Though the 2025 architecture extravaganza at La Biennale di Venezia closed just a few days ago, the organization already has news about its next version: Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, of Amateur Architecture Studio, will curate the Biennale Architettura 2027. It will be the 20th staging of the architecture exhibition, which formally began in 1980.
This marks the first time Chinese curators have directed the exhibition, and only the second time a duo has led the way: Pritzker Prize–winners Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects curated the event in 2018 with the theme FREESPACE. Their version included the work of Amateur Architecture Studio, as did the showings in 2016 (curated by Alejandro Aravena), and 2010 (curated by Kazuyo Sejima).
Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu founded their architecture practice, Amateur Architecture Studio, in Hangzhou, China, in 1997. When the work was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2012, it only went to Wang Shu.
The couple’s buildings have been realized in China, where they raise their voice to counteract the lightning-fast speed of development. Instead, they 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,” and they “advocate for a radical experimentation that is rooted in the local context and vernacular tradition,” according to a description from La Biennale di Venezia. It continues: “The studio merges memory with innovation by combining recycled old building materials with modern engineering techniques, offering a powerful response to the social reality of urban development that involves large-scale demolition and construction. They have consistently upheld a broad global perspective, expressing through their works an innovative vision that transcends the cultural conflict between city and countryside, and the dichotomy of the artificial and the natural.”
In a statement about the curatorship, the couple said: “We are very honored to be the Artistic Directors of the Architecture Department and Curators of the 20th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2027 by the invitation from President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. And thanks to the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia for the trust in us. We will try our best to meet this big challenge. 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.”
Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu conclude: “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.”
Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu’s official theme and positioning statement have not yet been released.
Like national elections that ping pong between opposing parties, the sentiment in this initial quote reads as a departure from Carlo Ratti’s curatorship of the Biennale Architettura 2027, which, under the theme of Intelligens, gathered numerous techno-optimist efforts in a jam-packed setting.
The Biennale Architettura 2027 will run from Saturday, May 8, though Sunday, November 21, 2027, with its pre-opening vernissage on May 6 and 7. See you there?
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