The theme of the Biennale Architettura 2021 is its title. The title is a question. The question is open:

How: Speaks to practical approaches and concrete solutions, highlighting the primacy of problem solving in architectural thinking.

Will: Signals looking toward the future, but also seeking vision and determination, drawing from the power of the architectural imaginary.

We: Stands for first person, plural, and thus inclusive (of other peoples, of other species), appealing to a more empathetic understanding of architecture.

Live: Means not simply to exist but to thrive, to flourish, to inhabit, and to express life, tapping into architecture’s inherent optimism.

Together: Implies collectives, commons, universal values, highlighting architecture as a collective form and a form of expression.

?: Indicates an open question, not a rhetorical one, looking for (many) answers, celebrating the plurality of values in and through architecture.

The question, "How will we live together?" is at once ancient and urgent. The Babylonians asked it as they were building their tower. Aristotle asked it when he was writing about politics. His answer was "the city. " The French and American Revolutions asked it. Against the tumultuous backdrop of the early 1970s, Timmy Thomas passionately pleaded it in his song "Why Can’t We Live Together?". It is indeed as much a social and political question as a spatial one. More recently, rapidly changing social norms, the political polarization between left and right, climate change, and the growing gap between labor and capital are making this question more urgently relevant and at different scales than before. In parallel, the weakness of the political models being proposed today compels us to put space first and, perhaps like Aristotle, look at the way architecture shapes inhabitation in order to imagine potential models for how we could live together. (…)

The current global pandemic has no doubt made the question that this Biennale Architettura is asking all the more relevant and timely, even if somehow ironic, given the imposed isolation. It may indeed be a coincidence that the theme was proposed a few months before the pandemic. However, many of the reasons that initially led us to ask this question - the intensifying climate crisis, massive population displacements, political instabilities around the world, and growing racial, social, and economic inequalities, among others - have led us to this pandemic and have become all the more relevant.

The Biennale Architettura 2021 is organized into five scales:

Three in the Arsenale
1. Among Diverse Beings
2. As New Households
3. As Emerging Communities

Two in the Central Pavilion
4. Across Borders
5. As One Planet

Projects range from the analytic to the conceptual, the experimental, the tested and proven, to the widely deployed. Each of these is in turn addressed through a series of themes and each one is housed in individual rooms of the Biennale buildings and grounds.

In addition to the invited participants, the 2021 Biennale also includes a series of research stations that support the Exhibition, developed by researchers from universities around the world.

The grounds of Forte Marghera will feature projects devoted to children’s play, by five architects and an architectural photographer under the subtheme: “How Will We Play Together?”.

The videos and images will answer five questions posed by Sarkis to all the participants:

- How can we answer the question How will we live together? today, and how do we also involve an audience that is not specialized in the issues of architecture?

- How did your team collaborate in the project and how can the role of the architect be defined as that of a convener?

- Every architectural space inspires new social arrangements and relationships: how do you represent that relationship in your project?

- How does your project relate to the scales (Among Diverse Beings, As New Households, As Emerging Communities, Across Borders, As One Planet) identified in the Exhibition theme?

- The Biennale Architettura has been postponed to 2021 due to the global health emergency still underway. It may be too soon to describe the impact of the pandemic on architecture, on the Biennale, on the projects and on the theme of the exhibition. But beyond that, what do we expect from the Biennale Architettura 2021, given the many challenges that Venice has faced in recent years at the global level?

Biennale Sneak Peek ►

Golden Lion for Best National Participation to United Arab Emirates for a bold experiment which encourages us to think about the relationship between waste and production at both the local and global scales, and opens to new construction possibilities between craft and high technology.

Special mention as National Participation to Russia for a sensitive and careful architectural renovation of a historical pavilion at the Giardini that opens it to its immediate surroundings and to the future.

Special mention as National Participation to Philippines for this exemplary community project that creates a rich archive and experience of collaborative construction practices.

Golden Lion for the best participant in the 17th Exhibition How will we live together? to raumlaborberlin (Berlin, Germany) for an inspiring collaborative approach that argues for participation, regeneration and collective responsibility, resulting in two projects that are a model for imaginative civic revitalization.

Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the 17th Exhibition How will we live together? to Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST) (Amsterdam, The Netherlands; New York, USA) for a daring proposal that invites us to think about divided histories, agricultural practices, rituals of daily life and the realities of settlement and occupation.

Special mention to the participant in the 17th Exhibition How will we live together? to Cave_bureau (Nairobi, Kenya) for an imaginative and creative exploration of one of man’s oldest living environments.

Mitglieder der Jury der 17. Internationalen Architekturausstellung:

Kazuyo Sejima - President
(Japan) Architect and winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2010, she curated the Biennale Architettura (People meet in architecture) that same year. Owner and founder of the firm SANAA with Ryue Nishizawa, she is distinguished by her commitment to architectural form as the field’s primary domain of intervention in the social and spatial realms.

Sandra Barclay
(Peru) An architect working between Lima and Paris, was the co-curator for the Peruvian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2016, winning a Special Mention of the Jury. She brings a heightened awareness of the poetic role of architecture as a transformative building act in extreme contexts.

Lamia Joreige
(Lebanon) A visual artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Beirut. Co-founder and co-director of the Beirut Art Center, she offers a very acute view of architecture and the city as cultural material and as rich domains for artistic expression.

Lesley Lokko
(Ghana-Scotland) A successful architect and writer who lives between Johannesburg, London, Accra and Edinburgh. She was the founder and director of the Graduate School of Architecture of the University of Johannesburg (2014-2019) and Dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture City College of New York (2019-2021). She is a Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Lokko brings deep and critical perspective on the relationship between architecture, social, and economic development and the environment.

Luca Molinari
(Italy) An architect, historian, critic, journalist and curator. In 2010 he was the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. He is the scientific director of the M9 Museum in Mestre (Venice). His profile ensures a vast array of angles from which he views architecture, its public role, and the agency of the architect in society.