Biennale Architettura 2023: The Laboratory of the Future

What’s most striking about the title chosen for the Architecture Biennale 2023 is the message of hope behind it. The first image that comes to mind is that of Gauguin’s paintings, the first artist in Western society to produce very exotic images on a canvas. The artist’s eye is always the most vulnerable and avant-garde, thus the fact Biennale has decided to focus on a silent, exhausted, and contradictory place such as Africa, which is certainly vast but in some ways still unexplored, is clearly a message of hope. This will lay the foundations for the future. Although today’s society moves at unreal speeds, we will not see the outcome of this, yet, we know it will be an important step for the future, one that brings something valuable. Just like Gauguin’s great vision, as well as exotic and different worlds, this is the fate of the avant-garde and forward-looking impulse, which society is rarely capable of appreciating in the short term, in fact, it can even criticize it. In politics, change is a word that is often abused to the point of becoming meaningless, however, when it is used in the world of arts, it’s a completely different story. Change is by nature intrinsic to the concept of art and architecture. In this case, when we consciously change anything in society, we can only hope someone will reap a very sweet fruit, one day.
It’s a delicate moment, we are right between two millennia and there are very few catalysts of change capable of ushering in a future that brings a conscious U-turn from where we are currently heading. It is not a simple task, but only art can begin this journey. We are truly looking forward to the exhibition, to see what it produces, which may even be a source of inspiration for us.