The Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 is a "Laboratory of the Future"
Curated by Ghanian-Scottish architect and academic, Lesley Lokko.
The Venice Architecture Biennale is set to open to the public on May 20th. This year, the show has been curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect and academic Lesley Lokko, who has conceptualised an overall theme titled “The Laboratory of the Future”.
From its opening through to November 26, the six-part exhibition will play host to a vast programme of participants across the city and in key locations. Each will be exploring their own version of Lokko’s curatorial concept, which she describes as being “not a single story, but multiple stories that reflect the vexing, gorgeous kaleidoscope of ideas, contexts, aspirations, and meanings that is every voice responding to the issues of its time”.
Throughout the process of pulling together the show, Lokko has spent time questioning the role of an architectural exhibition in history, in order to create something relevant to the present day.
“It is impossible to build a better world if one cannot first imagine one”
Lesley Lokko, Photo by Jacopo Salvi
“In architecture particularly, the dominant voice has historically been a singular, exclusive voice, whose reach and power ignores huge swathes of humanity — financially, creatively, conceptually — as though we have been listening and speaking in one tongue only,” her curatorial statement reads. “The ‘story’ of architecture is therefore incomplete. Not wrong, but incomplete.”
In response – Lokko has decided to shine the spotlight where it hasn’t been shone before – and for the first time in the Biennale’s 18-year history, has ensured over half of the 89 participants are from Africa and the African Diaspora. “Those gathered here represent a fraction of the exploding community of African and African Diaspora practitioners who are redefining the term ‘practice’ in ways that could not have been imagined a decade ago,” Lokko adds. In addition, nearly of participants are from sole or individual practices of five people or less; the gender balance is even, and the average age is 43. She continues:
These statistics reflect a seismic change in the culture of architectural production at large, and an even greater shift in participation in international exhibitions. The balance has shifted. Things fall apart. The centre can no longer hold.
The Laboratory of the Future begins in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, which has been the designated site of the Biennale exhibitions since the first edition in 1895, and is home to 29 pavilions of foreign countries. It moves through to the Arsenale – an industrial area which was once the largest production center in Venice – for two sections titled “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Curator’s Special Projects”. In addition, 64 National Participations will present at their designated pavilions around the Giardini, Arsenale, and in the center of Venice.
“Central to all the projects, though, is the primacy and potency of one tool: the imagination,” Lokko concludes. “It is impossible to build a better world if one cannot first imagine one.”
The Venice Architecture Biennale officially opens to the public on Saturday, May 20th. In other design news, a new platform titled OMET is championing elevated Mexican and Latin American design.
