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18ª Exposición Internacional de Arquitectura, Biennale di Venezia



Lesley Lokko  © Photo: Jacopo Salvi. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Lesley Lokko © Photo: Jacopo Salvi. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

La 18ª Exposición Internacional de Arquitectura, titulada The Laboratory of the Future, se halla bajo la curaduría de Lesley Lokko (Ghana/Escocia), renombrada académica de la arquitectura, educadora y novelista de éxito. (vea la biografía)

Celebrada del 20 de mayo al 26 de noviembre de 2023 en los Giardini, el Arsenale y Forte Marghera, será la primera gran exposición de esta disciplina que pondrá a prueba en la práctica el proceso para alcanzar la neutralidad en carbono, reflexionando además sobre los temas descolonización y descarbonización.

La Exposición Internacional como agente de cambio

“¿Qué significa ser 'un agente del cambio'? (...) A lo largo de los últimos nueve meses, en cientos de conversaciones, mensajes de texto, llamadas de Zoom y reuniones”, declaró Lesley Lokko, “ha surgido una y otra vez la pregunta de si exposiciones de esta envergadura -tanto en términos de carbono como de gastos- están justificadas. En mayo del año pasado me referí varias veces a la exposición como "una historia", una narración que se desarrolla en el espacio. Hoy he cambiado de idea. Una exposición de arquitectura es a la vez un momento y un proceso. Toma prestada su estructura y formato de las exposiciones de arte, pero difiere de éstas en aspectos críticos que a menudo pasan desapercibidos. Aparte del deseo de contar una historia, las cuestiones de producción, recursos y representación son fundamentales en la forma en que una exposición de arquitectura llega al mundo, y sin embargo rara vez se reconocen o debaten. Desde el principio, estaba claro que el gesto esencial de El Laboratorio del Futuro sería el 'cambio'”.

“(…) Por primera vez, la atención se centra en África y la diáspora africana, esa cultura fluida y enmarañada de afrodescendientes que se extiende por todo el planeta. ¿Qué queremos decir? ¿En qué va a cambiar algo lo que digamos? Y, quizá lo más importante de todo, ¿cómo interactuará lo que digamos con lo que digan los 'otros', de modo que la exposición no sea una única historia, sino múltiples historias que reflejen el enojoso y magnífico caleidoscopio de ideas, contextos, aspiraciones y significados que es cada voz respondiendo a los problemas de su tiempo?".

“A menudo se dice que la cultura es la suma total de las historias que nos contamos a nosotros mismos, sobre nosotros mismos. Aunque es cierto, lo que falta en esta afirmación es el reconocimiento de quién es el "nosotros" en cuestión. En arquitectura, en particular, la voz dominante ha sido históricamente una voz singular y exclusiva, cuyo alcance y poder ignora a enormes franjas de la humanidad -financiera, creativa, conceptualmente-, como si hubiéramos estado escuchando y hablando en una sola lengua. La 'historia' de la arquitectura es, por tanto, incompleta. No errónea, pero incompleta. Es en este contexto en particular donde importan las exposiciones”. – (vea el statement completo)

Estructura de la exposición

“The Laboratory of the Future es una exposición en seis partes. Incluye 89 participantes, más de la mitad de los cuales proceden de África o de la diáspora africana. El equilibrio de género es 50/50, y la edad media de todos los participantes es de 43 años, descendiendo a 37 en los Curator’s Special Projects, donde el más joven tiene 24 años (vea la lista de participantes). El 46% de los participantes considera la educación como una forma de práctica y, por primera vez, casi la mitad de los participantes son profesionales únicos o de cinco personas o menos. En todas las partes del Laboratory of the Future, más del 70% de las exposiciones son de prácticas dirigidas por una persona o un equipo muy pequeño.

“Central to all the projects is the primacy and potency of one tool: the imagination - Lokko said. It is impossible to build a better world if one cannot first imagine it. The Laboratory of the Future begins in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, where 16 practices who represent a distilled force majeure of African and Diasporic architectural production have been gathered. It moves to the Arsenale complex, where participants in the Dangerous Liaisons section – also represented in Forte Marghera in Mestre - rub shoulders with the Curator’s Special Projects, for the first time a category that is as large as the others. Threaded through and amongst the works in both venues are young African and Diasporan practitioners, our Guests from the Future, whose work engages directly with the twin themes of this exhibition, decolonisation and decarbonisation, providing a snapshot, a glimpse of future practices and ways of seeing and being in the world. (…) We have deliberately chosen to frame participants as ‘practitioners’ – the Curator stated – and not ‘architects’ and/or ‘urbanists’, ‘designers’, ‘landscape architects’, ‘engineers’ or ‘academics’ because it is our contention that the rich, complex conditions of both Africa and a rapidly hybridising world call for a different and broader understanding of the term ‘architect’. (see complete statement)

Carnival (Eventos)

El programa del Laboratory of the Future se enriquece con Carnival, un ciclo de seis meses de eventos, conferencias, mesas redondas, películas y actuaciones que exploran los temas de la Bienal Architettura 2023.

“Conceived as a space of liberation rather than a spectacle or entertainment, Carnival offers a space for communication in which words, views, perspectives, and opinions are traded, heard, analysed, and remembered – Lokko said. Politicians, policymakers, poets, filmmakers, documentary makers, writers, activists, community organisers and public intellectuals will share the stage with architects, academics, and students. This public event programme is increasingly a form of architectural practice that attempts to bridge the gulf between architects and the public.”

Participaciones nacionales

64 participaciones nacionales organizarán sus exposiciones en los pabellones históricos de los Giardini (27), en el Arsenale (22) y en el centro de Venecia (14). Níger participa por primera vez en la Biennale Architettura; Panamá participa por primera vez con pabellón propio y ya ha participado en ediciones anteriores como parte de la I.I.L.A. (Organización Internacional Italo-Latinoamericana).

La Santa Sede vuelve a la Biennale Architettura, participando con su propio Pabellón en la Isla de San Giorgio Maggiore (participó en la Biennale Architettura por primera vez en 2018).

El Pabellón de Italia en la Tese delle Vergini del Arsenale, patrocinado y promovido por la Dirección General de Creatividad Contemporánea del Ministerio de Cultura, está comisariado por el colectivo Fosbury Architecture, formado por Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, Claudia Mainardi. El título de la exposición es SPAZIALE: Everyone Belongs to Everyone Else.

Vea las 64 Participaciones nacionales

(De informaciones de prensa, La Biennale di Venezia.
Trad. del inglés: Universes in Universe)


Awards - 18th International Architecture Exhibition

see also the photos

Golden Lion for the best National Participation:
Brazil
Terra [Earth]
Commissioner: José Olympio da Veiga Pereira, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Curators: Gabriela de Matos and Paulo Tavares
Exhibitors: Ana Flávia Magalhães Pinto, Ayrson Heráclito, Day Rodrigues with the collaboration of Vilma Patrícia Santana Silva, Fissura collective, Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká (Casa Branca do Engenho Velho), Juliana Vicente, Mbya-Guarani Indigenous People, Tukano, Arawak and Maku Indigenous Peoples, Tecelãs do Alaká (Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá), Thierry Oussou, Vídeo nas Aldeias
Venue: Giardini

Special mention for a National Participation:
Great Britain
Dancing Before the Moon
Commissioner: Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture Design Fashion at the British Council
Curators: Jayden Ali, Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kellay and Sumitra Upham
Exhibitors: Yussef Agbo-Ola, Jayden Ali, Mac Collins, Shawanda Corbett, Madhav Kidao, Sandra Poulson
Venue: Giardini

Golden Lion for the best participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future:
DAAR
Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal
(Stockholm; Bethlehem)
Dangerous Liaisons section
Venue: Corderie, Arsenale

Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future:
Olalekan Jeyifous
(Brooklyn, USA)
Olalekan Jeyifous: * 1977 Ibadan, Nigeria
Venue: Central Pavilion, Giardini


Three special mentions:

Twenty Nine Studio / Sammy Baloji
(Brussels, Belgium)
Sammy Baloji: * 1978 Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Dangerous Liaisons section
Venue: Corderie, Arsenale

Wolff Architects
(Cape Town, Republic of South Africa)
Ilze Wolff: * 1980 Cape Town, South Africa; Heinrich Wolff: * 1970 Johannesburg, South Africa
Dangerous Liaisons section
Venue: Corderie, Arsenale

Thandi Loewenson
(London, UK)
Thandi Loewenson: * 1989 Harare, Zimbabwe
Force Majeure section
Venue: Central Pavilion, Giardini

Awards – The Motivations

Golden Lion for Best National Participation to Brazil for a research exhibition and architectural intervention that center the philosophies and imaginaries of indigenous and black population towards modes of reparation.

Special mention as National Participation to Great Britain for the curatorial strategy and design propositions celebrating the potency of everyday rituals as forms of resistance and spatial practices in diasporic communities.

Golden Lion for the best participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future to DAAR – Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal for their long-standing commitment to deep political engagement with architectural and learning practices of decolonization in Palestine and Europe.

Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future to Olalekan Jeyifous for a multimedia installation that explores a worldbuilding practice that expands public perspectives and imaginations, offering visions of a decolonized and decarbonized future.

Special mention to the participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future:
Twenty Nine Studio / Sammy Baloji for a three parts installation that interrogates the past, present, and future of the Democratic Republic of Congo, through an excavation of colonial architectural archives.
Wolff Architects for an installation that reflects a collaborative and multimodal design practice as well as a nuanced and imaginative approach to resources, research, and representation.
Thandi Loewenson for a militant research practice that materializes spatial histories of land struggles, extraction, and liberation through the medium of graphite and speculative writing as design tools.

Demas Nwoko - Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

The artist, designer and architect Baba (a Nigerian honorific title) Demas Nwoko (* 1935 in Idumuje-Ugboko, southern Nigeria) is the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Press release, 23 March 2023

International Jury

Members of the International Jury of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition:

Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli - President
Italian architect and curator based in Milan. He is the founder of 2050+, an interdisciplinary agency moving across technology, politics, design, and environmental practices. He curated Open, the Russian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2021 and co-curated Manifesta’s 12th edition in Palermo in 2018. Between 2007 and 2019 he has worked as architect and partner at OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). He teaches at the Royal College of Arts in London Data Matter, a research and design studio exploring the entangled relationship between data and the material world. Latest projects include Synthetic Cultures at the 10th Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam; the short film diptych Riders Not Heroes; the exhibitions Aquaria at MAAT in Lisbon and Penumbra in Venice; the design for the space of the Fredriksen’s collection at the National Museum of Norway in Oslo; and the transformation of La Rinascente’s modernist building icon in Rome.

Nora Akawi
Palestinian architect and curator living in New York. She is an assistant professor of architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and a co-founding partner in the interdisciplinary research and design studio interim. She co-curated the Pavilion of Barhain at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled Friday Sermon (2018). Her teaching and research focus on transcontinental South-South anti-colonial solidarity and on architecture’s role in erasure and bordering in settler colonialism, drawing from border studies, critical geography, and archive theory. Nora taught at Columbia University’s GSAPP, where she was the director of Studio-X Amman and initiated the Janet Abu-Lughod Library and Seminar. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Faktur: Documents and Architecture and InForma, the peer-reviewed architecture publication of the Universidad de Puerto Rico

Thelma Golden
(USA) Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual art by artists of African descent, where she began her career in 1987 before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. She returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs and was named Director and Chief Curator in 2005. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Barack Obama Foundation, Crystal Bridges Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She holds a B.A. in Art History and African American Studies from Smith College. She was appointed to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House by President Obama in 2010.

Tau Tavengwa
(South-Africa) Co-founder, curator and editor of Cityscapes, a hybrid annual publication that showcases different ideas, and narratives on the built environment and cities globally from Africa, Latin America, and South Asia perspectives. He’s a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) (2018), an Aspen Global Leadership Fellow, a Research Fellow in Advanced Visualization at Max Planck Institute (2019-2023), and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics' LSE Cities from 2020-22. He is also the Curator-at-Large at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and was curator of the 2022 Lisbon Architecture Triennale’s Multiplicity exhibition. With Edgar Pieterse, he is a co-founder of the CS Collective.

Izabela Wieczorek
(Poland) A registered architect in Spain, and a researcher and educator based in London. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading, where she is the Director of the Master of Architecture Programme and the acting Research Lead for Architecture. She was a co-director of an award-winning Madrid-based office Gálvez+Wieczorek Arquitectura (2003-2016). Her work has been presented in several publications, including ‘Cartographies of the Imagination’, London (2021), ‘Works+Words Biennale of Artistic Research in Architecture’, KADK, Copenhagen (2019), and the Spanish Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia Exhibition (2018). She curated the In-Between public lecture series at Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Denmark (2013-2016).


Informaciones prácticas:

Horarios 2023
Giardini / Arsenale / Forte Marghera:

20 mayo – 30 septiembre: 11 – 19 hs
1 octubre – 26 noviembre: 10 – 18 hs
Cerrado los lunes
Aperturas extraordinarias: Lunes 22 de mayo, 14 de agosto, 4 de septiembre, 16 de octubre, 30 de octubre, 20 de noviembre de 2023

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Organizador, contactos:

La Biennale di Venezia
Art and Architecture
Ca' Giustinian
San Marco 1364/A
30124 Venezia, Italia
Website | Email

Oficina de Prensa - Arquitectura:
pressoffice@labiennale.org
Tel.: +39 041 5218 - 846 / 849

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Foto de arriba: Serge Attukwei Clottey: Time and Chance
© Foto: Marco Zorzanello. Cortesía de La Biennale di Venezia


Como en todas las Exposiciones Internacionales de Arte desde 2001 y las ediciones de la Bienal de Arquitectura desde 2016, Universes in Universe publicará un Especial sobre la 18ª Exposición Internacional de Arquitectura 2023. Mientras tanto, vea:
Especial Bienal de Arquitectura 2021

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