Saudi Arabia announced its participation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, with an exhibition titled IRTH إرث, legacy in Arabic, exploring qualities of materials in relation to the Saudi landscape. The third round of participation the Saudi Pavilion will have at the International Architecture Exhibition, this year's edition is represented by architect AlBara Saimaldahar and curated by the duo Basma and Noura Bouzo. The Pavilion will be on display at the Arsenale – Sale d’Armi 2023.
The National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia will explore the tangible and intangible qualities of materials in relation to Saudi architecture, in keeping with this year's theme, "The Laboratory of the Future." It will provide an interactive journey that uses the idea of the earth as a starting point for exploration and organic material experimentation. “IRTH” is a multi-part project that will encourage viewers to experience the curatorial vision from many angles, enabling them to interact with the local architecture of Saudi Arabia and comprehend its fundamental components. The project intends to show the empirical design as a window into the essentials, where visitors can go on a raw sensory journey that encourages them to reach their own independent, uninfluenced judgments.
Irth is a transliteration of the Arabic word that can either mean ‘legacy’ or ‘treasured possession,’ which encapsulates the intent of our curatorial vision for the Pavilion. Materials within an architectural context have narratives embedded within them, telling us about a nation’s inhabitants and how they responded to the world around them. Likewise, we recognized that a dynamic legacy is at play - one that is built upon by collective and continuous efforts of institutions and grassroot practitioners alike.
--Basma and Noura Bouzo
The Saudi team took a two-pronged strategy to include the ideology and exploration of the Biennale Architettura 2023's overall topic, "Laboratory of the Future," within the Pavilion after carefully considering the theme. The first focuses on methodology, with architect AlBara Saimaldahar discussing the utilization of fundamental building components in combination with cutting-edge techniques to produce the Pavilion's shape and offer an experience interpretation of IRTH. The second strategy focuses on the exhibition's substance, which will be an exposition on the materiality of Saudi architecture in its present and future.
Visitors are invited to participate in the material investigation and build a legacy for future generations by visiting the Saudi Pavilion. In addition to encouraging viewers to think about how investigations from the past and present might provide solutions to the puzzles of the future, it seeks to capture the architecture's anthropological, vernacular, and historical components.
Under Lesley Lokko’s theme, “The Laboratory of the Future,” many countries have taken the same initiative to explore their surrounding landscape, materials, and history to inform future decision-making in architecture. The UAE Pavilion “Aridly Abundant” will examine landscapes such as dunes, wadis, and desert plateaus and uses that environment to simulate different architectural solutions and future building modes. The Taiwan Pavilion, “Diachronic Apparatuses of Taiwan,” will display how locals throughout Taiwanese history have used their intuition to shape their environment, unpacking the embedded intelligence from the natural terrain. Finally, the Hungarian Pavilion will present the Museum of Ethnography collection, allowing visitors to dive into old Hungarian traditions and customs and create a worldwide community.
