Venice Architecture Biennale 202318th International Architecture Exhibition.
Get to know the 17th and the 16th edition.

Lesley Lokko, a Ghanaian-Scottish academic, writer, and curator, has been named one of the BBC's 100 most influential women of 2024. The prestigious list highlights women from around the globe who are recognized for their resilience and their contributions toward driving change in their respective fields. Lokko's inclusion reflects her groundbreaking work in architectural education, her commitment to diversity and inclusion, and her focus on addressing global challenges like decolonization and decarbonization.

On behalf of His Majesty the King, Ghanian-Scottish architect Lesley Lokko has been officially awarded the 2024 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture. Held at RIBA London headquarters, the medal was presented by RIBA President Muyiwa Oki, acknowledging Lokko’s dedication to promoting diverse perspectives in architectural practice and education. As the curator of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, she has been working to explore the overlaps between architecture and race, while shifting focus to Africa and its diaspora in the industry.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is set to present an expansive exhibition focused on Tropical Modernism, an architectural movement that emerged in the late 1940s. British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry were instrumental in developing this approach, combining modernism’s functional goals with local climate adaptations in warm and humid weather. This movement, which embodies Britain's unique contribution to international modernism, evolved against a backdrop of anti-colonial resistance, blending colonial architectural principles with local needs.

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Black Females in Architecture (BFA) is a social enterprise supporting a membership of more than 450 Black women in built environment professions worldwide. Founded by architects Neba Sere, Selasi Setufe, and Akua Danso, the group advocates for diversity, race and gender equity across all sectors of the built environment, including architecture, urbanism, landscape, engineering, design, and construction.

In early 2018, spatial practitioner and Bartlett lecturer Neba Sere hosted a panel discussion at London's Architecture Foundation, where she was one of six young trustees. The topic: beginnings. How to go about them, move ahead, and transform them into something that lasts. Six years later, she looks back on the event as a beginning in itself: that day marked the creation of a WhatsApp group that would turn into Black Females in Architecture (BFA). BFA is now a 500-strong global membership network co-directed by Sere and fellow architects Selasi Setufe and Akua Danso.

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The 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia closed on November 26th. A total of 285,000 people visited the exhibition, making it the second most highly attended Architecture Biennale in its history. Named "The Laboratory of the Future," this edition led by curator Lesley Lokko, has been the first to focus on Africa and its diaspora, exploring the “fluid and enmeshed culture of people of African descent that now straddles the globe,” in the words of the curator, with themes of decolonization and decarbonization.

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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.

After being awarded the prestigious Silver Lion for his contribution to this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous shows no signs of slowing down. Currently in the midst of preparing his entry to the next Sharjah Architecture Triennial, he also recently celebrated the opening of Climate Futurism, a group exhibition that highlights the power and efficacy of artists’ methods and processes to imagine a more equitable future – and is working on a public monument to former United States Representative Shirley Chisholm as part of New York City's She Built NYC initiative, among other projects.

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In light of the looming climate crisis and the pursuit of sustainability, the concepts of revival and reuse have emerged as crucial strategies in the quest for decarbonization in the architecture industry. These principles preach that creating new structures may be sustainable but encourage architects to minimize their ecological footprint by reactivating and recycling existing resources. This year specifically, innovative projects in line with these themes were displayed as part of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. This world-renowned event’s core purpose is to serve as a platform for architects, designers, and thinkers to collectively reimagine sustainability, decarbonization, resource conservation, and the industry's future.

As part of the 6th edition of “Time Space Existence”, the European Cultural Center (ECC) presented the “Reconceptualizing Urban Housing” exhibition. Taking place from May 20 to November 26, 2023, it brings together a diverse array of women-led architecture practices from around the world, each offering a unique perspective on collective housing, particularly within urban settings. The showcased projects feature approaches from Europe, North America, and more developing countries like Uganda, Malaysia, and Mexico.

As we understand it today, the sustainable architecture movement began to take shape at the end of the 20^th century. Essentially, it responds to growing concerns about environmental degradation, energy consumption, and resource scarcity. In this global discourse on sustainable architecture, wood has long been celebrated as a symbol of environmental consciousness and decarbonization. As one of the most widespread building materials, it has gained popularity with the rise of this movement. This is because trees absorb carbon dioxide during their growth, which stays in the wood during its construction use, keeping it out of the atmosphere.