Written and Produced by Mary Bissell, Mystique Films 2006
CBC TV Documentary 2006
For a painter, architect or designer to be selected to bring their work to the Venice Biennale it's like making the Olympic team. It's the kind of honour that can make a career.
CBC Radio 2006
Freestyle
Vancouver's Pechet and Robb Studio have nailed the perfect Canadian stereotype, the polar fleece sweater. Why polar fleece? When you're doing something in a national pavilion abroad, your charged with the task of defining a national identity......
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Miriam Blume, Design Quarterly Summer 2006
Stretching the Bounds of Architecture
Vancouver has come to expect the unexpected from Pechet and Robb Studio, and their latest project doesn’t disappoint. Known for work that combines thoughtful design with an imaginative playfulness, Pechet and Robb bring us SweaterLodge, a satirical multi-media exhibit that magnifies the everyday polar fleece sweater and turns it into an iconic gathering space symbolic of Vancouver urban culture. Providing visitors with a generous warm welcome, SweaterLodge is a fresh look at Vancouver’s eco-friendly, all-inclusive, new-age spirit that the city prides itself on.
Jim Nicholls, ARCADE architecture / design in the northwest, June 2006
In The Best Possible Light
The orange fleece Sweaterlodge evokes the comfortable familiarity of Mr. Rogers, the intimate space of a child’s blanket tent, the log cabin resourcefulness of Canada, the Northwest cult of the outdoors, the purification ritual of the sweat lodge, the erotic light of the boudoir and the warm embers of a welcoming fireplace.
Alexandra Gill, The Globe and Mail, May 9, 2006
Maybe they can just make a vest?
SweaterLodge, Canada's official entry for the architecture portion of this year's Venice Biennale, is an enormous tent in the shape of a pullover made from 350 square metres of bright orange polar fleece. The multimedia exhibit is a big, bold, warm and witty commentary on urban culture. The biannual event, which will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this fall, is one of the most prestigious in the world of architecture. So why is our Canadian team receiving such a chilly reception from government funding agencies and potential corporate sponsors?
CBC Arts, October 24, 2005
SweaterLodge to wrap Venice Biennale in orange cocoon
A national juried competition selected SweaterLodge as its design for the Canadian pavilion at the 2006 Biennale in Architecture, which will take place in Venice, Italy from September to November 2006.
www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/10/24/Arts/
Monika Ullmann, Jewish Independent, November 25, 2005
The big orange lodge: Giant fleece sweater is Canada’s Biennale entry.
Bill Pechet and Stephanie Robb, a Vancouver interdisciplinary design team with a sense of humor, knew that they were taking a chance when they turned an orange fleece into a “Sweaterlodge” – their entry into the architecture section of the Venice Biennale, an international art exhibition.
Robin Laurence, The Georgia Straight, October 27, 2005
SweaterLodge overlaps natural boundaries
Imagine an enormous sweater, 20 times human size. Imagine that the sweater is made of brilliant orange polar fleece. Imagine, too, that it is hung in a 12-metre semicircular span within the Canadian pavilion in the Giardini de Castello, Venice. Visitors walk into the installation and through it, embraced by its fabric, design, and colour. “When the light comes through the orange material, it feels like you’re inside an ember,” says Bill Pechet. It also feels like you’re enfolded within a witty and ironic notion of Canadian identity—of Vancouverite identity, in particular.
Lloyd Dykk, The Vancouver Sun, October 22, 2005
Canada’s architectural showpiece a giant fleece
The winning submission to represent Canada at the 2006 Venice Biennale in Architecture will be a sweater that just about everybody wears. Architectural partners Bill Pechet and Stephanie Robb of Pechet and Robb Studio have come up with an idea that is less architectural than it is a witty play on architecture and environment.
©Pacific Newspaper Group Inc. (The Vancouver Sun/The Province), a CanWest Company. Provided for information only - no endorsement is made or implied.
Paul Grant, CBC Radio 2005
NATIONAL ARTS REPORT
The Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale is an octagonal wood and steal structure with a spiraling roof. It's been compared to a tree house and a teepee. Now imagine that inside that pavilion the ceiling and walls are draped with a giant orange sweater, and you have the SweaterLodge.
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