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On-Site in Venice: 12 Interviews with Curators Discussing the Impact of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

November 24, 2023

While exploring the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, the ArchDaily team had a chance to engage in conversation with several curators of the national pavilions, along with Lesley Lokko, the curator of the entire exhibition. The discussions delved into the unique character of this year’s edition focused on an understanding of Africa as a “Laboratory of the Future.” Through this lens, the biennale became “a healing experience,” in the words of Lesley Lokko, reinterpreting and deconstructing the meaning behind ideas such as decolonization, decarbonization, resource management, or finding the hidden potential in vernacular forms of practice.

Following Lokko’s curatorial direction, the exhibitions presented at the national pavilions explored the specific conditions of their territories, striving to uncover and highlight the unique challenges and opportunities faced by their local cultural landscapes. During the interviews, the curators opened up in regard to their personal inspirations and the drive behind the choice of program, the messages embedded in the displays, and their hopes for the future of the profession.

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Tham & Videgård Celebrates Two Decades in Practice with Exhibition in Stockholm, Sweden

November 15, 2022

The Swedish architecture firm Tham & Videgård exhibits a broad selection of projects celebrating over twenty years in practice at the ArkDes—Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. For the first time, the studio’s work is being presented in its entirety, displaying in detail acclaimed buildings like the winning proposal for the Denfert art center in Paris and the 150-meter-tall +One Tower for the Swedish Exhibition in Gothenburg. From November 2022 to August 27, 2023, On: Architecture offers visitors a full-scale spatial experience involving models, new photography, and films – all set within a glass ground showroom.

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This 125-year-old Swedish Town Has Relocated, Buildings and All

May 23, 2020

Kiruna Forever, an exhibition at ArkDes, traces the town's relocation due to geological instability.

“Kiruna is on the move,” says Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, curator of the new exhibition Kiruna Forever. Kiruna, a 125-year-old Swedish town that sprouted around the iron mine of the same name, started an official relocation process in 2018 after decades of discussion with the state-owned mining company LKAB. Today, as the expansion of the mine destabilizes the ground surrounding it, nearby buildings are being demolished or loaded onto flatbed trucks and moved to the new city center nearly two miles east.

Flying Panels – How Concrete Panels Changed the World

October 26, 2019

Flying Panels - How Concrete Panels Changed the World is a new ArkDes exhibition designed by Note Design Studio and curated by Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola - authors of the Monolith Controversies exhibition, the winner of the Silver Lion award at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014.

It brings together a series models and material as posters, paintings, films, toys, cartoons and opera sets are gathered to reflect on how concrete panels influenced culture for the construction of a new society.

Eight Architects Envision the Future of Stockholm at ArkDes

May 10, 2019

Eight of Sweden's leading architects have created new visions for the future of Stockholm in Boxen at the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. Called Architecture Projects: Skeppsbron, the exhibition at ArkDes features visionary ideas for Skeppsbron in Gamla Stan. The exhibition celebrates the agency of the architect in thinking about the future city and aims to imagine new uses for Skeppsbron – one of the Swedish capital’s most symbolic inner-city sites.

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"Freestanding" Exhibition Shows the Power and Poetry of Sigurd Lewerentz’s Architecture

June 12, 2018

As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage, we present Freestanding, an exhibition in the Biennale's Central Pavilion. Below, the team describes their contribution in their own words.

Call for Fellows: "Projecting the Future" – 2018 ArkDes Fellowship in Stockholm

February 06, 2018

The ArkDes Fellowship offers practitioners, spatial thinkers, and researchers operating in or around the fields of architecture and design opportunities for interdisciplinary research at ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. The first annual fellowship will be dedicated to the theme of Projecting the Future, providing four Fellows with space to conduct explorative work for a six month-long period (September 2018 to February 2019) in Stockholm.

In Therapy: Inside the Nordic Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale

May 31, 2016

As part of ArchDaily's coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, we are presenting a series of articles written by the curators of the exhibitions and installations on show.

You are part of another’s shadow.
—Sverre Fehn in conversation with Per Olaf Fjeld

A central impetus for this exhibition is to acknowledge the presence of the ‘ghosts’ of Nordic architecture – those architects, theorists and educators—the most famous of which are often described as ‘Modern Masters’—who continue to exert influence on contemporary practice and pedagogy. Indeed, one of the most prominent of these gures, the Norwegian Sverre Fehn, designed the Nordic Pavilion. This exhibition addresses a common challenge faced by Finns, Norwegians and Swedes today: how can a building (or an exhibition, in this instance) exist in a dialogue with its setting when that setting is so charged? For us, this ties into a broader question: how can architecture occupy a legacy while still making progress?

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Nine Projects to be Highlighted in 'In Therapy', the Nordic Contribution to the 2016 Venice Biennale

February 19, 2016

The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (ArkDes) have revealed that In Therapy: Nordic Countries Face to Face—the exhibition for the Nordic Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, curated by David Basulto—will partly comprise "a contemporary survey of Nordic architecture." 300 projects, drawn from over 500 submissions to a recent open call, will be complemented by an in-depth study of nine projects completed post-2008 by practices including Tham & Videgård, Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, and Lahdelma & Mahlamäki.

"Just as Sverre Fehn’s pavilion is a crystallisation of Nordic architecture—embodying a precise and fluid articulation of structure, light, and nature—the nine we have chosen to focus in on as particularly representative of the contemporary scene have a similar gravitas and complexity – but with their own distinct identities" says Basulto, who has made the selection alongside James Taylor-Foster, Assistant Curator.

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David Basulto to Curate Nordic Pavilion at 2016 Venice Biennale

December 03, 2015

The Nordic Pavilion, representing Finland, Norway and Sweden, has selected David Basulto as curator for their exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Responding to Biennale director Alejandro Aravena's theme for the 2016 event, Reporting from the Front, the exhibition organized by Basulto and the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (ArkDes) will use Nordic architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture as "a springboard" to understand the future challenges which architecture and the built environment will face. The announcement is accompanied by an open call for completed projects that address these challenges. Selected projects will be displayed in the Sverre Fehn-designed pavilion at the Venice Biennale from May 28th to November 27th 2016.

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