The First Venice Architecture Biennale

The Venice Biennale, an Italian cultural institution founded in 1895 primarily for the visual arts, held its first dedicated International Architecture Exhibition in 1980, curated by Paolo Portoghesi under the title "The Presence of the Past" and staged in the Corderie of the Arsenale. Its centerpiece, the Strada Novissima, an indoor street lined with facades designed by twenty architects including Robert Venturi, Hans Hollein and Frank Gehry, became closely identified with the international arrival of Postmodernism as a named architectural movement on the world stage. The exhibition established itself as a recurring event, generally held every two years since, and grew into the most prestigious international architecture exhibition in the world, shaping architectural discourse through its curated national pavilions and thematic main exhibitions.