How will we live together?

A bit late but here I am with the second part of the Biennale 2021. Having seen both, I’d suggest you to start with this venue and then proceed to the visit at the Arsenale.

Here you will find two scales that include part of the global research on the initial question: Across Borders and As One Planet.

The projects and research displayed in the national pavilion of each country convey the idea of inclusivity, crossing boundaries and connecting human and non-human habitats.

Globalization and climate change are key-factors that demand an immediate and effective response. More efficient technologies and a team work between architects, ecologists, geo-engineers, global economists and sociologists in order to preserve the future of our planet.

At Padiglione Italia the first installation is Data Zone (2003) by Michael Rovner. Exhibited for the first time in 2003 at the Biennale Arte is a series of culture plates in which little human figures move in different directions, creating a vortex of order and disorder. Nowadays with the Covid pandemic this uncertainty is self-explanatory.

The Earth is an Architecture is a big sculpture by Pierre Alain Trévelo and Antoine Viger-Kohler

The World turned inside out, 2021 by Plan B asks the visitor to see the world from a different perspective, leaving whole areas unexplored and free from human colonization…

Resurrecting the Sublime is an interesting experiment of bio-engineering by Christina Agapakis of Ginko Bioworks, who took samples from a dried specimen of Hibiscadelphus wildernarius rock at the Harvard University Herbarium, 2018.

The Quino Treaty is a history of resistance by indigenous women. The Quino tree relates peoples and territories, building a new different world opposed to the dominant and imperial one.

Uncertainty is the theme of the Spanish Pavilion, again this time, the uncertainty is a prerequisite for creative investigation, giving shape to unexpected new opportunities.

What are you waiting for?

“Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,

And the little churchyard with lamenting names,

And the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others end: time and again we go out two together,

Under the old trees, lie down again and again,

Between the flowers, face to face with the sky.”

Time and Again, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by J. B. Leishman

This year, due to the Covid emergency, the Biennale of Architecture was postponed to May 2021 and will run until November 2021.

I had the privilege to visit the exhibition in the early days of its opening. It’s a stunning experience, including 112 participants from 46 countries coming from all over the world.

The whole exhibition is organised into five scales, three at the Arsenale and two in the central pavilion at the Giardini venue.

The Arsenale displays the first three scales, distributed as follows:

•Among Diverse Beings: Designing for new bodies & Living with Other Beings

•As New Household: Catering to new demographics, Inhabiting new tectonics, Living apart together

•As Emerging Communities: Appealing to civicness, Re-equipping society, Coming together in Venice, Co-Habitats

At the Giardini venue, you will embrace the other two scales: Across Borders and As One Planet.

In addition to these two shows, there are several installations scattered throughout the city of Venice, and also five related installations at Forte Marghera Park centred on a slightly different theme: How will we play together?

Significantly the curator of this Biennale is Hashim Sarkis, Chair at MIT. The Biennale Architettura displays multiple responses to the initial opening question that unfolds myriads of implications.

In his intense preface, Sarkis states that the question was asked because “we are not happy with the answers that are coming out of politics today.”

Architecture thus can offer alternative practices on how space is conceived. We need a new spatial contract. It has to be universal and inclusive.

Here’s some pictures to introduce you to this challenging journey!