BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2021
Shaping the future
Under the title "How we will live together?, the curator of the 17th edition of the international architecture exhibition, Hashim Sarkis, wants to take up currently significant topics and address them together with the 112 competition participants from 46 countries. Debates such as migration, climate change, the human need for community and the urban housing shortage will find form in practical approaches, experimental research and concrete proposals for solutions. "We ask architects this question because we are not satisfied with the answers that come from politics today. We ask architects because they are good mediators between the different actors and experts in the planning and building process. We ask architects because we are concerned with the design of the spaces in which people live together, and because we often imagine these spaces differently from the social norms that dictate them," says Hashim Sarkis.
Five overall themes are planned for the Biennale, within which the respective appropriate contributions will be gathered: "Among Diverse Beings", "As New Households", "As Emerging Communities", "Across Borders", "As One Planet". In addition, installations are foreseen on the mainland and in the park of Forte Marghera, which will give creative proposals to the question "How will we play together?" with a view to the coming generation.
Even though the Biennale Architettura is planned as a real event with health and safety measures for guests on site, there is already an emphasis on virtual offerings on the part of the pavilions. Until the official opening, the Biennale Architettura is also offering a "sneak peak" via its online presence, which provides an insight into the process of preparation with videos, podcasts and photographs, and guarantees a first look at the projects. The German pavilion, which has the theme "2038", will act as an interface to the virtual pavilion, thus turning the reduced physical exhibition into a mobile experience with the help of digital formats. The theme, chosen before the pandemic, now sounds increasingly real instead of futuristic: "2038 looks back from the future. In a series of films, 2038 tells the story of a world in which everything has just gone right. We have arrived in the era of the New Serenity. 2038 is a fiction that finds its justification in the knowledge of experts in architecture and art, economics and ecology, philosophy and politics, science and technology. 2038 tells how we want to live together in the future," reads the press release of the German Pavilion. The "Team 2038", who developed the fictional retrospective from the future, includes curator Olaf Grawert as well as Arno Brandlhuber, Nikolaus Hirsch and Christopher Roth. (am)
