Over the past few editions of the Biennale, curatorial efforts have markedly focused on the challenging task of breaking the canonical mould of Eurocentric, white supremacy\u2014the path is clearly visible. It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that a visit to Lesley Lokko\u2019s accomplished and sophisticated The Laboratory of the Future<\/em> should feel like a return to the path carved by The Milk of Dreams<\/em>, curated by Cecilia Alemani last year. This impression is further reinforced by the ever-thinning line that separates the aesthetic languages characterizing both events. Painting might be less prominent here, but squint your eyes enough and this year\u2019s Architecture Biennale could easily pass itself for its art sibling. There are spectacular installations, multimedia displays, sculptures, film, video and sound installations\u2014gone are the days when the Biennale was filled almost exclusively with minimalist architectural models, once the lingua franca of the architectural international community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps this is a conscious effort to engage wider audiences? The Architecture Biennale of 2021, to a degree hindered by sudden pandemic restrictions, still attracted a substantial 299,000 visitors, the vast majority of whom were far from being architecture professionals. Or is this shift toward contemporary art aesthetics and modes of expression the sign of a radical and long-overdue disciplinary metamorphosis? It certainly isn\u2019t a case of artification<\/em>, to use the infelicitous term coined by Roberta Shapiro and Nathalie Heinich just over ten years ago\u2014a concept that fails to account for the fluidity with which disciplines intermingle today. This is not a matter of architecture posing as art to make a buck either. It\u2019s something bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the beginning of the new millennium, architecture has more openly come to terms\u2014for better or worse\u2014 with its society-defining powers. Let\u2019s be clear: architects have always been well aware of this. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Italian architects were openly in competition with Middle Eastern masters to build the largest and more gonfiante <\/em>domes. Or think of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican: it was the plan for its sheer size and opulence that fuelled the Protestant revolution\u2014a crisis that forever changed the history of the Western world. I might be leaning too much into my Foucauldian upbringing here, but architecture can be seen as a sedimentation of power relations that, in turn, defines more power relations through its material structures. Walls, floors, roofs, partitions, windows, terraces, towers\u2014architecture opens and obstructs, dwarfs and gathers, excludes and confines, connects and separates; perhaps most importantly, it manifests. Architecture is materially grounded, discursively driven, geographically situated, and ideologically laden. It generates and perpetuates. It might seem static, but it defines the movements of everything else. And it is never neutral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas the art world, as a form of self-assurance, often deliberately over-indexes the world-shaping agency of \u201cold\u201d media, such as painting and sculpture, which today impact smaller audiences than they did in the nineteenth century, architecture is truly world-defining in inescapable ways. Architecture often acts subliminally; at least in the West, it tends to be naturalized as culture. Inside\/outside\u2014our fraught relationship with nature has its roots firmly planted in architectural foundations. So, perhaps it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that the current edition of the Architecture Biennale foregrounds the extremely rich and all-encompassing conceptual dimensions of architecture rather than championing innovation in the arrangement of its structural elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Architecture as spatial practice. Architecture as plausible solution to the climate crisis. Architecture as responsibility. This biennale stretches the very idea of what architecture has been, can be, or needs to be in the future. If taken seriously, and there is no indication that Lokko\u2019s proposition shouldn\u2019t be, this Biennale will represent a monumental turn in our conception of the discipline. The deconstructive process begins with the very question \u201cwhat is an architect?\u201d As Lokko explains, \u201cWe have deliberately chosen to frame participants as \u2018practitioners,\u2019 not \u2018architects\u2019 and\/or \u2018urbanists,\u2019 \u2018designers,\u2019 \u2018landscape architects,\u2019 \u2018engineers\u2019 or \u2018academics\u2019 because it is our contention that the rich, complex conditions of both Africa and a rapidly hybridising world call for a different and broader understanding of the term \u2018architect.\u2019\u201d Although I am not sure that the world is hybridizing\u2014I\u2019d rather think of more rapid and less intentionally obstructed processes of cross-pollination, new identity formations, and technologically augmented interconnectedness\u2014I concur that the demise of the \u201carchitect\u201d label can constitute an important productive step in the rethinking of the discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also seems cunning that the two key themes around which the contributions to this edition of the Biennale revolve should be decolonization <\/em>and decarbonization.<\/em> The message is clear: architecture is now a tool through which we can reimagine ourselves along with the planet. These themes have been the focus of many other cultural events and initiatives since before the pandemic. However, Lokko\u2019s eighty-nine participants, over half of them from Africa or the African Diaspora, seek to reconfigure these concepts from new and invigorating perspectives\u2014those of groups that have been until recently excluded from the history of architecture itself and that are already bearing the brunt of drastic climatic shifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the Arsenale and Central Pavilion exhibitions, the work of thirty practitioners is organized into four categories: Food, Agriculture & Climate Change; Gender & Geography; Mnemonic; and Guests from the Future. Lokko\u2019s wide-ranging experience as architect, educator, and writer foregrounds processes of narrativization that renegotiate the existing ties among memory, identity, and the land. Her architecture is essentially turned inside out\u2014not simply containing space or separating nature from culture but conceived as an ethically aware, responsibly less anthropocentric, porous interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Afrofuturism takes centre stage in the colourful displays by Olalekan Jeyifous, who considers the realities of aquatic ecologies connecting the Niger delta to other waterways that ultimately emerge in multiple figurations of Yemoja, the Yoruba goddess of the sea. Ecofeminist and ecocritical critiques intertwine to condemn oil spills. Architect, planner, and educator Toni L. Griffin presents Land Narratives\u2014<\/em>Fantastic Futures, <\/em>a multimedia installation encompassing collage, mapping, video, audio, and 3D-printed clay vessels in which she examines the lost histories of the \u201cBlack Belt\u201d neighbourhoods of Chicago\u2019s South Side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Griffin invited Chicagoans to embody a superhero identity to challenge them to think of future-forward scenarios for the places they call home. As she explains, \u201cMy hope is to create a dialogue between land histories and current conditions, fostering ideas on how architectures and spaces are imagined and created by Black people, as a way of reclaiming the space of the city where Black Americans were formerly confined to inhabit and thrive.\u201d Gonzalo Carrasco + Beals Lyon Arquitectos present a collection of seeds from Chilean plant varieties linked to ecological remediation projects. The dimly lit display, which loosely evokes a galaxy, visualizes a universe of the territorial initiatives made by many people and organizations for nature conservation and diversity and for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lokko\u2019s The Laboratory of the Future <\/em>is as urgent and original as it is surprising, visionary, and thought-provoking. Not to be missed\u2014it will be remembered as a turning point in the history of architecture at a time of crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An author and curator specializing in the history and theory of photography, representations of nature, and materiality in art, Giovanni Aloi has edited and authored more than ten books. He is the editor of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture<\/em> and the University of Minnesota Press series Art after Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/web_mai_Aloi_ArchitectureBiennale_Andrea-Avezzu_8604.jpg\")
Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023.
Photo: Andrea Avezz\u00f9, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Photo-by-Andrea-Avezzu_AVZ-8590.jpg\")
Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023.
Photo: Andrea Avezz\u00f9, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/web_mai_Aloi_ArchitectureBiennale_MDM_Olalekan-Jeyifous-0541.jpg\")
Installation views, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023.
Photos: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/web_mai_Aloi_ArchitectureBiennale_MDM_Olalekan-Jeyifous-0544.jpg\")
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Land Narratives \u2014 Fantastic Futures<\/em>, installation view,
Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/web_mai_Aloi_ArchitectureBiennale_Chile2023-0207.jpg\")
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Moving Ecologies<\/em>, installation views,
Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023.
Photos: Marco Zorzanello, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n