Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu to Curate 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale
La Biennale di Venezia has announced that architects Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, founders of Hangzhou's Amateur Architecture Studio, will direct the Venice Architecture Biennale's 20th International Architecture Exhibition, making them the first curators of the exhibition from China.
Today's announcement comes just a few days after the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, curated by Carlo Ratti under the theme Intelligens, wrapped up its six-month run. Wang Shu is best known for receiving the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2012, though his practice, Amateur Architecture Studio, is truly collaborative, founded by him and his wife, Lu Wenyu, in 1996. The firm maintains, in the words of La Biennale di Venezia, “a sustained focus on existing materials, the traces of ordinary people's daily lives, the vitality of the unnamed, common structures, and the process and craftsmanship of artisans on the construction site.” Their most widely known works are the Ningbo History Museum (2008), with its collage-like re-use of bricks from demolished houses, and the Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art, where the couple founded an architecture department in 2003 and whose campus they have been adding to in phases since. In addition to their practice, both architects teach at the China Academy of Art's School of Architecture: Wang Shu is its first Dean and Lu Wenyu is the Director of the Sustainable Construction Center.
Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu are no strangers to the Biennale. They first participated in 2006, contributing the Tiled Garden installation for the Chinese Pavilion. Built next to the canal at the far end of the Arsenale, the installation was made from 60,000 tiles shipped from China and assembled like a roof without a house. Four years later, in the 12th International Architecture Exhibition curated by Kazuyo Sejima, Amateur Architecture Studio installed Decay of a Dome inside the Corderie, earning a special mention for the project. Most recently, the pair contributed to the 2016 Biennale, curated by Alejandro Aravena under the theme Reporting from the Front, assembling mockups in clay and other materials from construction sites for their buildings in China.
“In the current world, the rapid and multiple changes in architecture are more a phenomenon of appearance, the result of excessive conceptualization or marked commercialization. Conceptual experiments driven to extremes are often divorced from reality and over-commercialization tends to be merely popular and short-lived. This phenomenon changes rapidly in order to survive, breaking away from the connection with the real place. It will lead to the death of architecture. Therefore, architecture becomes a kind of delusional expression about the future. ¶ For this reason, in the face of the real crisis of this world, insisting on a simple and true concept and method of architecture has a special value. We will strive to present this value and exploration with the greatest sincerity for a better reality and future.”
Reading their words above, and knowing a little bit about the buildings of Amateur Architecture Studio, it seems that Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu's forthcoming Biennale will be most strongly aligned with Aravena's 2016 exhibition, which presented projects and proposals that were strongly rooted in place and strove to solve urgent problems. While their words hint at a theme, we'll have to wait for the official statement; if previous Biennales are any indication, the theme will probably come sometime in the first half of 2026.
Also announced today were the dates for the 20th International Architecture Exhibition: from Saturday, May 8, to Sunday, November 21, 2027.
