For the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the national pavilion of Latvia will be transformed into “TCL,” a supermarket that gathers architectural ideas and products of different origins. Commissioned by Jānis Dripe and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, the exhibition is curated by Uldis Jaunzems-Pētersons, and designed by a team comprising Ernests Cerbulis, Ints Menģelis, Toms Kampars, and Karola Rubene. The Pavilion will be open from May 20th until November 26th, 2023.
Through the image of a supermarket, the pavilion aims to create a horizontal, diverse, and democratic space where different ideas and concepts related to architecture meet on the same shelves. The 506 products on display bring forward ideas presented during the last ten Venice Architecture Biennales. The exhibition also allows visitors to interact with the “products” by participating in a voting system to reevaluate the importance and impact of past editions.
Read on to discover the statement from the official press release.
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Lesley Lokko on the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale: "I Hope It Provokes the Audience to Think Differently and More Empathetically"Celebrating 20 years since its first participation in the International Architecture exhibition, the new supermarket will be a place where visitors can find "everything and more". The Latvian pavilion stores 506 unique products made of the last ten Architecture Exhibitions, which were created by the authors with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The Supermarket will offer visitors a hands-on opportunity to get involved in The Laboratory of the Future through an entertaining voting system.
Under the overarching theme of the biennale, “The Laboratory of the Future,” curated by Lesley Lokko, other national pavilions have also announced their exhibition themes, with some of them focusing on the impact of data and attempting to measure the immeasurable. The Singapore Pavilion seeks to explore a community’s relationship with its surroundings by using “The Values Measurement Machine” to quantify the immeasurable values of architecture. On a similar note, the Polish Pavilion will present Datament, an installation that allows visitors to experience data in physical form, while the Korean Pavilion explores how people can cooperate in withstanding the current and future environmental crises.
