Archinect - News

Urban housing by women-led firms featured at the 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-06-08T11:01:00-04:00

As part of the 2023 Venice Biennale, an exhibition on the future of housing has opened feating the work of several women-led practices. Titled 'Reconceptualizing Urban Housing,' and organized by the European Cultural Centre, the exhibition centers on “unique perspectives on collective housing, primarily in or near urban areas.”

Reconceptualing Urban Housing Architects

Featured practices in the exhibition are Adengo Architecture (Uganda), Alison Brooks Architects (UK), Dubbeldam Architecture + Design (Canada), Eleena Jamil Architect (Malaysia), Fernanda Canales Arquitectura (Mexico), Manuelle Gautrand Architecture (France), Mecanoo (The Netherlands), Meyer-Grohbruegge (Germany), and Studio Gang (USA).

Mecanoo - Villa Industria Silos. Photo credit: Mecanoo architecten

“The global housing crisis has created an urgent need for housing worldwide, especially in urban centers where 80% of the world’s population is housed,” the organizers explained. “In the race to build more homes faster, ma...

Ukraine's optimistic vision at the 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-05-29T15:32:00-04:00

A pair of time-sensitive installations from the Ukrainian contingent at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale is rallying two contraposed notions of future rebuilding and present-day trauma together for the outside world to experience optimistically under one prescient exhibition aptly titled Before the Future.

The country’s first Biennale entry since 2014 is being presented in two locations by curators Iryna Miroshnykova, Oleksii Petrov, and Borys Filonenko, who say their contribution presents Ukraine as a “powerful participant in transforming the image of the future in Europe and the whole civilized world.”

Beginning first inside the Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi, the exhibition remakes an otherwise cavernous host space into a windowless, claustrophobic chasm within which visitors can experience the state of abandonment and eerie comfort that Ukrainians are daily inhabiting as they fight for a more vital and sustainably built peace-filled world to come.

Image: © Matteo de Mayda, court...

China exits Venice Biennale over Alison Killing's Xinjiang detention camp investigation

2023-05-26T15:36:00-04:00

Opening week for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale wasn't short of excitement, reflection, criticism, and social commentary from the architecture community and the general public. With that said, another piece of controversial news was recently reported by the Italian news and analysis website Decode39 on the Chinese Embassy's decision to exit one of the largest international design and culture exhibitions.

According to Decode39, China withdrew from the event due to an installation titled Investigating Xinjiang’s Network of Detention Camps. Created by architect and urban designer Alison Killing of Killing Architects, the project aimed to explore and investigate the "network of detention camps built by the Chinese government in Xinjiang for the mass detention of Muslims."

Previously on Archinect: Architect Alison Killing has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her Chinese internment camp investigations

In 2021, Killing was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the International Reporting cat...

'Whats the point of all this?' Patrik Schumacher's blistering critique of the Venice Architecture Biennale stirs debate

2023-05-23T17:51:00-04:00

A new Facebook post from Patrik Schumacher critical of the newly-opened 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale is gaining traction after the Zaha Hadid Architects Principal expressed his concerns over the apparent lack of architectural content in the Lesley Lokko-curated exhibition, whose theme touches on Afrofuturism, the environmental crisis, and identity.

In a fourteen-paragraph invective titled “Venice Biennale Blues,” Schumacher decried the Biennale as being “mislabeled,” claiming that “What we are witnessing here is the discursive self-annihilation of the discipline.”

Schumacher, who is himself a co-curator of this year's Venice Virtual Pavilion, claimed to visit twelve total pavilions without seeing anything related to architecture before lamenting the pavilions and themed exhibitions as being awash in “documentary-style intellectual-artistic allusions to moral issues, garnished with pretentious critical-speak.”

Perhaps controversially, Schumacher lambasted the American pavilion a...

Details emerge regarding the Italian government denying visas for three Ghanaian curators at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2023-05-22T15:47:00-04:00

Controversy stirred at the Venice Architecture Biennale after Italian government officials refused visas to three key Ghanaian curators who had planned on entering the country to attend the exhibition ahead of its opening on Saturday, May 20.

On May 19, The Art Newspaper's Tom Seymour reported on the latest details on the story first mentioned by Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright via Twitter on May 10th.

Sickening to hear this from the curator of this year's Venice Biennale, Lesley Lokko – large numbers of participants from Africa have been denied visas to attend: pic.twitter.com/Pn5ASUgev9
— Olly Wainwright (@ollywainwright) May 10, 2023

The drama began after the Italian ambassador to Ghana denied entry permissions to the traveling contingent, reportedly accusing curator Lesley Lokko of trying to bring three “non-essential” workers into the EU’s Schengen economic zone.

Lokko, who is herself of Ghanaian descent, responded to decry the actions as the motivations of a right-wing caree...

U.S. Pavilion for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale analyzes the human relationship with plastic

2023-05-18T18:11:00-04:00

The United States Pavilion for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale has been completed ahead of the event’s May 20th public opening. Organized by the Cleveland-based alternative art organization SPACES, and titled Everlasting Plastics, the exhibition seeks to explore “one of the most ubiquitous materials in our world: plastic.”

Externalities by Ang Li. Photo credit: ReportArch / Andrea Ferro Photography

Investigating how plastic has permeated modern life, the exhibition reframes attitudes and approaches toward addressing the overabundance of plastic waste in waterways, landfills, and streets. Acknowledging the global dependence on the material, the pavilion seeks to make a case for a “profound reconsideration for how we coexist with plastics and its possibilities as an agent for change.”

PROOFING: Resistant and Ready by Xavi L. Aguirre. Photo credit: ReportArch / Andrea Ferro Photography

“In representing the United States at La Biennale, we wanted to draw a connection between an indu...

NEOM goes to Venice to promote its 'zero gravity urbanism' concept

2023-05-17T12:11:00-04:00

A new exhibition titled Zero Gravity Urbanism—Principles for a New Livability will explore the conceptual underpinnings behind Saudi Arabia’s contentious NEOM megadevelopment parallel with the start of the 2023 Venice Biennale on May 20th.

Featuring contributions from Morphosis, Peter Cook, UNStudio, Studio Fuksas, Oyler Wu, and Adjaye Associates, the exhibition presents what organizers say are the $500 billion endeavor’s "seven key principles [...] defined and brought to life through the proposals of architects and urban thinkers, who are envisioning the foundations of a new livability in NEOM."

Other than the plan’s 110-mile main THE LINE segment, details on NEOM’s Oxagon, Trojena, and Sindalah regional developments will also be presented.

Previously on Archinect: OMA, Peter Cook, Morphosis, Adjaye Associates among firms showcasing design proposals in NEOM's recent The Line Experience exhibition

A series of lectures and public presentations will supplement the exhibition. Peter Coo...

Adjaye debuts preview of India's new Kiran Nadar Museum of Art project in Venice

2023-05-17T00:01:00-04:00

As part of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, David Adjaye will be on hand to present an architectural model of the new Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) project in New Delhi.

The model will be staged inside the Arsenale as part of the Curator’s Special Projects Mnemonic section, which runs from May 20th until the close of the Biennale.

Once it is completed in 2026, the museum building is expected to become India’s largest cultural center. Offering space for the museum’s collection of over 10,000 modern and contemporary works, the project is being undertaken in collaboration with S. Ghosh & Associates and will consolidate its currently disparate locations in New Delhi and Noida into a 100,000-square-meter (one-million-square-foot) new home on a plot adjacent to the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Architectural model of the new KNMA, New Delhi. Courtesy David Adjaye Associates and KNMA

The museum’s founder and namesake explains: “Our presentation at the Biennale Architett...

The New York Times gives Lesley Lokko the profile treatment ahead of next week’s Venice Biennale

2023-05-10T10:56:00-04:00

Although the Biennale is hardly the first major exhibition to focus on Black and diasporic practitioners, the cascading crises of climate change, rapid urbanization, migration, global health emergencies and a deep imperative to decolonize institutions and spaces — starting with the historically Eurocentric Biennale itself — arguably make Lokko’s focus on hybrid forms of practice timely, be it planners as policy experts or artist-environmentalists.

Lokko repeated to the Times her interest in using the Biennale platform to disabuse stigmas about African identity before discussing her own experiences with identity, path to architecture, and the potential she and others are striving to present to the world.

“The ability to be several things at once — traditional and modern, African and global, colonized and independent — is a strong thread running through the continent and the Diaspora,” she told the paper. “We’re used to having to think about resources, about switching on a light with no guarantee of electricity. We’re able to grapple with change. That capacity to overcome, to negotiate, to navigate ones’ surroundings is going to take center stage.”

Events kick off May 20th with the announcement of the Golden Lion and other select award winners.

The 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale reveals its International Jury selection

2023-05-09T15:28:00-04:00

The international jury for this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale has been announced by the fair’s Board of Directors in advance of its May 20th opening.

The 18th International Architecture Exhibition will be judged by the Italian architect and curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (who will serve as President of the jury); Palestinian architect and curator Nora Akawi; &South-African Cityscapes co-founder, curator, and editor Tau Tavengwa; Spain- and London-based Polish academic Izabela Wieczorek; and Studio Museum in Harlem Director Thelma Golden.

They were each recommended by the Exhibition’s curator, the African Futures Institute founder Lesley Lokko, and will be tasked with judging the Golden Lion for best National Participation; the Golden Lion for best participant in the International Exhibition; and the Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the International Exhibition, in addition to a potential special mention to National Participations and up to two for partic...

A Japanese teahouse prototype made from food waste debuts at this year’s Venice Biennale

2023-05-08T13:18:00-04:00

Japanese architecture and engineering firm Mitsubishi Jisho Design has unveiled details of a sustainable teahouse project at the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale, which takes place from May 20th to November 26th in what is now its 18th edition.

The Veneti-An Tea House prototype is included in the European Cultural Center’s Time Space Existence exhibition, which runs parallel to the fair in the city's Giardini Marinaressa Gardens. According to its designers, the scheme is meant as a place of “renewed connection.” Its structure is composed of food waste products, adding to the intended exploration of themes of environmental protection and sustainable design.

Image courtesy Mitsubishi Jisho Design

The components are culled from local coffee grounds and pasta (common waste products in Italy, according to the designers) made using Fabula Food Concrete, a University of Tokyo-born Japanese product that entered the market only recently and offers architects the chance to build using a m...

Norman Foster Foundation and Holcim to exhibit essential housing prototype at 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-05-02T11:52:00-04:00

Construction and materials group Holcim has announced a collaboration with the Norman Foster Foundation at the 2023 Venice Biennale to develop a model for essential housing. Titled the Essential Homes Research Project, the model is intended to “provide safety, comfort, and well-being for displaced communities.”

The project is to be unveiled at the Time Space Existence exhibition organized by the European Cultural Center during the biennale, which will include the display of a real-size prototype in the Marinaressa Gardens. The prototype will be supported by an exhibition hosted in the Palazzo Mora, reflecting on the Biennale’s overall theme “The Laboratory of the Future.”

“Natural and manmade disasters create a continuous exodus of people seeking instant shelter,” said Norman Foster in a statement. “Traditionally tents or variations on them are the primary r...

University of Illinois Chicago faculty selected for leading roles at Venice and Chicago architecture biennials

2023-04-28T11:50:00-04:00

Two faculty members from the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (CADA) have been selected to share their work and vision at upcoming Biennials. While Norman Teague will debut new bespoke plastic fabrication works within the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale’s ‘Everlasting Plastics’ exhibit, Faheem Majeed will serve as Art Director for the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Teague and Majeed, assistant professors of industrial design and art respectively, have sought to “bridge the gap between academia and the civic arts, engaging students with local creative leaders and citizens to uplift and transform communities, particularly in the South Side of Chicago,” according to CADA. Beyond their academic commitments, both individuals have also “ardently advocated for artists to recognize their responsibilities as agents of social change,” the institution added.

U.S. Pavilion material by Norman Teague. Image courtesy: University of Illinois Chic...

France debuts 'Ball Theater' pavilion installation ahead of the 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-04-27T13:09:00-04:00

France’s pavilion to the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale will feature an immersive interchange of identity and emotion inspired by ballroom dances and human rituals of experience-based social cohesion.

French studio Muoto partnered with scenographers Georgi Stanishev and Clémence La Sagna for the design of Ball Theater, which they say ties into curator Lesley Lokko’s thematic look to the future where “architecture is no longer to represent or to be represented as an image.”

Image courtesy of Muoto, Georgi Stanishev and Clémence La Sagna

Their project for the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs takes the form of a semi-spherical intervention that’s configurable for different immersive experiences all based around Ball Theater’s usage as a forum for artistic performances and civic inquiry.

Image courtesy of Muoto, Georgi Stanishev and Clémence La Sagna

Special events will be held in its hollowed chamber space, taking...

Lesley Lokko tells Rowan Moore architecture's story is still 'incomplete'

2023-03-29T11:00:00-04:00

It’s a fact that Africa stands for something that comes from outside. But Africans share something that is 100% there. There is a sense, particularly among the young, that the time has come to define that something on their own terms. There is a sense that it is our time.

The woman tasked with leading the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice this summer told The Guardian critic about the ideas involved in producing the Biennale, which promises a packed slate highlighting the untapped potential Africa contains.

She also spoke to Africa’s status as a continent lacking in homegrown architects and defined by “instability and invention, minimally constrained by professional structures, where the 'speed of change is likely to outstrip the ability to understand it.'”

Polymathic Nigerian designer Demas Nwoko was recently named as the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement recipient of this year's edition. The 2023 Venice Biennale opens May 20th with a special awards ceremony held at the exhibition’s Ca' Giustinian headquarters in San Marco.

Demas Nwoko receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award

2023-03-27T13:59:00-04:00

Multitalented Nigerian architect, sculptor, and designer Demas Nwoko is named the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale in recognition of what curator Lesley Lokko described as the “polyglot nature of his talents and oeuvres and to the rather narrow interpretation of the word ‘architect’ that has arguably kept his name out of the annals.”

Nwoko's work was also commended by Lokko for his polymath abilities and commitment to sustainability, adding: “Although relatively few, Nwoko’s buildings in Nigeria fulfill two critical roles. They are forerunners of the sustainable, resource-mindful, and culturally authentic forms of expression now sweeping across the African continent — and the globe — and they point towards the future, no mean achievement for someone whose work is still largely unknown, even at home.”

Nwoko was born in the rural town of Idumuje-Ugboko and was educated at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology. One of the orig...

2023 Venice Architecture Biennale to highlight diversity’s role in guiding 'The Laboratory of the Future'

2023-02-22T15:24:00-05:00

The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale officially announced its 89-strong slate of participants for this year’s exhibition titled “The Laboratory of the Future,” curated by the Scottish-Ghanaian architect and academic Lesley Lokko.

Opening May 20th, the Biennale will run through November 26th and feature an even 50-50 gender parity and the representation of more than half of this year’s participating artists identifying with the African diaspora. The diversity highlighted by the selection underscores the broader theme focused on the social effects of climate change and decolonization while attending to Lokko’s curatorial aim to “put forward ambitious and creative ideas that help us imagine a more equitable and optimistic future in common.”

Theaster Gates, Adjaye Associates, Hood Design Studio, atelier masōmī, and Pritzker-winner Francis Kéré were among those selected to participate in the exhibition. The exhibition is divided into six parts and includes participation from notable s...

Curators and designers of the U.S. Pavilion will call attention to worldwide plastic dependency at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2023-02-16T19:00:00-05:00

The U.S. Pavilion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens in May, will feature an examination of worldwide plastic dependency through the work of five artists and designers who will deliver site-specific commissions as part of the overall exhibition curated by Lesley Lokko, founder and director of the African Futures Institute.

SPACES' Executive Director Tizziana Baldenebro and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland curator Lauren Leving were selected to co-organize Everlasting Plastics, which will be on display as part of the Pavilion from May 20 – November 26, 2023.

Baldenebro explained, "Inherent to art and architecture is the aesthetic and materiality of form. Everlasting Plastics bridges this divide by drawing on the power of looking to serve as an entry point for reconsidering our relationships to material worlds."

"As the climate crisis becomes a tangible reality, our da...

Architects Lesley Lokko and Indy Johar recognized in King Charles' New Year honors list

2023-01-03T18:24:00-05:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced that Scottish-Ghanaian architect and academic Lesley Lokko has been awarded an OBE for her services to architecture and education in King Charles III’s first New Year's honors list.

Founder and Director of the African Futures Institute and former Dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, Lokko’s growing collection of honors and accolades includes the 2020 RIBA Annie Spink Award and being appointed to curate the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, making her the first Black architect and fourth woman to do so.

Previously on Archinect: Lesley Lokko chosen as curator for 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition

Lokko was joined by fellow architect Indy Johar, co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, a nonprofit strategic design and development company, who was awarded an MBE for his services to architecture.

Indy Johar. Image: Dark Matter Labs

Johar also co-founded multi-disciplinary design studio Archi...

U.S. Pavilion at 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale will be organized by Cleveland-based nonprofit SPACES around the role of plastic waste in the built environment

2022-11-15T15:17:00-05:00

Influential Cleveland-based nonprofit gallery SPACES has been selected by the State Department to organize the U.S. Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported recently.

Under the curatorial theme of “Everlasting Plastics,” the group has said they will invite area artists Lauren Yeager, Xavi Aguirre, Simon Anton, Ang Li, and Norman Teague to explore the danger of plastic waste to the ecosystem. All pursue art that entails “thinking very seriously about systems of waste, waste production, and their impact on communities” and will be presented within the Biennale’s broader context of The Laboratory of the Future and led by former Spitzer School of Architecture dean Lesley Lokko.

Li and Yeager are particularly noteworthy for their investigations into the use of recycled plastic as a building material and structural system, while Teague uses it as a source in his furniture-making practice. The exhibition will also focus on “communities most affected by pl...

Africa will hold the key to the future at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2022-06-01T15:36:00-04:00

The theme and title of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale have been announced as The Laboratory of the Future, vetting a decolonized vision of Africa as a petri dish for the hopes of the broader world to come. As the Biennale’s curator, architect and academic Lesley Lokko, explains: “At an anthropological level, we are all African. And what happens in Africa, happens to us all.”

Under the direction of Lokko, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition will focus on the continent’s past history and potential to be a ‘workshop’ (in historian Richard Sennett’s understanding of the word as a ‘laboratory’) wherein the shared fate and destiny of mankind are being forged in areas of urbanization, public health, resilient design, and social justice.

Lokko pointed to models of African history as forerunners of change that ushered into this world institutions like the Tuskegee Institute and social causes such as the Civil Rights movement to the overall betterment of society. The exh...

Housing activist group to represent Canada at 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2022-04-28T10:46:00-04:00

The housing reform collective Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) will represent Canada at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Having been selected by the Canada Council for the Arts, AAHA will use the event to launch an architectural activity campaign for safe, healthy, affordable housing, titled “Not for Sale!”

The newly-formed collective was created specifically for the purposes of the Biennale bid, composed of architects, designers, educators, and historians, with support from collaborators and contributors with backgrounds in affordable housing, indigenous communities, education, and design. The aim of the group is to “instigate an architectural movement and create socially, ecologically, and creatively empowering housing for all.”

Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), Headquarters (rendering by William Hansen), 2022.

To further this goal, the group will use the 2023 Biennale to transform the Canada Pavilion into a campaign headquarters for equitably housi...

Lesley Lokko chosen as curator for 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition

2021-12-14T13:55:00-05:00

Today the Board of La Biennale di Venezia announced the appointment of Lesley Lokko as its curator for the 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition.

Lokko is an esteemed architectural leader, best-selling novelist, and academic advocate whose work within and outside architecture circles has proven her a formidable force for change. Upon her appointment, Lokko shared with La Biennale di Venezia, "A new world order is emerging, with new centers of knowledge production and control. New audiences are also emerging, hungry for different narratives, different tools, and different languages of space, form, and place."

Image from African Futures Institute website. Image courtesy of AfricanFuturesInstitute.com

This past year, Lokko's work and efforts within architectural academia have made headlines. While her resignation as Dean of CCNY's Spitzer School of Architecture in October 2020 shook the architecture community, that did not stop Lokko's unshakeable efforts and dedication to her ...