While the 2020 Venice Biennale was postponed, many look forward to what 2021 has to offer with the announcement of the event's opening date on May 22. 

Carrying on with the theme "How will we live together," Hashim Sarkis, curator of the exhibition, shared, "the world is putting new challenges in front of architecture. I look forward to working with participating architects from around the world to imagine together how we are going to rise to these challenges." 

With this in mind, exciting projects and exhibitions make way for their debut at the Biennale. Take the Nordic Pavilion, for example. They've announced the Pavilion's participation in an experimental cohousing project led by Norwegian firm Helen & Hard. The firm's expertise in wood use and experimental housing projects will come to life in their exhibition titled, "What We Share."

"Being both architects and inhabitants of a cohousing community has made us aware of the potential that this housing model can offer in terms of tackling some of the societal and environmental challenges we face today," shares firm partners Siv Helene Stangeland and Reinhard Kropf. "In Venice, we want to explore this potential and demonstrate how the interplay between inhabitants and agencies involved can create an adaptable architecture."

Taking a note from their award-winning experimental housing project Vindmøllebakken, they use it as a framework for what's possible at the Nordic Pavilion. For the exhibition, the duo hopes to motivate the residents to "develop a more radical version of communal housing" by asking "which aspects of their private lives are they willing to move out of their apartments and share with other residents, and with the audience?"