. New infrastructural connections in the Baltic Sea, FSRU Independence, the natural gas storage ship in Klaipėda, and the pan-Baltic railway project Rail Baltica are among the many examples of this new kind of architecture.
The Baltic Pavilion attempts to unravel the conventions and instruments operated by a wide range of spatial practices, industries, and infrastructures that are actively trans-forming the built space of the three Baltic States, and the wider region. Without making distinction between abstract ideas and their material projections, the exhibition seeks to distill parameters and thought structures, to enable the formulation of a range of spatial interventions which aim to reconfigure the inert built environment of the Baltics.

Inertia
Some elements of this built environment are too inert to be completely reorganised instantaneously—infrastructure, cities, and transport links are currently in a state of functionality, and so demand specific practices simultaneously to maintain their stability. At the same time, these structures also determine future possibilities. The BalticPavilion is interested in an ecology of practices that inscribe new policies onto existing material assemblies through procedures such as addition, transition, translation, integration, and assimilation—making use of what is already at work.