While there are cultural institutions slowly reopening in a few European countries after the Coronavirus emergency, in some cases major events had to be cancelled. One of these events was Milan Design Week, postponed to next year, while the 17th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice was initially postponed from May to August.
Unfortunately, though, the new rules and regulations about social distancing would make the Venice Biennale simply impossible as queues would be unmanageable if people had to respect social distancing and would be even slower if body temperatures had to be taken at the entrance. Hence, earlier on this week, organisers announced the Architecture Biennale was going to be postponed till next year (new dates go from 22nd May to Sunday 21st November 2021), while the art exhibition scheduled for 2021 will take place in two years' time.
The title of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - "How will we live together?" - will not change, but it will take an entirely new meaning.
Curator Hashim Sarkis wrote in the original press release: "In the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, we call on architects to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together."
The original idea for this year's biennale was indeed inviting architects to consider their projects in collaboration with other figures, among them artists, builders, and craftspeople, but also politicians, journalists, social scientists, and everyday citizens.
In that original call, Sarkis wanted architects to approach this question from a social and political, but also spatial point of view. Yet, things have radically changed in the last few months because of the global pandemic that has put a stop on our lives.
Coronavirus has destroyed normal patterns of life, bringing new issues forward: we have indeed explored the possibilities of temporary hospitals rearranged in spaces for cultural events and mobile shipping containers turned into plug-in Intensive-Care Units (ICU), but there have been also a lot of debates about managing care homes for the elderly and how Coronavirus quickly spread in these establishments killing too many residents.
Last but not least, we have also seen images of mass graves in the States or Brazil and of coffins being transported in Italy from one city to another to be buried, tragic moments that probably prompted some architects to ponder about how we can rethink and redesign the afterlife.
The architectural discourse is also vivid now as countries reboot after the long Coronavirus emergency lockdown. Many places such as shops, restaurants, bars, gyms and pools have to be redesigned to make sure safe social distancing measures are respected, while mobile textile screens may be employed in some areas to create temporary architectures in open air spaces.
During the lockdown our houses turned into hybrid spaces, allocating grown-ups smartworking, but also kids and young adults following online classes, new tasks that disrupted the concept of house, recombining offices and schools in private spaces. There will be further challenges in the months to come as more offices, but also schools reopen.
Originally the Venice Architecture Biennale was going to feature a section entitled "How will we play together?", a project dedicated to children's play at Forte Marghera, presented by five architects and an architectural photographer and it will be intriguing to see what will it become after so many kids had to stay inside and ended up spending more time in front of computers and mobile phones, cut off from social interactions with their friends, but still being able to see them and their teachers in digital format.
But it is not just physical architecture that has been disrupted by Coronavirus, we can indeed also talk about social architecture: after months of lockdown we will have to relearn how to rebuild our social skills, while remembering to keep on maintaining social distance, also thanks to personal and portable barriers - face masks.
Architecture faces therefore new and difficult yet exciting challenges, but we have a year to think about them and find new ways to learn to collaborate with experts from different fields towards a better future in which we consider modern issues such as pandemics and climate change, and we devise new plans to go back to genuinely live together with no worries about safe distancing and face masks.
In the press release for the Venice Architecture Biennale, Paolo Baratta, Chairman of Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, stated: "Architecture makes us more aware individuals; it helps us become citizens, not just consumers; it stimulates us to consider the indirect effects of our actions; it helps us understand more fully the importance of public goods and of free goods. It helps us develop a more all-around vision of welfare, (...) lastly, architecture helps us to conserve resources and to give ourselves a modicum of happiness."
Hopefully, the Architecture Biennale 2021 will be a genuine call to the public, as Baratta hoped it would be in the original press release announcing the event, a call that will bring all the experiences we have been through in these two months together and develop new ideas for exciting projects and proposals.
Image credits for this post
Padiglione Centrale Giardini, Venice, Photo by Francesco Galli, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Arsenale, Venice, Photo by Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Arquitectura Expandida, La Casa de la Lluvia [de ideas]/The House of the Rain [of ideas], a cultural and environmental community space, La Cecilia neighborhood, San Cristóbal District, Bogotá D.C. Self-building process. 2012-ongoing. Courtesy Arcquitectura Expandida
doxiadis +, "Growing," Entangled Kingdoms, 2019-20. Courtesy doxiadis +
Atelier RITA, Emergency Shelter for Refugees and Roma Community, 2017. Courtesy David Boureau @urbamutability // All rights reserved 2020
Dogma, "You always seemed so sure that one day we'd be fighting," The Opposite Shore, 2016-19. Courtesy Dogma
SOM, "Moon Village Earth Rise," Life Beyond Earth, 2020. Courtesy SOM | Slashcube GmbH
Osbourne Macharia, "GIKOSH: Example of Photographic art projects involving the creative Millenial within the informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya," 2019. Courtesy Osbourne Macharia
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