Architects explore how the built environment can build community in China at the Venice Architecture Biennale

The city of Suzhou in China has partnered up with Beijing Design Week and curators Beatrice Leanza and Michele Brunello to bring the exhibition ‘Across Chinese Cities – The Community (The Objects, Spaces and Rituals of the Collective)’ to the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.
This is the third chapter of the exhibition, which cropped up at the 2014 and 2016 editions of the Venice Architecture Biennale. This year, the project expands its research and findings further with new perspectives on the relationship between the built environment and socio-economic issues of the contemporary Chinese context.
Located at the Ca’ Tron palace, the exhibition uses 20 case studies to presents the community as a mechanism that can create ‘new systems of social, economic and spatial belonging’. The proposed projects look to find policy and community based approaches to urban organization aiming for results of inclusivity, empowerment and collective creativity.
Participating in the project, architects such as 3andwich Design, Atlas Studio, Stefano Boeri,Vector Architects, People's Architecture Office and Digua Community, present ideas and projects under a framework of six themes that provide a unique pathway through the explored topics.
See all the latest from Venice Architecture Biennale here
The Shangping Village Regeneration Project
Plugins Plugin House
The Kwan Yen Project
Zhejiang Suichang Chayuan Village Project
INFORMATION
‘Across Chinese Cities – The Community (The Objects, Spaces and Rituals of the Collective’ is on view until 25 November 2018. For more information, visit the ACross Chinese Cities website
ADDRESS
Ca’ Tron
Santa Croce 1957
30135
Venice
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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).
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