An overview on Biennale Architettura 2023

By Yehuda Safran - 1 September 2023

Architecture in Everything, City Planning in Everything (“Architecture en tout, urbanisme en tout”)

This was the title of the lecture Le Corbusier delivered in October 1929 in Buenos Aires.

It is as difficult as it is rare to assume responsibility for the demanding task of encompassing the state of world architecture at any given time, let alone in the space and time of the Biennale Architettura in Venice.

Lesley Lokko, Curator and Director of the latest edition, is an extremely articulate spokesperson. Her ability to invoke the suffering and pain of others is great and impressive. However, while it is true that we must work harder and do more to respond to injustice, her use of the “Laboratory of the Future” is strongly reminiscent of the rhetoric used by the Soviet Union in its early years. It gives an air of scientific authority that could be regarded as misleading. No doubt, Lokko wished to address as many issues as she could in a limited space and time. The result is a conflation of issues such as de-carbonization and de-colonization.

Africa has never before been addressed in Venice as the youngest, yet incontestably, the oldest continent, being the origin not only of human beings but also of civilization. Indeed, for quite some time now, the majority of participants in the Central Pavilion have hailed from the USA. Sir David Adjaye was born in Ghana but has lived most of his adult life in London. He is very important to all of us, but to promulgate him across the entire exhibition does not serve any real purpose. On the contrary, it suggests pointless repetition and limitations.

The Brazilian Pavilion won recognition, with a Golden Lion, more for responding to the political agenda, protesting the treatment of native people, than for any pertinent architectural issues. Perhaps, the most impressive pavilion of all was Austria’s, curated by architect...