Ugo Bienvenu - Lorem Ipsum. French Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia 2023

In this novel, Ugo Bienvenu, drawer and director, imagines the history and myth of the Ball Theater. His tale is set in a world suspended between the past and the future, mixing the turmoil of abandonment and the joy of a collective celebration. The story takes us through the journey of a small community of strangely similar children and a rusty robot, and their discovery of enigmatic objects that they set out to assemble and bring back to life. The title Lorem ipsum comes from an extract, reworked and deprived of meaning, from a Latin treatise. It refers to the common practice in the graphic design and printing industry of using this text as a temporary filler for pending text areas. In the context of the book, the combination of these two Latin terms refers to the idea of an architectural tale whose meaning emerges in the course of action, before words and explanations.