The 18th edition of the Biennale Architettura is curated by architect, lecturer and writer Lesley Lokko, who has chosen for her curatorship the crucial goal of combating climate change and promoting a more sustainable model for the design, staging and performance of all the activities linked to the event.
“The Laboratory of the Future” aims to make the Architecture of the Future discussion as broad as possible by leaving no voice unheard. In this Biennale, for the first time ever, the spotlight is on Africa, its diaspora, and the fluid and interwoven culture of people of African descent that now embraces the world.
"The Laboratory of the Future" is an exhibition divided into six parts. It includes 89 participants, more than half of whom are from Africa or the African Diaspora. The gender balance is equal too, and the average age of the participants is 43, which drops to 37 in the curator's "Special Projects" section, where the youngest is 24. The participants are defined as “practitioners” and not as “architects”, “urban planners”, “designers”, “landscape architects”, “engineers” or “academics”, because the rich and complex conditions of both Africa and a rapidly hybridising world call for a different and broader understanding of the term “architect”. According to Leslie Lokko, at the heart of every project there is a key, decisive tool: the imagination. This is because it is impossible to build a better world if you don't imagine it first. iGuzzini illuminazione has helped create the Biennale by supplying luminaires that light a number of pavilions and side events.
United Arab Emirates Pavilion - Aridly Abundant
Commissioner
Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation
Curator
Faysal Tabbarah
Photos
Alessandra Chemollo
The exhibition operates at the intersection between land-based knowledge and contemporary technology. It challenges perceptions of arid environments as spaces of scarcity and precariousness. The main question of Aridly Abundant is: What architectural possibilities can emerge if we re-imagine arid landscapes as spaces of abundance? iGuzzini has complemented the Palco spotlights already present in the pavilion with new reflectors, accessories and optics to create highly concentrated light with gradients from below upwards.
France Pavilion - Ball Theater
Commissioners
French Institute, Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Culture Curators: Muoto & Georgi Stanishev
Photos
Schnepp Renou
The Ball Theater is an installation designed to reawaken our desires for utopia. Its hemispherical shape evokes multiple images. It can be interpreted either as a terrestrial globe or a mirror ball, a kitsch icon of a time when partying was still possible. This party atmosphere suggests a new approach to today's crises, in which the emphasis is no longer on emergency, but on the possibility of alternative futures. Palco spotlights fitted with a flood optic ensure general, diffuse and homogeneous lighting.
Greece - Bodies Of Water
Commissioner
Efthimios Bakoyannis, Secretary General of Spatial Planning and Urban Environment
Curators
Costis Paniyiris and Andreas Nikolovgenis
Photos
Alessandra Chemollo
After the establishment of the modern Greek state, and especially after 1950, water reservoirs as well as drainage, irrigation, water supply, and hydroelectric projects have constituted a support system for agricultural production and all kinds of human activity. It is a transformation of the land where a new hydro-geological map of the country is invented, constructed, and operationalised. Bodies of Water addresses this evolving geological construct by investigating and presenting the problematic presence of these bodies and their technical works as a laboratory of the future. Palco ∅ 86mm spotlights and tracks make up the light structure that illuminates the large central model on display.
A Fragile Correspondence
Client
Scotland + Venice Partnership
Curators
Architecture Fringe, ism and /other
Photos
Daniele Sambo
The fragility referred to concerns our understanding of the natural world around us. How can a closer relationship between the land and language help architecture to be more in tune with the environment in which it operates? Language is powerful and shapes how we understand the world around us. Highlighting cultures and languages that have a close affinity with the landscapes of Scotland, A Fragile Correspondence explores new perspectives and approaches to the worldwide climate emergency. Palco spotlights are responsible for the lighting here too.
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