The Venice Architecture Biennale first explored the moral responsibilities of the profession in 2000, guided by the slogan "less aesthetics, more ethics". In 2006, social responsibility was in the forefront of the exhibition. This year's exhibition examines - in a number of different ways - what is expected of architecture in the present and the future: new frameworks for organising, spaces, connections and ways of life. Curator Betsky does not show existing buildings or even plans for buildings, but ideas in the making and research that re-think the conditions of human life. The exhibition presents concept homes, fantasy cities, new technology and new ways of looking at things.
"Architecture is not building," says curator Betsky. "Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough. They are big and wasteful accumulations of natural resources that are difficult to adapt to the continually changing conditions of modern life."
The Corderie in the Arsenale will open with the presentation of Hall of Fragments, by David Rockwell with Casey Jones and Reed Kroloff: an interactive work that reflects on architecture's capacity to release its visionary power by borrowing from film imagery. The Corderie will present large-scale installations, that "are not prototypes for buildings," according to Betsky, but represent different ways of asking questions about architecture and how to feel "at home" in the world. Participating in the installation are Asymptote, Atelier Bow Wow, Barkow Leibinger Architects, Nigel Coates, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Diller Scofidio+Renfro, Droog Design+Kesselkramer, Vicente Guallart, Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Ante Liu, Greg Lynn, M-A-D, Massimiliano Fuksas, MVRDV, Penezi and Rogina, Philippe Rahm, Matthew Ritchie in collaboration with Aranda/Lasch and Daniel Bosia/ARUP AGU, Kramervanderveer, Thonik and UNStudio. The exhibition continues outside the Corderie with a modern-day yurt from Kazakhstan by Totan Kuzembaev, which represents the meeting point between the traditional nomadic civilization and the contemporary one. The visit ends at the Giardino delle Vergini, a new space acquired by La Biennale di Venezia, with Towards Paradise, a landscape installation by Gustafson Porter-Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.
The exhibition continues at the Artiglierie dell'Arsenale with two exhibitions about Rome: Roma Interrotta and Uneternal City. The first is sponsored by the Incontri Internazionali d'Arte and reproposes an innovative project conceived by Piero Sartogo in 1978, in which twelve great international architects were invited to configure a "New Rome", working on the historic heart of the city. The second exhibition is Uneternal City which, thirty years after Roma Interrotta, calls upon twelve architectural firms - from Italy, Europe, the United States and Asia - to verify the general theme underlying the entire exhibition, but applying it to the suburbs of the Rome.
