Eventful Beginnings

After a long flight and a series of late trains, I arrived in Venice a little worse for the wear. This wasn’t the case for Jean-Louis Cohen, who looked right at home. I spotted the historian on the Vaporetto from the Santa Lucia train station to the Arsenale, the hangarlike Kunsthall that doubles as the entrance to the eighteenth edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Its sprawling gallery space is complemented by programming in the Giardini, where the main exhibition is staged; the leafy surrounds also support two-dozen national pavilions (give or take), each with their own gloss on the event theme. This year, it’s Laboratory of the Future, with a spotlight on Africa and the African diaspora.

To attempt to cover the entirety of the Biennale in a single day would require superhuman strength, or at least a pair of very comfortable shoes. To attempt this feat during the vernissage, when curators, architects, designers, press officers, journalists, critics, and academics and students are thick on the ground, is surely misguided. Wanting to avoid this critical mass…