... But the research, depicting architecture as a major American export, like Coke and Mickey Mouse, is only one aspect of the ambitious project. The curators also selected eight young designers, several of them architects, to spend the next 25 weeks working under the name OfficeUS. Seated at tables designed by Leong Leong (or lying on a round bed in the pavilion’s rotunda), they will analyze the mostly-20th-century projects through 21st century lenses. Those lenses have already been determined and given cleverly vague names like “Trojan Horses” and “Profit Margin.” Invited experts and visitors to the pavilion will be able to comment on the work. (And there are other aspects of their task, including studying the organization of U.S. architecture firms, with a focus on everything from salaries to the placement of water coolers.)

It’s impossible not to be struck by the curators’ bravery. First example: After they had a list of the 700 or so projects they wanted to include, they asked the responsible firms (those that still exist) for additional information. Occasionally, firms asked that a project not be included; the curators, attempting to create as complete a historical record as possible, brushed off the requests. Second example: Some of the lenses through which the partners will analyze the 700 projects are implicitly critical of U.S. “architectural imperialism,” a potential sore point for the State Department (which selects Biennale curators). Third example: Many of the architects whose projects will be analyzed and critiqued are alive and well, and a few have already visited the Biennale. Will some of them be offended by the way their buildings are treated? Probably, but the curators say they’re ready.

Compiling reams of information on 700 projects, which together form an invaluable record of American architecture by firms with the wherewithal to work abroad, is an accomplishment. Presenting those 700 projects in a beautifully outfitted, futuristic but inviting office, is another. The three curators could have stopped there. But what happens in the next 25 weeks has the potential to bring important ideas to the fore. (Luckily, the curators already have four books planned.) And it has the potential to bring the OfficeUS partners and the architects whose projects they are looking at into a rich, multigenerational discussion of what architecture was, is, and could be.

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