Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: 'Cool' kids and guerrilla interventions

2016-05-27T18:05:00-04:00

The general atmosphere at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front, is one of excitement, of subversion. The Fifteenth edition of the Biennale explicitly calls for instances where architecture is an “instrument of self-government, of humanist civilization, and a demonstration of the ability of humans to become masters of their own destinies.” In that spirit, the usual suspects of a Biennale move to the sidelines, giving way to those working on the ground to prove that architecture can make a difference.

Cool Capital, the South Africa Pavilion at the Arsenale, brings Pretoria to the limelight by challenging the historical interaction between citizens and public space. “Pretoria has a huge political baggage and negative connotation”, curator Pieter Mathews explains, adding that “guerrilla interventions want to look at the city with new eyes; take whatever is good from the past and use it.” The Pavilion features selected works from the Cool Capital platform—the fi...

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Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: 'Cool' kids and guerrilla interventions