Opening program Biennale di Venezia: Official Opening to the PublicOpening program Biennale di Venezia: Official Opening to the Public

Presentation of the winning contribution to the Outside the Box Open Call

In front of the Belgian, Dutch, and Spanish pavilions, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia On the occasion of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2018, and in response to the general theme "Freespace," the Belgian, Dutch and Spanish pavilion teams launched a joint Open Call for site-specific projects that encourage collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and solidarity across borders. The winning entry was "Europa" by CENTRAL Office for Architecture and Urbanism. The names of the countries on the three pavilion facades will be overwritten in a performative event with six letters--EUROPA. With this subtle yet bold gesture, the project evokes the sentiment of an imagined space of open borders, free circulation, equality, solidarity, and diversity. It addresses Europe beyond the European Union, engaging in a form of representation that transcends the identity of the nation state and questions the methodological nationalism associated with the idea of an enclosed pavilion.

Extended Program Tour

#LOCKER ROOM, Dutch Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia With the curatorial team, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Creative Industries Fund and the winners of the Open Call for the Extended Program: Northscapes Collective, Giuditta Vendrame, Paolo Patelli and Giulio Squillacciotti, Liam Young, and the Institute of Patent Infringement.

Short presentations and performances as part of the extended program of the Dutch Pavilion. Spanning a range of media and themes, these contributions offer an entrance into the embodied, ethical, and spatial dimensions of labor by exploring and intervening in a harbor, a waiting room, and a render farm, as well as in Amazon patents.

Outside the Box Open Call

In front of the Belgian, Dutch, and Spanish pavilions, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia With the Belgian, Dutch and Spanish pavilions and CENTRAL Office for Urbanism and Architecture.

After months of conversations and a trail of emails full of passionate ideas, happy emojis and exclamation marks, let's raise our glasses to celebrate the collaboration between the Belgian, Dutch and Spanish pavilion teams, and the outcome of Open Call for site-specific projects: the installation 'Europa' by CENTRAL Office for Architecture and Urbanism.

#LOCKER ROOM, Dutch Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia With Martino Stierli, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, New York; Michelle Provoost, director of INTI, the International New Town Institute in Rotterdam and co-founder of Crimson Architectural Historians; Liza Fior, founding partner at Muf architecture/art in London; and Tom Avermaete, professor of Architecture at TU Delft. Moderated by Dirk van den Heuvel, Head of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre.

To celebrate the publication of Jaap Bakema and the Open Society an international panel with distinguished guests will discuss the vicissitudes of the post-war welfare state and possible lessons for today. | Partner Program.

More info on the book publication
More info on the Dutch presentation of the 2014 exhibition Open: A Bakema Celebration

#LOCKER ROOM, Dutch Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia With co-directors and graduates of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

The 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will feature the curatorial and exhibition work of four graduates of Columbia GSAPP's program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices (CCCP) in Architecture: Nora Akawi for the Kingdom of Bahrain; Gabriela Etchegaray for Mexico; Marina Otero Verzier for the Netherlands; and Bika Rebek for the Republic of Slovenia. Moderated by Felicity D. Scott and Mark Wasiuta, co-directors of GSAPP's CCCP program, this panel will host a conversation about and celebrate the participants' contributions to the Biennale. | Partner Program.

#LOCKER ROOM, Dutch Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia With Adrian Lahoud, Sam Jacoby, Tarsha Finney, and others. Chaired by Marina Otero Verzier.

It could be argued that the first accurate cartographic description of public space in a city was completed by Giambattista Nolli in 1748. In 1854, John Snow revolutionized the fight against cholera by mapping an outbreak in London's Soho, while Charles Booth's Poverty Map of 1889 led to the most significant transformation in housing in the history of the United Kingdom.

Fast forward to 2005 and Google launches its new Google Maps platform, followed by the first comprehensive three-dimensional map of public space with Street View in 2007. Currently there are over a billion users and over a million apps and websites that use the Google Maps Platform. AirBnB alone has attracted 150 million users in just nine years.

More than 250 years after Nolli completed his map of Rome, we are no closer to understanding the remainder of the city, the spaces where we spend between 85 to 90% of our lives, working, eating, sleeping, and socializing--the interior. Despite the severity of the housing crisis in many cities, there is a lack of consistent, reliable data on interior spaces at either the neighborhood or urban scale. In fact, it remains impossible to determine the dimensions or layout of an average apartment in numerical terms--our domestic spaces and our work spaces exist in an information blind spot. This is an astonishing situation, since at the same time computational tools are helping us to understand everything from deforestation in the Amazon and flood risk to traffic jams and gentrification.

This event, hosted by the Royal College of Art, School of Architecture will examine the domestic interior space as the next frontier of automation. | Partner Program.