BREAKING: U.S. Pavilion for Venice Biennale Announces Its Main Exhibitors

Today, the curators of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale announced the seven architects, landscape architects, artists, designers, and researchers who will create the Pavilion’s primary works. They are:

• Amanda Williams & Andres L. Hernandez (Chicago, IL)
• Design Earth (Cambridge, MA)
• Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York, NY)
• Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman (San Diego, CA)
• Keller Easterling (New Haven, CT)
• SCAPE (New York, NY)
• Studio Gang (Chicago, IL)

This year’s pavilion is being organized by two co-commissioners: School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the University of Chicago. The exhibition, titled Dimensions of Citizenship, will evidently have a strong political dimension: the announcement states that, “Each of these new works commissioned for the U.S. Pavilion will interrogate a different spatial condition of design and citizenship.” Mimi Zeiger, one of the Pavilion’s curators, told Metropolis that, “Given our political moment, it’s easy to assume that when we talk about citizenship that we are talking only about nationhood. And while architects and designers have an urgent responsibility to interrogate border conditions, the spatial implications of inclusion and exclusion exist across smaller and larger territories—an Uber ride, a Confederate monument, a space station.”

Kate Orff, founder and partner at SCAPE, added: “I’m excited to advance SCAPE’s research agenda on redefining the regional landscape at next year’s Biennale. Now more than ever concepts of landscape and climate are tied to questions of citizenship and engagement. Fixed, static notions of ‘the region’ are being challenged as forest ecosystems, animals, and people are on the move, adapting, migrating and re-organizing along shifting environmental baselines and creating new relationships. Dimensions of Citizenship—dimensions of care, stewardship, and activism about the environment—or its absence—will shape the regions of the future.”

This year’s full curatorial team includes Niall Atkinson, Associate Professor of Architectural History at the University of Chicago; Ann Lui, Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Mimi Zeiger, an independent critic, editor, curator, and educator. Iker Gil, SAIC faculty member, director of MAS Studio and founder of the design journal MAS Context, was also announced as associate curator. The curatorial advisory board includes among its members Theaster Gates, Sarah Herda, and Zoë Ryan. Additionally, Project Projects has been tapped as the U.S. Pavilion’s web, graphic, and exhibition designer.

In addition to the main exhibitors’ installations, existing works by other architects, artists, and “practitioners of aligned disciplines” will be on view at the Pavilion. Dimensions of Citizenship will also include “a digital platform designed to foster conversations and to seek new ideas, stories, and engagement from both local and global publics representing diverse voices.”