哈希姆·薩基斯/Hashim Sarkis

黃華青 譯/Translated by HUANG Huaqing

我們需要一份新的空間契約。在激化的政治割裂與日增的經(jīng)濟(jì)不平等背景下，我們呼吁建筑師想象這樣一種空間，讓我們在普遍意義上“共同”生活。

“共同”，作為人類，盡管個(gè)人主義不斷增強(qiáng)，還是渴望通過數(shù)碼或現(xiàn)實(shí)世界與彼此乃至其他物種連接；

“共同”，作為新的家庭，尋求更加多元化、有尊嚴(yán)的居住空間；

“共同”，作為新興的社群，要求平等、包容和空間身份；

“共同”，跨越政治邊界，想象新的地理聯(lián)結(jié)；

“共同”，隨著我們的星球面臨危機(jī)，需要全球行動(dòng)方能繼續(xù)生活。

第十七屆國際建筑展的參展人和其他從業(yè)人員及支持者合作——不僅有藝術(shù)家、建造商、工程師和手藝人，還包括政治家、記者、社會(huì)科學(xué)家和日常市民。實(shí)際上，2021年建筑雙年展試圖強(qiáng)調(diào)，建筑師的角色不僅是熱忱的召集者，也是這種空間契約的監(jiān)護(hù)者。

同時(shí)，建筑展還堅(jiān)持如下立場：建筑在其物質(zhì)、空間和文化特殊性上都能啟發(fā)我們共同生活的方式。就此，我們呼吁參展人凸顯該主題所折射的獨(dú)一無二的建筑要素。

闡釋問題

本屆建筑雙年展的主題已體現(xiàn)于標(biāo)題中。該標(biāo)題提出一個(gè)問題：“我們將如何共同生活？”這個(gè)問題是開放的。

“我們”：說明主語是復(fù)數(shù)，因此可以包容其他人群、其他物種，呼喚一種更具共情理解力的建筑學(xué)。

“將”：表明在面向未來的同時(shí)尋求愿景和決心，從建筑想象中汲取力量。

“如何”：指向操作路徑和切實(shí)方案，強(qiáng)調(diào)建筑學(xué)思辨以解決問題為目標(biāo)的重要性。

“共同”：意味著社群、共同體、普世價(jià)值，凸顯建筑作為一種集合形式和一種集體表達(dá)的形式。

“生活”：意味著不僅僅要生存，還要繁榮，要興盛，要居住，要表達(dá)生活，挖掘建筑學(xué)內(nèi)在的樂觀主義。

“？”：是一個(gè)開放的問題，而非一個(gè)修辭層面的問題，尋求（多種）答案，稱頌蘊(yùn)含于建筑、超越于建筑的多元價(jià)值。

“我們將如何共同生活”這個(gè)問題，初聽起來古老而緊迫。古巴比倫人在建造通天塔時(shí)曾如此發(fā)問；亞里士多德在其著作中討論政治問題時(shí)也曾如此發(fā)問，他的回答是“城市”；法國和美國的革命者亦如此發(fā)問。在1970年代早期的動(dòng)蕩背景下，蒂米·托馬斯充滿激情地在歌聲中發(fā)問：“我們?yōu)楹尾荒芄餐?？?/p>

這不僅是社會(huì)和政治問題，同樣是空間問題。近期，社會(huì)規(guī)范的快速轉(zhuǎn)變、左翼與右翼的政治極化、氣候變化，以及勞動(dòng)和資本之間割裂的不斷擴(kuò)大，都讓該問題變得前所未有的緊迫且無處不在。與此同時(shí)，當(dāng)代政治模型的羸弱使我們不得不寄希望于空間，或許如亞里士多德所言，探尋建筑塑造居住的方式，由此想象我們將如何共同生活的潛在模型。

每一代人都認(rèn)為有必要提出這個(gè)問題，并以自己獨(dú)一無二的方式來回答。與先前由意識形態(tài)驅(qū)動(dòng)的幾代人不同，當(dāng)今的一代似乎存在這樣一種共識，即這一問題的答案不可能源自任何單一源頭。來源的多元性和答案的多樣性，只會(huì)豐富我們共同享有的生活，而非形成阻礙。

我們向建筑師提出這個(gè)問題，因?yàn)槲覀儗Ξ?dāng)今政治所提供的答案并不滿。在威尼斯建筑雙年展的語境下，我們向建筑師提出這個(gè)問題，因?yàn)槲覀兿嘈?，他們有能力給出更具啟發(fā)性的答案。我們向建筑師發(fā)問，因?yàn)樗麄兩瞄L在設(shè)計(jì)和建造過程中召集不同的行動(dòng)者及專家。我們向建筑師發(fā)問，因?yàn)樽鳛榻ㄖ?，我們一直全神貫注于塑造讓人們共同生活的空間，一直在想象一種不同于社會(huì)規(guī)范指令約束下的新生活。

從這種意義上說，我們設(shè)計(jì)的每一個(gè)空間都會(huì)在擁抱所服從的社會(huì)契約的同時(shí)，為其提供一條替代路徑。我們渴望激發(fā)社會(huì)契約最好的一面，并提出我們認(rèn)為能夠予以改善的替代措施。單一家庭住宅或許最終仍會(huì)延續(xù)二戰(zhàn)后核心家庭模型的顯性價(jià)值和隱性壓迫，但我們也看到來自建筑師強(qiáng)有力的實(shí)驗(yàn)，他們挑戰(zhàn)了獨(dú)立住宅的家庭秩序和性別區(qū)隔，轉(zhuǎn)而提出替代性的平面布局和開放程度。

值得期待的是，這個(gè)問題會(huì)持續(xù)推動(dòng)我們向好的方向發(fā)展，并進(jìn)一步建構(gòu)建筑和建筑師賴以維持的樂觀主義。我們的職業(yè)任務(wù)是為更好的生活設(shè)計(jì)更好的空間。我們的挑戰(zhàn)并非是否應(yīng)該保持樂觀。我們沒有選擇。我們的選擇是，如何更成功地通過我們以建筑創(chuàng)造的“愿景”來為居者爭取更好的生活。

當(dāng)下的全球疫情無疑使得本屆建筑雙年展提出的問題變得更為切題和緊迫——雖說在強(qiáng)制隔離措施下，這甚至顯得有些諷刺。這或許真是個(gè)巧合，因?yàn)樵撝黝}是在疫情開始前幾個(gè)月提出的。然而，很多引導(dǎo)我們提出這一問題的原因——日益嚴(yán)峻的氣候危機(jī)、大量人口流離失所、全球各地的政治不穩(wěn)定，以及激增的種族、社會(huì)和經(jīng)濟(jì)不平等——都將我們引向這場疫情，并讓一切變得更為休戚相關(guān)。

一份新的空間契約

5個(gè)人走進(jìn)只有4把椅子的房間，將會(huì)如何安排座位？他們可以玩搶椅子游戲，這是一種空間契約。他們也可以把椅子連排在一起形成一把長椅，這樣就可以擠在一起。還有一個(gè)例子，當(dāng)一座城市決定建造一條新的地鐵線，它應(yīng)該連接哪些部分、又拋棄哪些部分？影響決策的或許包括經(jīng)濟(jì)因素、政治競爭和技術(shù)支撐，但某種意義上，地鐵線的布局卻取代并成為了一種大部分人口彼此聯(lián)系的方式，逾越于試圖蒙蔽或割裂他們的政治之上。

政治和政策為集體生活鋪設(shè)了前提和路線圖，但人們在空間中聚集，空間則幫助塑造和改變前者所確立的社會(huì)契約。例如，當(dāng)亞里士多德試圖描述理想的民主時(shí)，他無法脫離城市來闡明。我們很難想象一個(gè)社會(huì)而不考慮它所占據(jù)的空間。從那時(shí)候開始，政治理論家便時(shí)常依賴空間來解釋社會(huì)，同時(shí)驅(qū)動(dòng)他們想象中的社會(huì)。從盧梭到羅爾斯，他們皆認(rèn)為人所形成社會(huì)的過程，應(yīng)發(fā)生在一個(gè)能夠幫助塑造社會(huì)契約的空間中。如果某項(xiàng)社會(huì)契約決定了人們進(jìn)入社會(huì)所必須放棄或得到的自由，那么空間契約便決定了人們借助空間互動(dòng)以協(xié)商自由的方法?？臻g契約領(lǐng)先、預(yù)演、闡釋、物化，不可避免地催化或抑制又時(shí)常取代了社會(huì)契約。

城市史學(xué)家認(rèn)為，墻的共享是標(biāo)志了城市出現(xiàn)的時(shí)刻。這個(gè)時(shí)刻意味著，兩棟住宅經(jīng)過重新思考，走上了節(jié)儉和共享的道路?？臻g契約的奇特之處在于空間需要特定準(zhǔn)則的觀念，但它在某種意義上非常多元，因?yàn)榭臻g具有某種可促發(fā)多樣性的共時(shí)性。因此，觀察某社會(huì)如何塑造空間以及其空間形塑了怎樣的準(zhǔn)入和行為準(zhǔn)則，或許就和觀察他們的道德標(biāo)準(zhǔn)本身一樣重要。

我們依舊在按照一個(gè)早已過時(shí)的關(guān)于好生活的理念居住于住宅和城市中。這些空間的建筑韌性或許能夠隨著我們需求的變化而不斷調(diào)整，但如今，它們已抵達(dá)彈性的極限。

我們的身體需要新的修復(fù)術(shù)，而且愈發(fā)需要全新的自由來表達(dá)流動(dòng)的性別立場。他們變得多元化，從一致性之中解放出來，然而關(guān)于其舒適性的建筑標(biāo)準(zhǔn)依然是基于標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化的路徑，限制著身體，并將其從環(huán)境中脫離。我們的家庭生活早已變得愈發(fā)多元化，但人們依然乏味地復(fù)制著核心家庭的模型，包括其根深蒂固的關(guān)于等級和隱私的偏見。我們的社會(huì)聯(lián)結(jié)已變得更為離散和多樣，但社區(qū)空間依然圍繞著聯(lián)結(jié)的價(jià)值觀展開，后者通常顯得更加內(nèi)向、自閉。我們的城市擴(kuò)張?jiān)缫殉讲煌δ軈^(qū)劃和收入群體塑造的中心化模型，但人們依然認(rèn)為一座好的城市應(yīng)具有一個(gè)中心，具有空間組織上的社會(huì)層級，并且背靠鄉(xiāng)村和自然。首要的是，我們?nèi)找嬉庾R到自己的空間實(shí)踐——包括交通和環(huán)境控制——的全球風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，但我們的生活方式依然假定自己獨(dú)自生活在擁有無限資源的被動(dòng)星球上。用歌手普林斯的話來概括，我們依然“像1999年那樣開派對”。

我們不能再指望政治家來提出通向更好未來的路徑。盡管政治持續(xù)創(chuàng)造著分裂和隔閡，我們卻能通過建筑來提供共同生活的替代方式。畢竟，空間相對那些塑造了它的人類境遇，常常能夠預(yù)先存在、投射呈現(xiàn)，或是更長時(shí)間地留存?？臻g契約能夠構(gòu)筑社會(huì)契約。我們尋求這樣一種空間契約，它是普世且包容的，一種可以讓所有人群和物種以其多樣性共存并茁壯生長的擴(kuò)充契約。

走向一種新的建筑能動(dòng)性

2021年威尼斯建筑雙年展是由當(dāng)下世界擺在建筑學(xué)面前的一系列新問題所驅(qū)動(dòng)的，同時(shí)它的啟發(fā)還來自年輕建筑師覺醒的行動(dòng)主義，以及建筑行業(yè)為了直面挑戰(zhàn)而提出的激進(jìn)修正方案。

建筑師在本質(zhì)上都是召集者。他們綜合不同的領(lǐng)域，協(xié)調(diào)不同的職業(yè)要求，最后將它們一起呈現(xiàn)給甲方。他們也是契約的監(jiān)護(hù)者。但除此之外，建筑師通過其安排、分隔和聯(lián)結(jié)空間的方式，提供了可能的社會(huì)組織。他們同時(shí)塑造了社會(huì)與社群所擁有的時(shí)刻、回憶及表達(dá)，創(chuàng)造一種共同的語言，讓公眾得以討論和溝通他們的經(jīng)驗(yàn)和文化。

今天的建筑師，正在重新思考手中的工具，以應(yīng)對其面臨的復(fù)雜問題。他們也在擴(kuò)大眼前的談判桌，以吸納其他的從業(yè)者及市民。為了更有效地承擔(dān)他們被賦予的責(zé)任，建筑師正致力于發(fā)揮他們最重要的作用——不同形式的專業(yè)技能和表達(dá)方式的整合者。

前所未有地，人們希望建筑師來提供替代路徑。我們調(diào)用綜合的技能將人們團(tuán)結(jié)在一起，以解決復(fù)雜的矛盾。作為藝術(shù)家，我們蔑視不行動(dòng)主義，這來自提出“這樣又會(huì)如何”的不確定性。作為建造者，我們從深邃無窮的樂觀主義出發(fā)，試圖做到最好。在這個(gè)混沌的時(shí)代，不同角色的交匯只會(huì)讓我們的能動(dòng)性變得更強(qiáng)；而我們希望，這也讓我們的建筑變得更美好。

5 種尺度

2021年建筑雙年展的主展覽包括來自46個(gè)國家的112位參展人，尤其是來自非洲、拉丁美洲和亞洲的代表不斷增加，而參展男女比例也愈發(fā)均衡。

這次展覽還包括一系列研究站，它們作為對展覽項(xiàng)目的補(bǔ)充，提供了針對相關(guān)話題的深度分析。這些研究站是由來自世界各地的大學(xué)的研究者開發(fā)的，包括：英國建筑聯(lián)盟學(xué)院、貝魯特美國大學(xué)、巴萊特建筑學(xué)院、哥倫比亞大學(xué)、庫珀聯(lián)盟學(xué)院、蘇黎世聯(lián)邦理工學(xué)院、埃塞俄比亞建筑與城市發(fā)展學(xué)院、馬德里高等建筑技術(shù)學(xué)院、哈佛大學(xué)、香港大學(xué)、威尼斯建筑大學(xué)、卡爾斯魯厄技術(shù)大學(xué)、魯汶大學(xué)、萊斯大學(xué)，以及來自麻省理工學(xué)院的研究團(tuán)體——威尼斯實(shí)驗(yàn)室。

2021年建筑雙年展是按照5種不同尺度來組織的：其中3種布置在軍械庫展區(qū)，另兩種在中央展館。項(xiàng)目的類型包括分析性的、概念性的、實(shí)驗(yàn)性的、經(jīng)過驗(yàn)證的，以及已廣泛應(yīng)用的。每種尺度又進(jìn)一步指向一系列不同主題，各自在雙年展的建筑及場地的獨(dú)立展廳中進(jìn)行展示。

這5種尺度包括：多樣的生命之間、作為新的家庭、作為新興的社區(qū)、跨越邊界、同一個(gè)星球。

（1）多樣生命之間（軍械庫展區(qū)）

-為新的身體設(shè)計(jì)：面向人類身體感知和觀念的改變；

-與其他生命共存：凸顯與其他生命的共情行為及涉入。

（2）作為新家庭（軍械庫展區(qū)）

-滿足新的人口結(jié)構(gòu)：回應(yīng)家庭結(jié)構(gòu)和密度的變遷；

-居住于新的建構(gòu)學(xué)：探索應(yīng)用于創(chuàng)新住宅建造的技術(shù)；

-共同分開居?。和卣构⒔ㄖ鳛榧暇幼☆愋偷目赡?。

（3）作為新興社區(qū)（軍械庫展區(qū)）

-呼吁市民性：探索讓社區(qū)在空間上組織起來的新方式；

-重新裝配社會(huì)：提出新型的社會(huì)配套設(shè)施（公園、學(xué)校、醫(yī)院等）；

-匯聚在威尼斯：在海平面升高、疫情和人口結(jié)構(gòu)變遷的挑戰(zhàn)下構(gòu)想威尼斯的未來；

-共居：展現(xiàn)我們?nèi)绾卧谶@些地方共同生活——亞的斯亞貝巴、阿茲拉克難民營、貝魯特、印巴走廊、拉各斯以及開羅和瓜達(dá)拉哈拉的寮屋聚落、紐約、普利斯蒂納、里約熱內(nèi)盧和圣保羅城市圈。

（4）跨越邊界（花園展區(qū)，中央展館）

-超越城鄉(xiāng)隔閡：調(diào)和全球城市與全球腹地之間日益擴(kuò)大的社會(huì)經(jīng)濟(jì)差距；

-聯(lián)結(jié)黎凡特：協(xié)商黎凡特地區(qū)尖銳的政治隔離；

-尋找庇護(hù)：審視被迫遷徙的空間挑戰(zhàn)；

-保護(hù)全球共同體：調(diào)動(dòng)建筑想象以應(yīng)對極地、亞馬孫、大洋、印度洋-太平洋海域和空域的瀕危財(cái)產(chǎn)。

（5）同一個(gè)星球（花園展區(qū)，中央展館）

-創(chuàng)造世界：預(yù)期并校準(zhǔn)星球的未來；

-設(shè)計(jì)未來的大集合：為聯(lián)合國提出一份不止于人類的未來方案；

-氣候變化的設(shè)計(jì)變革：應(yīng)對全球環(huán)境惡化的解決方案；

-空間網(wǎng)絡(luò)：聯(lián)結(jié)地球和外太空。

除了在中央展館和軍械庫展區(qū)室內(nèi)的展覽之外，花園展區(qū)和軍械庫展區(qū)的室外場地也陳列了若干與以上5個(gè)尺度相關(guān)的裝置展品。此外，威尼斯內(nèi)陸部分的福蒂·瑪蓋拉公園還設(shè)置了5個(gè)相關(guān)裝置：我們將如何共同玩耍？□

We need a new spatial contract. In the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, we call on architects to imagine spaces in which we can generously livetogether:

·togetheras human beings who, despite increasing individuality, yearn to connect with one another and with other species across digital and real space;

·togetheras new households looking for more diverse and dignified spaces for inhabitation;

·togetheras emerging communities that demand equity, inclusion, and spatial identity;

·togetheracross political borders to imagine new geographies of association;

·togetheras a planet facing crises that require global action for all of us to continue living at all.

The participants in the 17th International Architecture Exhibition are collaborating with other professions and constituencies - artists, builders, engineers, and craftspeople, but also politicians, journalists, social scientists, and everyday citizens. In effect, the Biennale Architettura 2021 asserts the vital role of the architect as both cordial convener and custodian of the spatial contract.

In parallel, this Exhibition also maintains that it is in its material, spatial, and cultural specificity that architecture inspires the ways we live together. In that respect, we ask the participants to highlight those aspects of the main theme that are uniquely architectural.

Unpacking the Question

The theme of this Biennale Architettura is its title. The title is a question: How will we live together? 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: Is 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 collective 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 polarisation between left and right, climate change, and the growing gap between labour 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.

Every generation feels compelled to ask this question and answer it in its own, unique way. Today, unlike with previous ideologically-driven generations, there seems to be a consensus that there is no single source from which such an answer can come. The plurality of sources and diversity of answers will only enrich our living together, not impede it.

We are asking architects this question because we are not happy with the answers that are coming out of politics today. In the context of the Biennale Architettura we are asking architects this question because we believe they have the ability to present more inspiring answers than politics has been thus far offering in much of the world. We are asking architects because architects are good conveners of different actors and experts in the design and construction process. We are asking architects because we, as architects, are preoccupied with shaping the spaces in which people live together and because we frequently imagine these settings differently than do the social norms that dictate them.

In that sense, every space we design simultaneously embraces the social contract that willed the space and proposes an alternative to it. We aspire to enable the best of the social contract and to propose alternatives where we can improve on it. A single-family home may ultimately replicate the explicit values and implicit oppressions of the post-WWII nuclear family model, but we have also seen powerful experiments from architects who have challenged the detached house's familial hierarchies and gender segregations by proposing alternative layouts and degrees of openness.

Hopefully, the question continues to propel us hopefully ahead and, in doing so, to build on the optimism that drives architecture and architects. Our profession is tasked with designing better spaces for better living. Our challenge is not whether to be optimistic or not. There we have no choice. It is rather how successful we are at transposing the inhabitants to better lives through the "wish images" that we produce with architecture.

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.

A New Spatial Contract

Five people walk into a room that has only four chairs. Who sits where? They can play musical chairs. That's one spatial contract. They can also line up the chairs to form of a bench where they all fit together. That's another. A city decides to build a new subway system. Which parts does it connect and which does it leave out? There may be economic issues, political rivalries, and technological drivers that guide these decisions, but somehow the layout of the subway system supersedes and becomes a way in which a larger portion of the population connects with each other above and beyond the politics that bind or divide them.

Politics and policies lay out the terms and processes for collective living, but people convene in space, and the space helps shape and transform the social contract they lay out. When Aristotle, for example wanted to describe the ideal democracy, he could not do so without the city. It was very difficult to imagine a society without the spaces that it occupied. Since then, political theorists have often relied on space to explain but also to enable the society they are imagining. From Rousseau to Rawls, the deliberation of people forming society takes place in a space that helps shape the social contract. If a social contract determines the freedoms lost and gained in order for people to enter society, a spatial contract, determines the methods by which people negotiate these freedoms through their spatial interactions. The spatial contract precedes, rehearses, articulates, materialises, invariably enables or resists, but oftentimes supersedes the social contract.

Historians of cities attest to the sharing of walls as being the moment of emergence of cities, the moment when two houses are rethought in order to economise and share. The spatial contract has a singularity in the idea of space requiring a decorum, but it is very plural in the sense that space has a level of simultaneity that can empower multiplicities. Thus, to look at how societies shape their spaces and what decorum of access and behaviour are shaped by their spaces could be as important as looking at their codes of ethics themselves.

We continue to inhabit houses and cities built on outmoded ideas of a good life. The architectural resilience of these spaces may have adjusted to our changing needs over time, but by now they have reached the limits of their elasticity.

Our bodies have acquired new prosthetics and, increasingly, the nascent freedom to express fluid genders. They are being diversified and liberated from uniformity, but the architectural criteria of their comfort are still based on standardised approaches that confine the body and detach it from its environment. Our family lives have evolved and diversified, but we continue to replicatead nauseamthe model of the nuclear family house along with its embedded biases of hierarchy and privacy. Our social associations have become more diffused and diverse and yet the space of the community is still centred around values of association that tend to be more inward-looking and claustrophobic. Our cities have long expanded beyond the centralised model of separated landuses and income groups, but we often continue to think of the good city as one with a centre, spatially organised societal hierarchies, and with its back turned to the rural and nature. Above all, we have become increasingly aware of the global dangers of our spatial practices, including transportation and environmental controls, but we continue to live as if alone on a passive planet of endless resources. To paraphrase from the singer Prince, we continue toparty like it was 1999.

We can no longer wait for politicians to propose a path towards a better future. As politics continue to divide and isolate, we can offer alternative ways of living together through architecture. After all, space often precedes, projects, and survives the human conditions that shape it. A spatial contract could constitute a social contract. We are looking for a spatial contract that is at once universal and inclusive, an expanded contract for peoples and species to coexist and thrive in their plurality.

Towards a Renewed Agency for Architecture

The Biennale Architettura 2021 is motivated by new kinds of problems that the world is putting in front of architecture, but it is also inspired by the emerging activism of young architects and the radical revisions being proposed by the profession of architecture to take on these challenges.

Architects are inherently conveners. They synthesise among different fields and coordinate among different professionals and represent them in front of the client. They are the custodians of the contract. But beyond that, architects suggest possible social organisations through the way they arrange sequester, and connect spaces. They also shape the monuments, the memories, and the expressions of societies and groups, creating a common language that enables the public to debate and communicate its experiences and cultures.

Architects today are rethinking their tools to address the complex problems at hand. They are also enlarging their table to include other professionals and citizens. To effectively take on the responsibilities being presented to them, architects are extending one of their most important roles, as generous synthesisers of different forms of expertise and expression.

But more than ever, architects are called upon to propose alternatives. As citizens, we mobilise our synthetic skills to bring people together to solve complex problems. As artists, we defy the inaction that comes from uncertainty to ask "What if?" And as builders, we draw from our bottomless well of optimism to do what we do best. The confluence of roles in these nebulous times can only make our agency stronger and, we hope, our buildings more beautiful.

Five Scales

The main exhibition of the Biennale Architettura 2021 comprises works by 112 participants coming from forty-six countries with increased representation from Africa, Latin America, and Asia and with comparable representation of men and women.

This Exhibition also includes a series of research stations that complement the projects on display with in-depth analysis of related topics. These stations were developed by researchers from universities around the world. They include the Architectural Association, the American University of Beirut, The Bartlett, Columbia University, Cooper Union, ETH Zurich, Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), ETSAM - Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Harvard University, Hong Kong University, Iuav University of Venice, KIT Karlsruhe, KU Leuven, Rice University, and the Venice Lab, a consortium of research groups at MIT.

The Biennale Architettura 2021 is organised into five scales: three are exhibited in the Arsenale and two in the Central Pavilion. 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.

The five scales are Among Diverse Beings, As New Households, As Emerging Communities, Across Borders, As One Planet.

(1) Among Diverse Beings (Arsenale)

- Designing for New Bodies: addressing changes in the perception and conception of the human body;

- Living with Other Beings: foregrounding empathetic behaviour and engagement with other beings.

(2) As New Households (Arsenale)

- Catering to New Demographics: responding to changing compositions and densities of households;

- Inhabiting New Tectonics: exploring technologies that enable innovative housing construction;

- Living Apart Together: expanding the possibilities of the apartment building as a collective housing typology.

(3) As Emerging Communities (Arsenale)

- Appealing to Civicness: investigating novel ways for communities to organise themselves spatially;

- Reequipping Society: proposing new forms of social equipment (parks, schools, hospitals, and so on);

- Coming Together in Venice: imagining the future of Venice in light of the challenges of sea-level rise, the pandemic, and changing demographics;

- Co-Habitats: Showing how we do live together in Addis Ababa, the Azraq Refugee Camp, Beirut, the India-Pakistan corridors, a Lagos squatter settlement compared to one in Cairo and another in Guadalajara, New York, Pristina, Rio de Janeiro, and the Sao Paulo area.

(4) Across Borders (Giardini, Central Pavilion)

- Transcending the Urban-rural Divide: mitigating the growing social and economic differences between global cities and the global hinterland;

- Linking the Levant: negotiating sharp political divisions in the Levant region;

- Seeking Refuge: examining the spatial challenges of forced displacement;

- Resourcing Resources: proposing better distribution of our common resources;

- Protecting Global Commons: bringing the architectural imaginary to engage with endangered treasures such as the Poles, the Amazon, the Oceans, the Indo-Pacific Region, and the Air.

(5) As One Planet (Giardini, Central Pavilion)

- Making Worlds: anticipating and calibrating the future of the planet;

-Designing the Assembly of the Future:proposing a speculative more-than-human future for the United Nations;

- Changing Designs for Climate Change: presenting solutions in the face of the global degradation of the environment;

- Networking Space: connecting between Earth and outer space.

In addition to the exhibitions housed inside the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale, the grounds of the Central Pavilion's Giardini and the Arsenale feature several installations that relate to one of the five scales. In addition, the Park of Forte Marghera on the mainland also features five related installations:How Will We Play Together?□