In keeping with the architectural impulse that informs the theme of this year’s Venice Biennale, “The Encyclopedic Palace,” curator Joanna Warsza of the Georgian Pavilion trains her eye on the definitive feature of Georgian architecture: balconies. Artist Gio Sumbadze has been commissioned to design a temporary balcony called the “Kamikaze Loggia” inspired by informal architecture in Tbilisi, as a site for showcasing work by artists including Thea Djorjadze, Gela Patashuri, Sergei Tcherepnin, and the Bouillon Group.

The structure solves a problem both practical and conceptual. Practically, Georgia doesn’t yet have a permanent pavilion. The Kamikaze Loggia, a bare-bones plywood frame accessible via wooden staircase, functions as a “parasitic extension” of the historic Arsenale warehouse to which it is attached. But conceptually, it makes a statement too: The structure imitates the appearance and function of the innumerable makeshift balconies that have appeared across the Georgian capital in the past 20 years. Made of scrap materials, such balconies hang precariously from the frames of modernist buildings in a mix-and-match style, creating a sense of impending collapse. The term “kamikaze” both plays on a common suffix in Georgian last names, and speaks also to the self-destructive potential of such makeshift spaces. The practice of building on top of preexisting ruins has been used since the Middle Ages in Georgia to establish a national architecture that does not monumentalize the past, but rather expands in constant conversation with preexisting structures.

In Venice, Warsza is eager to draw comparisons between the Georgian Pavilion and its petrified setting: “Here it is not permitted to build anything new, to add anything, even though the loggia tradition originates from here.” The Georgian Pavilion responds to the architectural setting of the biennale with a rebellious spirit that is very much in keeping with the curator’s view of the Georgian spirit: In the past, Warsza has referenced Georgia as “Italy gone Marxist.”