Venice Biennale 2020: The Latest Architecture and News

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Russian Federation Pavilion (@pavilion.rus) on Mar 20, 2020 at 4:32am PDT

The Russian Federation Pavilion announced that its exhibition Open! will "move to an entirely online presence". Coping with the recent outbreak of COVID-19 that led to the postponement of the Venice Biennale 2020, the pavilion will transform into a digital platform, to ensure the continuation of the projects.

La Biennale di Venezia has just announced that the International Architecture Exhibition – How will we live together? — curated by Hashim Sarkis, will be postponed once more, and will be held from May 22 to November 21, 2021.

Kate Wagner spoke with the curators of the U.S. Pavilion at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale about broader issues of labor, democracy, and suburbia.

Editor’s note: As of early March, The 17th International Architecture Exhibition has been postponed and rescheduled to run from August 29 to November 2020. 

On the face of it, the theme of the U.S. Pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale seems like a safe choice. It’s true that “American Framing” foregrounds the wood-framing construction system that has held sway in this country for nearly two centuries. But the exhibition’s curators, Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, also promise to explore aspects of the system other than its material attributes. Kate Wagner, the founder of the project McMansion Hell, spoke with the pair about broader issues of labor, democracy, and suburbia.

The Australian Institute of Architects has announced it will no longer participate in the 2020 Venice Biennale. Last month, organizers postponed the event's opening until August in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Australia’s exhibition, titled In Between, was to be curated by creative directors Tristan Wong and Jefa Greenaway, and it aimed to explore connections between indigenous cultures across Australia and the South Pacific.

No one ever dies too late, but Vittorio Gregotti died too soon for some of his radical ideas to be fleshed out in form, and too soon for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale of 2020, which has been postponed by the same pandemic that took him away last week, to say thank you.

Architecture owes a lot to Gregotti.

Last week the Venice Architecture Biennale announced it would postpone its opening to August 29 of this year, while maintaining the original closure date of November 29. The duration of the Biennale will thus be reduced to three months. The reason for this intervention is clear to everyone: the Covid-19 epidemic, which has threatened the usual intense preparations for the Biennale, and which, since the decision was announced, has exacerbated to a national state of emergency. The announcement of the decision reads as a lesson in common sense.

The British Council has announced that curators Manijeh Verghese and Madeleine Kessler will represent the UK at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2020. Selected from a shortlist of nine proposals, the winning project entitled “The Garden of Privatised Delights”, explores the creeping epidemic of privatized public spaces across cities in the UK.

The Hungarian Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Biennale will feature the work of twelve design studios that will reconsider twelve iconic modernist buildings in Budapest. For the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, the pavilion's curator Dániel Kovács wants to explore the value and heritage of architectural modernism to reconcile past and future architecture.

+ 2

The 17th International Architecture Exhibition, organized by La Biennale di Venezia will be open to the public from the 23^rd of May till the 29^th of November 2020. Entitled How will we live together? and curated by Hashim Sarkis, the exhibition’s pre-opening will take place on the 21^st and the 22^nd of May, while the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on the 23^rd of May 2020.

+ 11

Entitled 2038, the German pavilion looks back from the future to the past, which is, in fact, our modern time. Seeking to provide answers, the pavilion imagines the world in the era of “New Serenity”, and tells the “story of a world in which everything has just about gone well”, an alternative future without war.

The Russian Pavilion has announced its first list of contributors for the 2020 Venice Biennale. Selected after an open call, a new generation of architects will set up a temporary office within the pavilion, from May to November, creating an open workspace to plan the on-going architectural transformation.

+ 4

Videos

Cosmos Architecture, an international practice based in Madrid, Milan, Shanghai, and Cairo has designed a proposal for the Egyptian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale 2020. The project is an awareness campaign, highlighting diverse environmental issues occurring in Egypt and presenting proper solutions.

OMA'S architect and urbanist Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli will serve as the curator of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2020. Moreover, Teresa Iarocci Mavica, co-founder, and director of the V-A-C Foundation was appointed as commissioner of the Pavilion by the Russian Ministry of Culture. The exhibition entitled Open! will showcase young Russian architects and will focus on the renovation of the century-old building of the pavilion, built by renowned Russian architect Alexey Shchusev in 1914.

Archinfo Finland has announced the theme and curatorial team for the Pavilion of Finland at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of the 2020 Venice Biennale. Entitled New Standards, the exhibition conceived by Laura Berger, Philip Tidwell, and Kristo Vesikansa will explore Finland’s timber industry.

+ 6

2019 has been a very fruitful year in architecture, unveiling projects, discourses, and careers that cover most of the multiple layers, interest, and fields related to this discipline, and highlighting how relevant it has become to our societies —from the Pritzker Prize 2019 awarded to Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to the revealed theme of the Venice Biennale 2020. Take a look at the main architectural milestones of this year across the globe.

Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner were selected to curate the United States pavilion for the 17th edition of the Venice Biennale. With a proposal entitled “American Framing”, the architects will try to respond to the general theme of “How will we live together?”.

Archinfo Finland is seeking exhibition proposals for the pavilion of Finland at the 2020 Venice Biennale. The exhibition will be situated in the Alvar Aalto-designed Pavilion of Finland in the Giardini Biennale Park.