A new Facebook post1 from Patrik Schumacher critical of the newly-opened 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale is gaining traction after the Zaha Hadid Architects Principal expressed his concerns over the apparent lack of architectural content in the Lesley Lokko-curated exhibition, whose theme touches on Afrofuturism, the environmental crisis, and identity.
In a fourteen-paragraph invective titled “Venice Biennale Blues,” Schumacher decried the Biennale as being “mislabeled,” claiming that “What we are witnessing here is the discursive self-annihilation of the discipline.”
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- 1. Venice Biennale Blues
The Venice "Architecture" Biennale is mislabelled and should stop laying claim to the title of architecture. This title is just generating confusion and disappointment with respect to an event that does not show any architecture.
Assuming Venice to be not only the most important item on our global architectural itinery, but also representative of our discourse in general: What we are witnessing here is the discursive self-annihilation of the discipline.
Most national pavilions, including all major European nations like Germany, France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Holland, Norway/Sweden, Finnland, but also Japan, Canada, Australia and the USA, refuse to show the work of their architects, or any architecture whatsoever. I don't know about other national pavilions. I gave up after seeing no architecture in 12 out of 12 pavilions. (The Czech pavilion seemed closed and a video screen in front of the closed entrance was displaying faces talking about low income and long hours of work.)
What does this tell us? That there is no noteworthy architecture in Germany, France etc. etc .etc. or anywhere in the Western world? Is the design and construction of buildings only an occasion for bad conscience? Is this bad conscience the motive force behind the refusal (by now pervasive for more than a decade) to display any contemporary architecture whatsoever?
The German pavilion is filled with piles of construction material. There is no point to spend more than two seconds in there. A single glance and you get the one-liner message (because this message had been reiterated for years): The moral (if not practical/economic) imperative of material recycling. There was also a very similar one-liner message filling the space (and consuming the budget) a few years ago: don't build, re-use/renovate. Inbetween the pavilion was filled with documentation of current affairs issues like the refugee crisis. There always seems to be something more important and urgent than architecture. The obvious question why we should look at documentations of the refugee crisis when coming to Venice for the Biennale after we have been hearing about the refugee crisis on television every day for months was apparently never asked.
German architecture has been absent in Venice for years. the same applies to British architecture. Why the architects of these countries put up with this seems puzzling. Are they too shamefaced about their work to raise their heads above the parapet? In the case of the German pavilion the current emphatic absence of architecture has been explicitly endorsed by the president of the German chamber of architects today in a conversation in front of the German pavilion filled with the rubble of the previous Biennale. What are all these curators expecting the unsuspecting general public who come to visit an architecture Biennale to make of this?
Only the Chinese pavilion shows architecture, plenty of architecture. In the international show its again only Chinese architects who show work: Neru&Hu, and especially Zhang Ke (Standard Architecture) is showing an impressive suite of projects. The other fantastic exception is the suite of equally impressive projects by Adjaye Associates. Everybody else invited has been playing along with using exhibition space for documentary-style intellectual-artistic allusions to moral issues, garnished with pretentious critical-speak, of course without ever taking the risk of really taking up an explicit position or offering constructive proposal.
Whats the point of all this? Is it meant to inspire conversations? Architects want to talk about (and see) architecture. They won't talk about decolonising xyz. Perhaps architectural educators talk about such matters. Perhaps thats why architectural design has disappeared from most (especially the most prestigious) schools of architecture.
I have been coming to Venice witnessing architects reactions to several of these anti-architectural biennales. Like this time too, they all cling to the few exceptional instances of architecture and talk about those, and then about their frustration with the swamping of the Biennale with virtue signalling conceptual-symbolic installations.
This show is meant to be at least to 50% featuring architects (at least originally) from Africa. Without David Adaye's work - which I would suspect is the only display at this Biennale that would fill a visitor from Africa with pride - there would be no African architecture in the show. (I did not find Francis Kéré's display). Perhaps it was a mistake to focus on small studios and educators who don't have work. I was curious about African architects and African architecture but I am no wiser after seeing the show. The notable exception are Adjaye's projects. I think it is a significant fact and signal of development and aspiration, that such sophisticated world class buildings now exist on the African continent, a fact the importance and impact of which for the continent should not be underestimated.
While Western architectural culture (and Western culture in general) seems shamefaced and guilt ridden, excluding all its architecture from the "Architecture" Biennale, Chinese architectural culture, in positive contrast, is here in full force and self-confidence. Chinese architects and the Chinese national pavilion (including the Hong Kong pavilion) deliver virtually all the architecture (excepting Adjaye Associates) in the whole Biennale.
Is my conception of architecture as discipline too narrow if I expect to see architectural design in an architecture biennale? I don't think so. Whatever social, political or moral issues we want to address, the way to show their relevance to architecture is via projects that claim to respond to these issues.
No talk about "architecture as expanded field" can convince me that we are still in an architectural event when the scene is dominated by documentaries, critical art practice and symbolic installations while architectural works are nowhere to be seen in 99% of the exhibition space.
If everything lamentable or unjust, or urgent in the world is now an urgent, overriding concern of architecture, then this is not only an absurd overreach unhinged from architecture's competency, but the very dissolution and disappearance of this discipline. In academia, in Western schools of architecture, this process has been driven as far as in the Venice Biennale. Of course, the professional work of architecture continues, albeit without any support from academia, or without any representation and discussion in any Biennale, be it Venice, or Chicago. The professional work of architects seems to be beyond the pale, either too banal or morally too compromised to receive a platform in the lofty realm of a critical cultural event. Even professional architects seem to reach this conclusion once they are appointed as curators. They leave their day job, their work and professional competence behind to become dilettante social critics/commentators.
By now the approach of thematising social ills has become the standard, the expected, unassailable, safe option. Its also easy to organise and cost effective. Instead of the risky and difficult task to select, explain the selection, and deal with 25 architects, a single artist can be commissioned (or two to three) to interpret the theme, and be left alone to do so. Its all too convenient and cost effected. For the curators of the national pavilions this is the easiest way to discharge the curatorial burden. But its such a lazy, lame and predictable cop out.
How long can this continue? The Venice Architecture Biennale, over many years, has built up a stellar, unrivalled position as #1 global architectural gathering. However, I think the event is now gradually consuming and drawing down its built up reputation. Its consuming its social capital. If the event keeps diluting, even actively avoiding or displacing its mission as architectural event, it becomes vulnerable to new possible contenders if they are delivering what is being expected by the silent majority of architects and I presume by the general public. There is nothing in sight here but the vital function the Venice Architecture Biennale used to fulfil for our discipline for many years (and that needs to be fulfilled) is up for grabs.
Source: Patrik Schumacher on Facebook