Reporting from the Front seeks to also explore which forces—political, institutional or other—drive the architecture that goes “beyond the banal and self-harming”. The 2016 Venice Biennale calls for entries that not only exist in and of themselves, but that are a part of a larger social transformation. As Alejandro Aravena suggests, “improving the quality of the built environment is an endeavor that has to tackle many fronts: from guaranteeing very concrete, down-to-earth living standards […] to expanding the frontiers of civilization.” Pavilions that go down this path exhibit very specific examples of how architecture expands its frontiers.

The Ireland Pavilion’s installation, Losing Myself, explores the different layers of a building as experienced by people suffering from dementia. Co-curator Niall McLaughlin contextualizes the experience of this condition: “when you have dementia you lose the capacity to remember, to find yourself… a little bit like what happens in Venice after walking around for a couple of hours.” Walking into the Pavilion, located at the far end of the Arsenale, is at the same time disorienting and fascinating. Speakers suspended from the ceiling play spatialized sounds from across different decades, while a dynamic drawing is projected on the floor.

The installation brings to life the experience of a person with dementia in navigating a building. A 24-hour lapse has been condensed into sixteen minutes of intense activity that culminates with the calm moments of dawn, before the cycle recommences. The projection shows living drawings from people with dementia filmed through a light table, superimposed with grids of color as the mind would lay them out, and dotted with photographs that recall point memories from a distant time. The exhibition, which will tour Ireland to bring attention to the different social issues around dementia, has a robust research backing. “We wanted to address and highlight a challenging issue and report what we have learned. It is not only about the installation; it is also about the lessons learned,” says co-curator Yeoryia Manolopoulou.

Our Amazon Frontline, Peru’s Pavilion which received a Special Mention for the National Participation category, explores another very specific issue with significant repercussions for the country. Located on the second floor of the Sale d’Armi at the Arsenale, the Pavilion hosts an architectural initiative intimately linked to political and institutional processes in Peru. “In Peru, the frontier has always been the Amazon jungle,” says co-curator Jean Pierre Crousse. The exhibition, nested within curved partition walls that evoke the rainforest, shows the work of Plan Selva, the first government initiative in the region dedicated to preserve Amazon languages.

Architecture in this case serves as a vehicle for the realization of a greater educational project. Modular blocks that are easily transported across the jungle adapt to different climates, topographies and sizes. These combinations, achieved through participatory design processes, become spaces for the preservation of ancestral culture. The schools foster an environment for learning from indigenous traditions, instead of replacing them with ‘modernity’. “It’s an architecture that listens, that understands how people live. It’s an architecture that is changing the paradigm,” concludes Crousse.