This is a guest post by Michael Pilkington with photography by Susan Phillips, of Phillips/Pilkington Architects in Adelaide, who have generously shared their experiences of the Venice Biennale this year. All photos are by Susan Phillips.

We’ve been asked to offer some thoughts about 2023’s La Biennale and on the ‘controversy’ of Patrik Schumacher’s comments in his Facebook Post ‘Biennale Blues’ about this year’s Venezia La Biennale exhibitions, picked up by much of the design press. Patrik bemoaned it’s ‘lack of architecture’ and asserted that the La Biennale was at ‘risk of losing its status… as the #1 global architectural gathering’. While Patrik has been criticised by many, some of his concerns have validity.

Curator Lesley Lokko’s introductory installation to the Main Pavilion of the Giardini with fragments of every invited participant to the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ exhibition suspended from the ceiling.

Our background: we’ve been coming to Venezia at La Biennale since 2006, this is our eighth attendance, so we have a few shows to look back on.

Patrik Schumacher is a director of Zaha Hadid Architects and has penned some similar critical reviews of other architectural La Biennales (and many other issues) over the years.

This year’s curator, Lesley Lokko, put forward a theme of ‘The Laboratory of the Future: Agents of Change’: featuring strategies for ‘de-carbonisation’ and ‘de-colonisation’, and promising an exhibition which addressed these themes.

Since 2006, the first year in which Australia officially exhibited, the diversity of curators and themes has been:

2006: Cities, Architecture and Society / Richard Burdett
2008: Out There: Architecture Beyond Building / Aaron Betsky
2010: People meet in Architecture / Kazuyo Sejima
2012: Common Ground / David Chipperfield
2014: Fundamentals: Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 / Rem Koolhaas
2016: Reporting from the Front / Alejandro Aravena
2018: FREESPACE / Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara
2021: How will we live together? / Hashim Sarkis

Estudio A0’s 'Surfacing - The Civilised Agroecological Forests of Amazonia’ part of the ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ component of the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ exhibition in the Arsenale, an example of one of the more art based installations.

La Biennale comprises two main components:

The Curator’s Exhibition in the Arsenale and Central Pavilion of the Giardini, displays the work of Architects invited by the appointed exhibition curator(s) – exploring or illustrating the Curator’s theme.
Individual country exhibits, in national pavilions within the Giardini and for those countries without their own pavilion, in space rented in the Arsenale or buildings throughout Venice. Countries are encouraged to respond to the curatorial theme but are not compelled to.

In the eight Biennale’s that we have attended the national exhibitions have predominantly been of the following types:

French Pavilion ‘Ball Theatre – La fête n’est pas finie’ a theatrical installation typical of France over a number of Biennales.

The building-themed show: such as recent libraries from Finland, or social housing from France.
The group show: for example, the work of Spanish women architects.
The advocacy show: such as the Netherlands exhibition where they displayed all their empty public buildings and asked, ‘why build’? (when so much built-form is wasted by being unused) – also the theme of this year’s excellent Turkish exhibition ‘Ghost Stories-the carrier bag theory of architecture’. Other exhibitions this year that illustrated this typology were Canada’s ‘Not for Sale’ exhibition which was packed with material from ‘Architects against Housing Alienation’ and the Netherlands exhibition ‘Plumbing the System’ demonstrating how to collect rainwater from its own pavilion together with a DIY version for anyone’s home.
The ‘art, or the non-building,’ show: which the French always seem to succeed at, but which has also been explored in the past by, Belgium and this year, by Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Greece, to name a few.
The town planning/future living show: illustrating timely new thinking, of which there were several excellent examples this year, particularly Denmark, with a pavilion full of considerations around the climate emergency and its impact on their country entitled ‘Coastal Imaginaries’.

ZAO/standard architecture’s ‘Co-living Courtyard’ installation part of the ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ component of the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ exhibition in the Arsenale, with beautiful timber models and a massive ceiling timber installation (not shown).

atelier masomi’s ‘Process’ installation, part of the ‘Force Majeure’ section of the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ exhibition in the Main Pavilion of the Giardini which included chalk drawings directly on the wall, models and film, demonstrating how to make architecture in the face of scarcity.

In the national pavilions this year, the ‘art-oriented or non-building oriented’ responses outnumbered the other types of exhibits, for example in France, Germany, the UK, Ireland and Scotland. This is something that the Biennale curator obviously has no control over - each national curator is producing their own exhibition, responding as they see a fit, to the ‘grand theme’ or providing a counterpoint, or occasionally with no discernible connection.

In the main exhibition, it was a similar story: there were single invited individual examples of architectural brilliance and display that communicated excellence (ZAO/standard architecture, David Adjaye, atelier masomi and Hood Design Studio). It’s what we’ve particularly come to see: to have design work elevated to another level, ideas captured and expressed in drawings models and projections, directly communicating with the professional and lay visitor, hopefully enchanting and inspiring both, to the possibilities of architecture.

This year, the balance of design process, procedures, and work from allied fields that ‘touch’ on architecture (and the documentation of that intersection) overwhelmed the more traditional architectural exhibitions, in both the main exhibitions and the majority of national exhibits. In past years we’ve felt like we’ve had the privilege of seeing some of the best architecture that the world can offer, as a snapshot of our collective human endeavours, gaining an insight as to where architecture is at and moving towards the future.

Hood Design’s ‘Native(s) Lifeways’ installation in the Main Pavilion of the Giardini including the Carlo Scarpa courtyard, explores the negative impact of development encroaching on the wetlands of South Carolina, an important black cultural landscape where traditional basketmaking from West Africa continues to be practiced.

We love seeing new work from every continent. We did both admired, and recoiled from, the forensic research and advocacy this year of the invited Killing Architecture’s documentation and amazing 8m long isometric drawing and process movie of China’s Uyghur so called ‘re-education camps.’

The Main Pavilion in the Giardini seemed to be sparsely populated and Lesley Lokko has said that it has fewer invited exhibitors than previous years; we wonder why.

Flores and Prat’s installation ‘Emotional Heritage’ part of the ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ component of the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ exhibition in the Arsenale successfully illustrates ‘process’ focusing on the reuse of buildings, with a multitude of drawings and models exploring many design iterations. displayed.

Architects are commissioned by clients for specific building outcomes, and the opportunity to see the nitty-gritty of concept design, design development, the laboured thinking, the options, and outcomes, of all those decisions which the Flores and Prats installation ‘Emotional Heritage’, in the Arsenale exemplified and from a previous exhibition, Herzog & de Meuron’s trauma and budget drama in realising the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg comes to mind. Equally we are keen to see how the integration of humanitarian aspirations, ESD directions and technology are transforming architecture, these strands are worthy of a place in the Biennale. We had anticipated a much greater focus on ‘decarbonisation’ and while addressed in national exhibitions such as the United States exhibition ‘Everlasting Plastic,’ there was little evidence of useful strategies for the future, in the main curated exhibition.

We commend Lesley Lokko for the aspiration of the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ and focus on ‘Agents of Change’ and with the long overdue recognition of the contribution of African and African diaspora practitioners. While we disagree with some of Schumacher’s comments, his critique that the lack of displayed architecture will lead to La Biennale becoming a less-prestigious architectural event is a concern.

There are increasingly many other world cities offering ‘architecture/design festivals/awards programs’, none of which can match the location of Venezia, and the impact that La Biennale has all over the city. We would never want a formulaic outcome: La Biennale will always have a great diversity because of the way that it showcases both the ‘themed’ curator’s exhibition and the contributions of individual countries. Part of the fun and reason for multiple attendances is to see what transpires in each Biennale.

The challenge for each curator is the balance between the perennial tension of theory and practice and the need to appeal to both a professional and a lay audience. Our expectation of Lesley Lokko’s ‘Laboratory of the Future,’ (with its focus on de-colonisation and de-carbonisation), was the exploration of the implications and opportunities for a de-carbonised future, illustrated by projects that are leading the way. From the Australian perspective, widening the de-colonisation story to contextualise the African experience with other First Nations peoples’ stories and architectural futures would have been a welcome inclusion.

Even though there was less ‘buzz’ about the ‘must see’ exhibitions of this year’s La Biennale, it is still definitely worth a visit, spending at least a couple of days each in both the Giardini and the Arsenale. Finding National Pavilions that are scattered throughout Venezia, and often located in old palazzi or churches, which are attractions in their own right, is also rewarding. National Pavilions that we enjoyed included Turkey, Austria, Denmark, Canada, China, Netherlands, Belgium and of course, Australia. There are also many collateral events such as the Fondazione Prada exhibition ‘Everybody talks about the Weather’ in Ca’ Corner della Regina and gmp – Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects ‘UMBAU Non-Stop Transformation’ in the Salon Verde, strongly complementing this year’s La Biennale.

La Biennale is on display in Venezia until 26 November 2023.

Michael Pilkington

Phillips/Pilkington Architects

2023-06-27