The Latvian Pavilion during the 16th International Architecture Exhibition Biennale Architettura 2018, titled Together and Apart, looks at apartment buildings in relation to architecture’s role in organizing society. It examines how this architectural typology generates ways of living together and apart although the individual apartment provides the possibility to separate one from the outside, it is always a part of a common structure.

...how this architectural typology generates ways of living together and apart although the individual apartment provides the possibility to separate one from the outside...

Together and Apart is curated by a multidisciplinary team consisting of architect and urbanist Evelīna Ozola, architect Matīss Groskaufmanis, scenographer Anda Skrējāne and Director of the New Theatre Institute of Latvia Gundega Laiviņa. This exhibition aims to explore the question of living together in an increasingly complex society, and architecture’s role in providing for it. 

Two-thirds of Latvia's residents live in apartment buildings, which is the highest ratio amongst the European Union countries. 

“Two-thirds of Latvia's residents live in apartment buildings, which is the highest ratio amongst the European Union countries. This is remarkable when considering that at the same time it is one of the most sparsely populated parts of Europe. For many, this type of housing serves not only as the most common experience of architecture, but also as an interface between individual spheres and the processes of the outside world. To highlight this, we aim to display the apartment building as an architectural, as well as a political, an economic and an ecological project,” the curator Matīss Groskaufmanis explains.

The exhibition is divided into four sections Distance, Promise, Warmth, and Self, each looking at a socioeconomic transformation through the lens of an apartment building. Distance portrays the proximities between individual spheres that emerge as a consequence of demographic shifts; Promise looks at the apartment building as a political project; Warmth explores the relationship between energy consumption, geopolitics, and collective decision making; Self deals with the individual apartment as a subject of private property, and the limitations of it. 

These sections are presented through large-scale conceptual models, created by sculptor Ivars Drulle, artist Daria Melnikova, scenographer Charlotte Spichalsky, designer Dita Pāne and architect Mārtiņš Dušelis. Each in its own way, the models seek to capture architecture’s relationship to apartment living and broader societal processes. The exhibition also features archival materials that illustrate significant episodes from both the far and the more recent history of apartment living, as well as photography series by Reinis Hofmanis, depicting the multitude of apartment buildings found in Latvia’s urban and rural landscapes.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication The Architecture of Together and Apart: An Inquiry into Apartment Buildings. The book encapsulates and extends the content of the exhibition, and includes essays written by a diverse range of authors. Among them, architecture theorist Robert Alexander Gorny suggests a relational approach to understanding how apartment buildings came about as a specific form of residential architecture. Academic and artist Renata Tyszczuk notes how the domestic sphere is playing an increasingly bigger part in the politics of global climate. Also – economist Pēteris Strautiņš outlines the relationship between the free market and the experience of being a homeowner, while political scientist Ivars Ījabs describes how apartment buildings can function as cost-effective instruments of governance. Among the contributions, the book also includes an excerpt from Peter Sloterdijk’s Sphären III (Spheres III), that dissects the relationship of the individual apartment and the modern self. The 200 page volume is punctuated with fragments of photo series by Reinis Hofmanis and Ieva Raudsepa, portraying life in apartment buildings, both from a distant and a close-up perspective.