EDITORS DESK
This question could not be any more urgent now that many of the issues confronting us have to do with us coming together or falling apart. Of these many issues, such as the climate emergency, the migrant crisis, even politics, geo-politics, racism, and gender disparity, nothing has made us fear one another more than COVID-19.
As the curatorial theme for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, twice delayed last year on account of the pandemic, “How Will We Live Together,” more than a question, is a challenge for this year’s 112 participants from 46 countries, with upward of 60 national participants, including the Philippines, in Venice.
It’s a question often asked by explorers like Magellan arriving at newfound islands and by the islanders welcoming the explorers either with arms wide open or with sticks and knives, by tribes divvying up territories, by would-be neighbors accommodating newcomers, by lovers moving in together, even by “Aristotle when he was writing about politics,” according to Lebanese scholar and this year’s overall architecture biennale curator Hashim Sarkis, who shared that Aristotle’s answer to the question was “The City.”
At the Philippine Pavilion, housed in a 320-square-meter space at the Artiglieri, an ancient artillery warehouse at the Arsenale, a 45-hectare complex of shipyards and armories on the eastern end of Venice, the answer is a word—bayanihan.
Curated by Framework Collaborative, which is comprised of members of the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm and architects Sudarshan Khadka, Jr. and Alexander Eriksson Furunes, the answer finds expression in the large-scale installation “Structures of Mutual Support,” of which the centerpiece is a building that houses a community library and a conflict-resolution space, as well as an open and lively tambayan for the youth.
The curators arrived at this architectural thesis after a 22-day workshop in Barangay Encanto in Angat, Bulacan with members of the Philippine Pavilion Coordinating Committee and 32 farmers, carpenters and other laborers, housewives, and students from the GK Enchanted Farm community. True to bayanihan, which has evolved from the practice of neighbors helping one another move houses from one village to the next, the building was community-built in Bulacan, dismantled, and then shipped across the world to Venice, where it has been reconstructed as the piece-de-resistance of the Philippine Pavilion for the duration of the architecture biennale this year. After November, the building will be shipped back to the Philippines and reassembled in its permanent location in Barangay Encanto in Angat, Bulacan, where with hope it will serve its purpose of fostering not only community spirit but also camaraderie and the sharing of values, knowledge, goals, and vision.
In Venice, where the exhibitions run until Nov. 21, 2021, the participants are calling attention to myriad problem areas, such as the melting glaciers, overdevelopment in the Amazon, the extinction of flora and fauna, the refugee crisis, private ownership of public spaces, the increasing cost of urban housing, diminishing borders, and social distancing or disconnection becoming the new norm.
It is clear, as our very own practice of bayanihan so poignantly points out, that to live together against all these odds is to help one another. But from the 60 national pavilions alone, nobody seems to suggest that there are too many of us needing help. We have until November to find among the national and other pavilions the suggestion that for us to live together harmoniously, we must address the root cause of all the ills of the world—overpopulation.
This is an architecture biennale, however. And the task of architects is to provide a built environment for the population. Depopulating the towns, cities, and countries is not their problem.
This question could not be any more urgent now that many of the issues confronting us have to do with us coming together or falling apart. Of these many issues, such as the climate emergency, the migrant crisis, even politics, geo-politics, racism, and gender disparity, nothing has made us fear one another more than COVID-19.
As the curatorial theme for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, twice delayed last year on account of the pandemic, “How Will We Live Together,” more than a question, is a challenge for this year’s 112 participants from 46 countries, with upward of 60 national participants, including the Philippines, in Venice.
It’s a question often asked by explorers like Magellan arriving at newfound islands and by the islanders welcoming the explorers either with arms wide open or with sticks and knives, by tribes divvying up territories, by would-be neighbors accommodating newcomers, by lovers moving in together, even by “Aristotle when he was writing about politics,” according to Lebanese scholar and this year’s overall architecture biennale curator Hashim Sarkis, who shared that Aristotle’s answer to the question was “The City.”
At the Philippine Pavilion, housed in a 320-square-meter space at the Artiglieri, an ancient artillery warehouse at the Arsenale, a 45-hectare complex of shipyards and armories on the eastern end of Venice, the answer is a word—bayanihan.
Curated by Framework Collaborative, which is comprised of members of the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm and architects Sudarshan Khadka, Jr. and Alexander Eriksson Furunes, the answer finds expression in the large-scale installation “Structures of Mutual Support,” of which the centerpiece is a building that houses a community library and a conflict-resolution space, as well as an open and lively tambayan for the youth.
The curators arrived at this architectural thesis after a 22-day workshop in Barangay Encanto in Angat, Bulacan with members of the Philippine Pavilion Coordinating Committee and 32 farmers, carpenters and other laborers, housewives, and students from the GK Enchanted Farm community. True to bayanihan, which has evolved from the practice of neighbors helping one another move houses from one village to the next, the building was community-built in Bulacan, dismantled, and then shipped across the world to Venice, where it has been reconstructed as the piece-de-resistance of the Philippine Pavilion for the duration of the architecture biennale this year. After November, the building will be shipped back to the Philippines and reassembled in its permanent location in Barangay Encanto in Angat, Bulacan, where with hope it will serve its purpose of fostering not only community spirit but also camaraderie and the sharing of values, knowledge, goals, and vision.
In Venice, where the exhibitions run until Nov. 21, 2021, the participants are calling attention to myriad problem areas, such as the melting glaciers, overdevelopment in the Amazon, the extinction of flora and fauna, the refugee crisis, private ownership of public spaces, the increasing cost of urban housing, diminishing borders, and social distancing or disconnection becoming the new norm.
It is clear, as our very own practice of bayanihan so poignantly points out, that to live together against all these odds is to help one another. But from the 60 national pavilions alone, nobody seems to suggest that there are too many of us needing help. We have until November to find among the national and other pavilions the suggestion that for us to live together harmoniously, we must address the root cause of all the ills of the world—overpopulation.
This is an architecture biennale, however. And the task of architects is to provide a built environment for the population. Depopulating the towns, cities, and countries is not their problem.