Structure of the exhibition

"The Laboratory of the Future is an exhibition in six parts.
It includes 89 participants, more than half of whom are from Africa or the African diaspora. The gender balance is 50/50, and the average age of all participants is 43, dropping to 37 in the section Curator's Special Projects, where the youngest participant is 24.
46% of participants consider education as a form of practice and, for the first time, almost half of the participants come from their own or individual offices with five people or less. Across all sections, over 70% of the exhibits are from offices run by one person or a very small team.
These statistics reflect a profound change in the culture of architectural production as a whole, and an even greater change in participation in international exhibitions.
The balance has shifted. Things are falling apart. The center can no longer hold.
Essential to all projects has been the primacy and strength of a singular tool: imagination.
It is impossible to build a better world if you can't imagine it first. The Laboratory of the Future begins in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini, where 16 offices have been brought together to represent a refinedforce majeure of African and diaspora architectural production. It continues in the Arsenale complex, where the participants in the DangerousLiaisons section - also represented in Mestre's Forte Marghera - stand shoulder to shoulder with the Curator's Special Projects, which is for the first time a category as broad as the others. Interspersed throughout and among the works in both venues are young African and diasporic practitioners, our Guestsfrom theFuture [Guests from the Future], whose works react directly to the dual theme of this exhibition, decolonization and decarbonization, offering a snapshot, a glimpse into future practices and ways of seeing and being in the world. (...) We deliberately chose to categorize the participants as 'practitioners' - said the curator - rather than 'architects' and/or 'urban planners', 'designers', 'landscape architects', 'engineers' or 'academics' because it is our belief that the varied and complex circumstances in Africa and in a rapidly hybridizing world require a different and broader understanding of the term 'architect'."

Dangerous Links, ARSENALE

To deepen the idea of an expanded definition of architecture, in the next section, Dangerous Connections, taking place in the Arsenale complex, the 37 practitioners have all chosen hybrid works that cross disciplinary boundaries, geographies and new forms of partnership and collaboration.
There are individual practitioners (Gloria Cabral, Liam Young, Suzanne Dhaliwal, Huda Tayob, Killing Architects); medium-sized architecture firms (MMA Design Studio, Kate Otten Architects); and two- or three-person firms that combine teaching and practice in equal measure (Office 24-7 Architecture and Lemon Pebble Architects, Wolff Architects).
There are larger practices that focus on decarbonization in novel ways (White Arkitekter, BDR bureau & carton123 architecten, Flores & Prats Architects, and Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation), as well as experimental practices (Gbolade Design Studio, Studio Barnes, Le laboratoire d'architecture) whose work seeks to help us understand what decolonizing knowledge and production entails. Works from every continent are represented here (RMA Architects, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, ZAO/standardarchitecture, Grandeza Studio, Ursula Biemann, Gloria Cabral, Paulo Tavares, Studio Barnes, orizzontale, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, Studio of Serge Attukwei Clottey, Twenty Nine Studio, Low Design Office, AMAA Collaborative Architecture, DAAR - Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, David Wengrow and Eyal Weizman in collaboration with Forensic Architecture and Nebelivka Project) and from different disciplines such as film, investigative journalism, adaptive reuse, land reclamation, community practices at the local level.
Lesley Lokko

There are larger offices that focus on decarbonization in novel ways (White Arkitekter, BDR bureau & carton123 architecten, Flores & Prats Architects, and Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation), as well as experimental offices (Gbolade Design Studio, Studio Barnes, Le laboratoire d'architecture) whose work seeks to help us understand what decolonizing knowledge and production entails.
Works from every continent are represented here (RMA Architects, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, ZAO/standardarchitecture, Grandeza Studio, Ursula Biemann, Gloria Cabral, Paulo Tavares, Studio Barnes, orizzontale, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, Studio of Serge Attukwei Clottey, Twenty Nine Studio, Low Design Office, AMAA Collaborative Architecture, DAAR - Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, David Wengrow and Eyal Weizman in collaboration with Forensic Architecture and Nebelivka Project) and from different disciplines such as film, investigative journalism, adaptive reuse, land reclamation, community practices at the local level.
Lesley Lokko

Force majeure, GIARDINI

At the heart of the Exhibition in the Central Pavilion are some of the most representative African and African Diaspora practitioners working today. Adjaye Associates, Cave_bureau, MASS Design Group, SOFTLAB@PSU, Kéré Architecture, Ibrahim Mahama, Koffi & Diabaté Architectes, atelier masōmī, Olalekan Jeyifous, Studio Sean Canty, Sumayya Vally and Moad Musbahi, Thandi Loewenson, Theaster Gates Studio, Urban American City (Toni Griffin), Hood Design Studio and Basis all make up an exquisite snapshot of the myriad of roles, models and fields in which they work, teach and practice their profession. Those assembled here represent a sliver of the explosive community of African and African diaspora practitioners who are redefining the concept of "practice" in ways we could not have imagined a decade ago.

Curator's special projects

For the first time at Biennale Architettura, theCurator 's Special Projects and Special Participants constitute a broad category outside the competition. They are designated as "special" because of their close relationship with the curator and curatorial assistants, who collaborate to realize works for specific categories selected by the curator to complement the Exhibition. Three of these categories, Mnemonic; Food, Agriculture and Climate Change ; and Geography and Gender specifically examine the complex relationship between memory and architecture (Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Craig McClenaghan Architecture, Looty, and Studio & and Höweler + Yoon); between climate change, land practices, and food production (Margarida Waco, Gloria Pavita, BothAnd Group); and between gender, architecture, and performance (Ines Weizman, J. Yolande Daniels, Gugulethu Sibonelelo Mthembu, Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Clare Loveday and Mareli Stolp). An additional category, Guests from the Future, showcases 22 early-career practitioners of color whose work can be found throughout the Arsenale and Central Pavilion complex, offering a possible glimpse into the architect of the future and their potential interests, concerns and ambitions. Black Females in Architecture, Dele Adeyemo, Cartografia Negra, Ibiye Camp, Courage Dzidula Kpodo with Postbox Ghana, Elementerre with Nzinga Biegueng- Mboup and Chérif Tall, Folasade Okunribido, Lauren-Loïs, Miriam Hillawi Abraham, Arinjoy Sen, Faber Futures, Tanoa Sasraku, Riff Studio, Anusha Alamgir, Guada Labs, Banga Collective, Banga Collective, New South, Aziza Chaouni Projects, Blac Spac, MOE+ Art Architecture, Juergen Strohmayer and Glenn DeRoché were selected for their groundbreaking work on all levels, in different contexts, from the "real" to the imaginary and all its adjacent nuances. Curator Special Projects are also supported by the Ford Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Food, Agriculture and
Change
Climate

Gender and Geography

Mnemonic

Guests
from the future

Three Special Participants

Filmmaker Amos Gitaï, architecture's first poet laureate, Rhael "LionHeart" Cape Hon FRIBA Cape and photographer James Morris are in the Arsenale at key moments. The participants' work here is both archival and experiential, complementing the Curator's Footnotes , which include short texts by the curator and photographs by Assistant Curator Alice Clancy and research team member Festus Jackson-Davis, running throughout the Exhibition.