The Laboratory of the Future, the Eighteenth International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, is open through November 26.
Following the opening of the current Venice Biennale, plenty of representatives of architecture’s old guard have quietly (and not-so-quietly) criticized curator Lesley Lokko for, in the words of Patrik Schumacher, “not showing any architecture.” The Zaha Hadid Architects principal seems to have been referring to the shiny images and models of finished buildings that have dominated previous incarnations of the Biennale. But Lokko’s curation doesn’t turn its back on architecture. Rather, it places it under almost unbearable scrutiny, forcing an examination of both the practice of architecture and the production of buildings.
The term “radical” is often over (and mis-) used, but here its literal meaning rings true: this Biennale comes from a different root. It is not asking for a nudge of the status quo, but rather demanding a wholesale dismantling of the previous colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal structures within which architecture has operated, and the substitution of said structures with an equitable framework for future practice. It does not want to expand the canon—it wants to question who determines what the canon is and what might be considered “other” in the first place. In contrast to the dominance of male and pale practitioners of Biennales past, this edition contains many more participants who are young (average age: forty-three), women, and people of color.
The exhibit in the central pavilion, titled Force Majeure, sees Lokko shift the gaze from Europe to Africa and its diaspora. As a result, the ideas expressed bear a sense of urgency as well as of specificity, and they chafe at the conventions of the inherently European rooms in which they’re exhibited. Sean Canty and Kéré Architecture, for example, contributed full-scale installations that almost overwhelm the galleries, taking up space that has been historically denied to Black practitioners. In doing so, they invite in a new audience.
The celebratory reconstruction of two sheds made by Canty’s great-grandfather in Eliott, South Carolina provides an unavoidable encounter with a self-determined Black vernacular architecture. In demonstrating how spaces for Black joy might be created, the project suggests that the tools to construct a hopeful and more inclusive trajectory for practice are already available—we just have to look for them. Similarly, Kéré Architecture’s one-to-one installation of undulating clay walls proposes a turn to ancient West African materials as a way of confronting the climate emergency. Decorated with vernacular motifs and accompanied by videos acknowledging the labor inherent to construction, these walls shift visitors’ focus from the consumption of texts to the experience of a space, reawakening our bodily senses using smell and light. The ultimate aim is not to build mud huts in Manhattan, but to expand our sensibilities in order to deliver a more environmentally and socially equitable future.
Against such insightful contributions, it feels jarring to encounter “The Adjaye Futures Lab,” a collection showcasing immaculately constructed scale models of projects in South Africa, Nigeria, Barbados, and the United Arab Emirates by Adjaye Associates. The models, whose diminutive scale implies a God-like perspective, have a pristine uniformity that erases local character and suggests top-down control. They feel awkwardly at odds with Lokko’s goal of celebrating the richness of building practices that don’t adhere to traditional architectural norms. This might be indicative of a reverence to the old (read: patriarchal) ways of working—especially in light of recent revelations/allegations about Adjaye. To add to the canon, as Adjaye has set out to do, seems to only reinforce its legitimacy. In contrast, Sumayya Vally and artist Moad Musbahi disassemble the canon altogether. Their installation The African Post Office presents a field of totems, minarets, and poles, holding artifacts upon which viewers can project their own cultural interpretation. It serves as a reminder of the commonality of the building blocks of architecture.
There are other uniting themes: reuse and non-extraction, the necessity to move away from consumerist material and cultural production to consider the wider impacts of architectural work. Thandi Loewenson, who received a Special Mention in the Biennale’s awards, captures the historical entanglements this work requires in a multimedia installation titled The Uhuru Catalogues. Delving beyond the use of materials in architectural application, she explores the consequences of their production and the interdependence of architecture upon African land ownership, extraction, and the destruction of ecology. Construction’s supply chains are undeniably tangled up in Africa’s colonization; the end of the latter implies the destruction of the former.
The projects in the central pavilion present stories of hope for an inclusive and non-extractive architecture profession. Taken together, they amount to a challenge to reconsider the ways we practice, to dismantle the frameworks which have perpetuated so much harm, and to open up to the richness of cultures the profession previously overlooked. They also call into question who and what we might revere as we build this future. No wonder the old guard are so shaken—their days on top, this Biennale suggests, are numbered.