VENICE BIENNALE 2021

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Highlights of this tour

Private visit to the major Biennale exhibits at the Giardini and Arsenale
The assistance of an experienced guide

VENICE BIENNALE 2021

VENICE BIENNALE 2021

The Architectural Biennale will open to the public on May 22 and will go on until November 21st , 2021
The main venues are the Giardini and the Arsenale, however many state pavilions are spread all over the city, and there’s also a good number of collateral events, with major exhibits at the Guggenheim and Francois Pinault Foundations.

President Paolo Baratta and curator of this 17th edition, Hashim Sarkis, presented the exhibit under title of “How Will we Live Together?”. A question that architects are invited to answer not only with theoretical announcements, rather presenting their projects and searching the collaboration of other professionals, such as scientists, artists, politicians, journalists, but also common citizens.

Starting from the consciousness that our planet is facing rapid and radical changes with multiple difficulties, teams of experts need to collaborate in order to find architectural solutions to the problems caused by climate changes, inevitable migrations, overcrowded megalopolises, global epidemics (we are writing this post in the midst of the coronavirus crisis), social and economic instability, progressive and inevitable exhaustion of building materials.

President Paolo Baratta stresses di accent on the gap between those vast areas where housing means a simple roof over your head, and other realities where houses have become obsolete and need to be updated. That’s why architects must develop their projects keeping in mind all the modern discoveries in the fields of automation and artificial intelligence. He states: “We look forward to the collective architectural imagination to meet this momentous occasion with creativity and courage.”

Human beings are bound to live together, notwithstanding our strong sense of individuality, need to learn how to survive in good harmony with all the other species. Our houses must be the expression of our dignity and identity, never bypassing the ideas of inclusion and social equity. AS humans, we are bound to search valid solutions for our planet, including man, animals and plants.

Although the Venice Architectural Biennale 2020 has not started yet, we can already tentatively suggest a list of ‘must-see’ exhibits, but of course, many of the pavilions are still ‘work in progress’:

USA PAVILION – ‘American Framing’ will center on

historical timber houses built with basic two-by-four timbers. The curators state that in America “The richest and poorest people live in houses that were built the same way”. Even President Kennedy’s and Beyonce’s homes were built in wood.

GERMAN PAVILION – The curators of this future-bound concept imagine that we are in 2038, and all the problems and difficulties we had to face in the 2020s are happily solved! Things ended up okay, as architects and other experts were able to answer “the great questions of our time” were by choosing pragmatic solutions.

FINLAND PAVILION – Timber is also at the core of the Finnish Pavilion. During the 1940s, when a huge number of families had to abandon their homes, a local consortium of timber manufacturers decided to build permanent wooden houses to shelter them. The project was extremely successful and easy to export, 300,000 homes were built, many of them still in inhabited today.

RUSSIAN PAVILION – opened to the public in 1914, the Russian Pavilion at Giardini of the Venice Biennale was designed to represent quintessential Russian culture. Today the curators invite young Russian professionals to develop their projects for the reconstruction of the Pavilion itself. Visitors will experience the actual reconstruction/restyling in the making, in a mix of reality and fiction.

AUSTRALIAN PAVILION – Australia’s Venice Biennale 2020 pavilion, ‘In Between’ will focus on Australia’s indigenous cultures and their connections with the South Pacific Islands. The team will star architects, a writer and an anthropologist, in the intent of unfolding layers of history and memory, drawing from the rich patrimony of native populations.

More about the Venice Biennale 2020 here.

More contemporary art tours in Venice on our Walks inside Venice website.

Cost of this tour

This is a six-hour tour (with a lunch break), or a three hour one for each section (Giardini or Arsenale).
Our expert guide will select the most prominent exhibitions.
Cost of this tour 400 euros for each three-hour tour
Admissions: Full- Regular 25,50 euros – Students under 26 years old 16,50 euros (with current student ID)
We can prebuy tickets for you
Only private parties.
The Biennale is closed on Mondays
For larger parties: please send us an email!