ZAO at 18th Venice Architecture Biennale in Arsenale

Zhang Ke/ ZAO presents co-living in Dangerous Liaisons section of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in Arsenale. The exhibition is open to the public from May 20 to November 26, 2023. It is the second time Zhang Ke/ ZAO participates in the core exhibition in Arsenale, following Reporting from the Front, which was curated by Alejandro Aravena in 2016.

The exhibition was selected by the curator, Lesley Lokko, as part of The Laboratory of the Future. Conceived as a co-living workshop, the exhibition invites visitors to ponder in a courtyard which is shaped by a suspended wood-structure mock-up.

Communities throughout history have practiced communal living and resource sharing as a way of life. From the Indigenous to the modern urban community, societies incubated new social systems, facilitated cultural exchanges and developed co-living ideas in shared spaces. Yet, co-living will be a dangerous situation while it remains passive. With the world’s rapid division indulging seclusion and conflict, we are drifting apart, physically and anthropologically. Is it possible to turn passive co-living active, both politically and architecturally?

The exhibition, conceived as a co-living workshop, invites visitors to reflect on our work under a suspended mock-up of the Hangzhou Museum, ponder in its courtyard as the philosophers did in ancient Chinese gardens, and dwell on our thinking of the vital relationships between interior and exterior, architecture and landscape, memory and identity. We trace back and look ahead, examine reminiscence to envision new aspects of co-living and induce discussions on sustainable co-living.

Three series of projects demonstrate consecutively our contemporary interpretation of co-living. The Tibet series explores the idea of incorporating a co-living landscape into a cultural context. The Hutong Metabolism series develops this with co-living spaces and programs that foster organic communal growth as a critical renewal in an existing urban fabric. Our latest project series, the Rizhao Community Art Center, represents the active co-living of programs, and co-living types of space: a contemporary Chinese garden in the air, a great semi-outdoor theatre in the middle, and an art gallery underneath.