The Globe and Mail

Two of Vancouver's finest young designers of houses are representing Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Opening today, Bill Pechet and Stephanie Robb's installation there is entitled Sweaterlodge, and seems at first not to be about houses — not even about architecture. Over the past decade, their firm has designed finely inventive custom houses for Victoria's Uplands and Vancouver's Southlands, while Robb's own Lakewood residence is the most interesting architectural transformation of a 'Vancouver Special' duplex, ever. No images of Pechet + Robb Studio's houses or other completed buildings are on show in this, the world's premiere architectural exhibition, even though many of their international colleagues have installed hard-sell pavilions-as-portfolios. There is nothing here to distract from Sweaterlodge itself, a 50-foot-high orange polar fleece sweater hung from the rafters of Canada's quirky permanent pavilion on the Venice Biennale grounds.