The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale was one with “no architecture,” some critics have alleged, but there was no shortage of consequential exhibition. Shaking off jetlag and whiplash from the contrasts on hand, Greg and Dan attempt to unpack their initial impressions of “The Laboratory of the Future.”

Show Notes

Intro/Outro: “The Boys are Back in Town,” by Thin Lizzy

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Discussed:

 

Olalekon Jeyifous – winner of the Silver Lion for “The African Conservation Effort”

 

Killing Architects + Buzzfeed + local Chinese journalists: “Investigating Xinjiang’s Network of Detention Camps”

 

Wilson, Yoon, Howeler, Begley, Han – Unknown Unknown: A Space of Memory

 

Albanian Pavilion: Untimely Meditations

 

Looty – LIDAR scanning objects of art and selling NFTs against them – expand access to works of art that had been stolen = digital repatriation

 

Liam Young – The Great Endeavour

 

Big Shovel – Daniel Yergin

 

Robots of Brixton – Kibwe Tavares

 

Forensic Architecture – The Nebelivka Hypothesis

 

The Dawn of Everything – David Graeber & David Wengrow

 

Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari

 

The Economy of Cities – Jane Jacobs

 

Sweet Water Foundation – “chaord”

 

DAAR – winner of the Golden Lion for “Ente di Decolonizzazione — Borgo Rizza” 

 

Black City Astrolabe – J. Yolande Daniels

 

Saudia Arabia – “Irth” – material focus

 

UAE – Aridly Abundant

 

Bahrain – Sweating Assets

 

NEOM <> Zero-Gravity Urbanism

–          Opening talk with Sir Peter Cook – Archigram

  • What the Biennale criticizes is what NEOM is built on…
  • Parallel: Brasilia – 50 years of progress in 5
  • Contrast: V & A’s exhibition on Tropical Modernism
  • Edifice Complex / The Myth of Tabula Rasa:   You can’t build your way out of a lack of institutions – it leads to disastrous consequences. 

 

Contrast with Canada Pavilion’s “Not for Sale!”

 

Rating the Tote Bag Designs:

 

No. 5 – Saudi Arabia

No. 4 --  Hungary

No. 3 – UAE

No. 2 – Switzerland (“Neighbors” with Venezuela)

No. 1 – Canada – AAHA!

 

Oliver Wainwright’s review for the Guardian

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