MAY 22 NOV 21
Helmed by architect Hashim Sarkis, the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale invited participants to address “widening political divides and (2021) is an installation of five towering water-filled glass columns that highlights the impacts of acidification, plastic pollution, and other anthropogenic problems affecting the waters of the world. Other architects and designers looked to the sustainable potentials of traditional or reused materials. The Bethlehem-based duo AAU Anastas created a pavilion with a vaulted canopy of interlocking stone slabs, (2020), which also hosted the collective Sonic Liberation Front’s protest against Israel’s bombing of Gaza during the festival’s opening. Azra Akšamija and Melina Philippou of the MIT Future Heritage Lab focused on the Al Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, devising a tent made from discarded clothes, (2021), which incorporates decorative tropes from Ottoman palaces.
