Every other year to the Venice Art Biennale, the landscapes and buildings are taken over by architects for the Biennale Architettura. It may make fewer global headlines, but it is an opportunity for practitioners to come together from across the world and explore new ideas, display projects to each other and the public, and drink Aperol spritz.

The 2021 edition had the curatorial title How will we live together?, a theme created before the pandemic but after two years of social distancing and enforced separation timely and present. It also speaks to much more of interest to urban, social, cultural, and architectural, with the British Pavilion - organised by Madeleine Kessler and Manijeh Verghese of Unscene Architecture - exploring themes of privatisation of public space in our urban realms, asking questions around who can access them, and what they offer.






Their exhibition title The Garden of Privatised Delights riffs of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, their early proposal drawings inserting British typologies, landscapes, and concerns into a reworking of the tryptich. The aesthetic of his painting also finds its way into the exhibition design, not least with a garish pink climbing frame designed by vPPR Architects, Titled Play with(out) Grounds, which discusses the lack of spaces for the in-between ages of teenagers, an age-group sometimes violently forced out of public life in Britain. The framework also acts as support for a range of soundscape interviews with teenagers from various backgrounds, exploring what it is to be, be seen, and be heard.

When exhibited in Venice, the climbing frame could not be touched, let alone used, such was the health and safety concern. Now located outside, it can be clambered over by children and adults alike, offering a rare moment of play within the centre of the capital. It’s an indication, perhaps, that the whole installation works slightly better here than in Venice, so centred within the landscapes and issues it depicts, and not extracted into such a specific space of display. Here, the projects can not only critique but actively address their surroundings.







The British Pavilion in the Giardini of Venice, one of the two main hubs of the Art and Architecture Bienniales, is a neoclassical, Palladian building. The elements of the installation were designed for this specific space, but now in London they have space to expand, unfold and fit within a new home. It has travelled from Venice in good condition - in fabric and idea - adapting to its new space admirably, even taking over the Building Centre’s accessible toilet with Studio Polpo’s installation To-i-let, provoking the idea that private disabled facilities should be opened up to all public with needs, making visible both a useful infrastructure but also making aware invisible disabilities, giving presence of different bodily and personal needs across society, asking for a high street of care as well as capitalism.

Built Works have looked into facial recognition, slowly saturating public and private realms, offering itself up as gift and security, but perhaps ushering a darker, Orwellian future. Their Ministry of Common Land offers a space for public debate, a citizens’ assembly forum to create ideas for an emerging society, and here presents the results and responses from its first incarnation.