"An overdose of utopia is dangerous," explains de Graaf when discussing the ideals of architects during this period, "but architecture today is characterised by an underdose of utopia, which can be just as dangerous."

The interview was filmed at OMA’s Public Works exhibition at the biennale, which shows buildings designed by the anonymous architects of local authorities.

De Graaf also talks about the brutalist Pimlico school, as well as buildings in France and Italy in the other two movies from this series.

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Above: Centre Administratif by Jacques Kalisz

The exhibition features a selection of "masterpieces by bureaucrats" and includes three public buildings commissioned by communist-run mayors in the municipalities surrounding Paris in the 1960s and 70s. De Graaf explains how the construction of the Centre Administratif by Jacques Kalisz, the Hotel de Perfecture du Val-D’Oise by Henry Bernard and the Montreuil Zonne Industrielle Nord by Claude Le Goas each made a deliberate statement against the monumental architecture promoted after the war by Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou.

Above: Hotel de Perfecture du Val-D’Oise

By contrast, de Graaf also presents the San Giovanni Bono Church, which was designed by Arrigo Arrighetti at a housing estate in Milan on behalf of a democratic Christian government. He discusses how the building was constructed as a gift that would keep the population happy and prevent the communists gaining favour.

Above: Montreuil Zonne Industrielle Nord (MOZINOR) by Claude Le Goas

"What you see as a communist endeavour in Paris you can actually see as a more right wing endeavour in Milan," says de Graaf. "The outcome is suspiciously close because they both try to court the same masses."

Above: San Giovanni Bono Church by Arrigo Arrighetti

Find out more about the exhibition in our earlier story, or hear about another of the featured buildings in the first movie from the series.

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Pimlico School was designed by John Bancroft of the Greater London Council's architecture department and was constructed in the 1960s. Its demolition to make room for a new building followed a long campaign to have it listed. "The architect campaigned very actively but he wasn't a star architect," de Graaf told Dezeen. "They took him to the demolition site and all he could murmur was 'bloody fools, bloody fools.'"

De Graaf explains that although they weren't credited by name for their work, architects working in government departments during the 1960 and 1970s created buildings with "enormous vitality and an impressive social mission."

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The fifteen featured buildings are located across the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, and are exhibited against a backdrop that replicates the graffitied concrete beneath London's Queen Elizabeth Hall.

OMA partner Reinier de Graaf explains that "the exhibition aims to show the work of anonymous bureaucrats who never had their own private practice, who are unrecognised by history but whose buildings still represent an enormous vitality and an enormously impressive social mission."

Featured buildings include some that have since been demolished, including Pimlico School in London and the Wibauthuis in Amsterdam, which formerly housed the city's public works department and which de Graaf claims was at one point so powerful that politicians feared it as a "bastion of civil servants."

The exhibition is on show inside the Central Pavilion at the Giardini throughout the biennale, which opens from 29 August to 25 November.

See more stories about the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 here, or click here to see more projects by OMA.

Photography is by Frans Parthesius.

Here's some information from OMA:

Public Works
Architecture by Civil Servants

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, large public works departments were common in Europe. Many of these departments employed architects, who, as civil servants, worked to serve the public cause. Ruled by unabashedly left-wing municipal governments, cities like London, Amsterdam and (West) Berlin, managed to mobilize creative talent to support their progressive ideologies. Even today, the legacy – the public buildings which remain standing – looks refreshingly modern and innovative.

This exhibition is a sort of “mini-biennale” of masterpieces realized for the greater good by bureaucrats: fifteen buildings across different European cities, all of which were designed by architects employed by the public sector. On display will be work by architects employed by the Greater London Council, the Public Works Department of Amsterdam, the Dutch “Rijksgebouwendienst”, the “Senatsbauverwaltung” of West Berlin and work from various architects in France and Italy as members of special ‘Architects Councils’, ‘guiding’ the public sector on matters of architecture and urbanism...

In the age of the ‘starchitect’, the idea of suspending the pursuit of a private practice in favor of a shared ideology seems remote and untenable. However, given the number of architects that made that choice, forty years ago serving the public cause proved a powerful source of inspiration... one might even call it common ground.

The exhibition is a mix of archival material and photographic record of the buildings in their current state.

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by OMA at Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 appeared first on Dezeen.