Venice Biennale: How Will We Live Together [Part 2]

The postponed 17th Venice Architecture Biennale asked its 112
participants to consider the question, “How will we live
together?”. A question originally posed in 2019 by curator and
architect, Hashim Sarkis far before our collective 2020
experience. He originally asked participants “to imagine spaces
in which we can generously live together” Answers from 46
countries materialized into the exhibition of 2021. After a year
spent living apart, the theme is both hauntingly fitting and
reifies our disconnection.


The second installment of our special two-part Design and the
City episode covers the long-awaited event. An event that
signaled something, a community eager to reconnect and a deeper
understanding of just how interwoven we are with our spaces
spanning the full spectrum of human existence. The exhibition
explores that spectrum across five scales: Among Diverse Beings,
As New Households, As Emerging Communities, Across Borders, and,
As One Planet.


For this episode we have it broken down into three parts. The
first features none other than the 17th Biennale curator himself,
Hashim Sarkis. Hashim is the Dean of the School of Architecture
and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
and the founder of Hashim Sarkis Studios. Joining him in
conversation is NewCities’ Director of Applied Research and
reSITE’s own visiting curator, Greg Lindsay, to discuss the
meaning and aims of this special Biennale.


Following Sarkis and Lindsay’s conversation, we will explore
accessibility and hear from the curators of the British Pavilion
entitled The Garden of Privatised Delights and wrap up with the
curators of the Austrian Pavilion entitled, We Like Platform
Austria. Both sets of curators tackled what can often be a rather
serious topic regarding accessibility along with the binary that
exists between public and private space, but with a bit of whit
and a sense of playfulness, ultimately makes the message on
accessibility, accessible in itself.


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Design and the City, is a podcast produced by reSITE about the
ways we can use design to make cities more livable and lovable.
reSITE is a global non-profit and platform connecting people and
ideas to improve the urban environment. We work at the
intersection of architecture, urbanism, politics, culture, and
economics, acting as a catalyst for social action and innovative
leadership. We encourage the exchange of ideas about making
cities more livable, competitive, resilient, inclusive, mobile,
and designed with humans in mind to protect and public space,
architecture, and sustainable development in cities.


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Design and the City is a reSITE production. reSITE is a global
non-profit connecting people and ideas to improve the urban
environment. This episode was directed and produced by myself,
Alexandra Siebenthal with support from Martin Barry, Radka
Ondrackova, Anna Stava, and Nikkolas Zellers as well as Nano
Energies and the Czech Ministry of Culture. It was edited by
Andel Sound Studio.