Opening: Giardini
1:15 p.m. Performance by FORWARD DANCE COMPANY by LOFFT – DAS THEATER
1:30 p.m. Speeches by Federal Minister Klara Geywitz and curators
2:15 p.m. Reception

Party: Giudecca
4:30 p.m. — 10 p.m. Neighborhood Festival on Giudecca
Location: Calle Cantiere 687/C, 30133 Venezia,Vaporetto stop Palanca

With Open for Maintenance – Wegen Umbau geöffnet, the curatorial team ARCH+ / SUMMACUMFEMMER / BÜRO JULIANE GREB “squats and maintains” the German Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2023.

Open for Maintenance is not an exhibition. It is an action framework for a new building culture. Referring to the Instandbesetzung (squatting and maintaining) movement of 1980s Berlin, it transforms the German Pavilion into a productive infrastructure—using leftover material and “spolia” from over 40 national pavilions and exhibitions of the Biennale Arte 2022.

Open for Maintenance squats the German Pavilion “as found,” including Maria Eichhorn’s contribution Relocating a Structure for the Biennale Arte 2022. In this way, the Art and Architecture Biennales become spatially and programmatically interwoven for the first time. The architectural interventions are oriented toward local needs: They include a ramp for accessibility, a material repository, a workshop, a space for meetings, a kitchenette, and an ecological bathroom. In collaboration with a broad network of Venetian and German activist groups, the contribution renders visible processes of spatial and social care work which are usually kept hidden.

Open for Maintenance transforms the monumental German Pavilion into a living place of (re)production. Assisting various groups from civil society, such as Assemblea Sociale per la Casa (ASC), university students and crafts apprentices will help to maintain, repair, and care for social infrastructures across Venice as part of the Maintenance 1:1 workshop program. The collaborative interventions at the Pavilion and within the city are not limited to a critique of the Biennale as a format and of architecture as a discipline. Rather, the practically minded approach sheds light on architecture’s myriad possibilities for action in converting and designing inclusive and socioecological cities.

Maintenance 1:1

Workshop program of the German Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura

in collaboration with Venice Biennale LAB by Sto Foundation, AIT-Dialog, and Università Iuav di Venezia

During the Biennale, the curators, in cooperation with the Sto Foundation’s Venice Biennale Lab series and AIT-Dialog, are organizing a workshop program that seeks to prove a fundamental idea of Open for Maintenance: Only a social turn in architecture will lead us to sustainable practice. For the program, architecture students and apprentices of the trades will work with local organizations on specific projects in Venice that focus on the care, repair, and maintenance of existing buildings, as well as valorization and recognition of the work involved. Participants will upgrade sanitary facilities, build ramps, design furniture for the community, paint fences, and repair roofs.

The program supports existing material and social (infra)structures counteracting the negative effects of Venice’s commercialization and actively promoting the social inclusion of underprivileged groups. The fully equipped workshop and material repository in the German Pavilion serve as a productive infrastructure and a starting point for the interventions around the city. The participants will live together during the workshops’ duration, promoting dialogue which will be consolidated by a networking event in the fall of 2023.

Overview of the sites of urban interventions

Circular Sanitation Days

with Project Group Sanitary Revolution

The newly installed sanitary infrastructure in the German Pavilion addresses the ecological issue as much as the social one. It reacts to the fact that drinking water will be a rare resource in the future, which makes our “comfortable,” water-based toilet system increasingly inappropriate. Therefore, the urinal and toilet in the Pavilion operate without water. The urine is evaporated in a reactor called the nutrient harvester and turned into powdered fertilizer. The feces, in turn, are transported to an organic farm on the mainland, where they are hygienically processed by a mechanical rapid composter before being used as fertilizer for the farm’s crops. More than twenty scientists and practitioners were involved in the planning and realization of the prototypes: Experts in accessibility, equality, product design, (waste)water and composting technology, as well as the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops. They are all united by the goal of a sanitary revolution—leaving behind the linear, water-based system for disposing of human waste in favor of a circular reuse process which, instead of human waste, sees a resource. The program brings together all participating parties for an exchange of knowledge in the field of circular sanitation.

Daily, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
IN MOTION …
THEMATIC GUIDED TOURS
Meeting point: Entrance of the German Pavilion

INCLUSIVE AND ECOLOGICAL. ALL THE WAY FROM THE STREET TO THE TOILET
Guided tour with Eleftheria Xenikaki

CIRCULAR MATTER[S] – TREAT AND REUSE
Guided tour with Ariane Krause and Nikola Schwarzer

SPACE FOR CIRCULAR SANITATION
Guided tour with Johanna Moser, Marco Grimm, and Michel Riechmann

Places of Resistance

Artist: Maria Eichhorn; Guides: Giulio Bobbo und Luisella Romeo

As part of Maria Eichhorn’s Relocating a Structure, guided tours to monuments and places that commemorate the activities of the antifascist resistance and the deportation of the Jewish population in Venice will be offered twice a week during the Biennale Architettura 2023: Tour A Ghetto, Tour B Stazione, and Tour C Arsenale. The city tours are organized in collaboration with the Istituto veneziano per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea (Iveser) and are conducted by Giulio Bobbo and Luisella Romeo.

Book your ticket here.

Each day at 11:15 am, we offer guided tours. For group tours and special requests please contact us: biennale(at)archplus.net

This year, the Pavilion Days take place on September 14–15. Participating pavilions are offering a coordinated program atacross the Biennale. On both days, the German Pavilion organizes a guided tour at 12:55 pm.

As part of the program, the German Pavilion also hosts a public event on Sept. 14 from 2–3:30 pm. Members of the curatorial team will present the outcome of the workshop program Maintenance 1:1.

Contributing to the event, the current team on site, students of HfbK Hamburg and Università IUAV di Venezia, trainees of Volkwagen, and members of the Assemblea Sociale per la Casa, will discuss their ongoing project Public Design Support on Giudecca.

You are welcome to join us for the event. Access only with valid tickets for the Giardini.

For the opening of the Biennale Architettura 2023, the Goethe-Institut will act as the German Pavilion’s programming partner, addressing further aspects of the curatorial concept through its program series Performing Architecture, which will feature artistic and performative projects on topics such as inclusion, care work, and urban practice. Workshops during the course of the Biennale will be announced later.

The German contribution to the 18th Architecture Biennale does not exhibit the multitude of participating initiatives and groups, but actively involves them in the program and the practical work on a socio-ecological transformation of society. Here, their contributions are documented and presented one by one.

Anne Femmer (born 1984) is an architect and co-founder of SUMMACUMFEMMER Architects in Leipzig. She has worked at a variety of international offices during and after her studies at TU Dresden and ETH Zurich, including with Adolf Krischanitz in Vienna, Go Hasegawa in Tokyo, von Ballmoos Krucker in Zurich, and architecten de vylder vinck taillieu in Ghent. From 2015 to 2018, she was a design assistant at ETH Zurich with Christian Kerez and Jan de Vylder. In 2019, she was a visiting professor at TU Munich and at the chair Integral Architecture at TU Graz from 2020 to 2022. Since 2022, she has been working as a visiting professor at UdK Berlin.

Franziska Gödicke (born 1998) studied architecture at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the IUAV Venice. She has been part of the ARCH+ editorial team since July 2021. As a freelance writer, her essays have appeared in publications such as the ETH Zurich’s trans magazin. In January 2022, she joined the collaborative architectural practice b+ in Berlin. In workshops and guest critiques at venues such as AA London, RWTH Aachen, and the University of Cambridge, she focuses on questions of care, repair, and maintenance, with a particular emphasis on post-socialist structures in East Germany.

Juliane Greb (born 1985) is an architect, leading her own office in Ghent since 2015. Parallel to her studies at RWTH Aachen and AHO Oslo, she worked in the ARCH+ editorial team. After finishing her studies, she worked at architecten de vylder vinck taillieu in Ghent, where she was a project leader responsible for realizing a number of experimental residential buildings. Subsequently, she worked on a freelance basis for OSAR architects in Antwerp. In recent years she has taught at UAntwerp and TU Delft, and she is currently a visiting professor at PBSA Düsseldorf. 

Christian Hiller (born 1975) is a media scholar, editor, and curator. He manages exhibitions, event series, publications, and research projects for institutions such as the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and ARCH+. He has curated international exhibitions such as bauhaus.film (SESC São Paulo, among others), Mensch-Raum-Maschine (Bauhaus Dessau, MMCA Seoul, among others), and Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism/Contested Modernities (Gudskul Jakarta, Goethe Institut Myanmar, NTU CCA Singapore, and others). With ARCH+, he has curated projects including projekt bauhaus (2015–19), An Atlas of Commoning (2018), and Cohabitation (2021).

Petter Krag (born 1978) is an architect, photographer, and partner at Büro Juliane Greb since 2017. After his studies in photography at the Oslo Fotokunstskole and six years working as a freelance photographer, he studied architecture at AHO Oslo. He has collaborated with artists on a variety of publications and exhibitions, and worked at international architecture offices including Christian Kerez in Zurich and architecten de vylder vinck taillieu in Ghent.

Melissa Angela Alemaz Makele (born 1989) is an editor at ARCH+. She studied architecture and art history at KIT Karlsruhe and was a guest student at HfG Karlsruhe. After her studies, she worked at firms including Atelier Bow-Wow and Studio Velocity in Japan. Her current research focuses on intersectional feminist (spatial) practice. In 2022, she was a Berlin Stipend recipient at the Academy of the Arts, Berlin.

Anh-Linh Ngo (born 1974) is an architectural theorist, curator, and editor in chief of ARCH+. He regularly curates exhibitions and research projects with ARCH+, including projekt bauhaus (2015–19), Cohabitation (2021), and The Great Repair (2023). From 2010 to 2016, he was a member of the advisory council at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), for which he developed and co-curated the traveling exhibitions An Atlas of Commoning (2018) and Post-Oil City (2009). He is currently a member of the advisory boards of IBA 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart, the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Goethe-Institut. Since 2022, he has been a member of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin.

Florian Summa (born 1982) is an architect and co-founder of SUMMACUMFEMMER Architects in Leipzig. After his studies at RWTH Aachen and ETH Zurich, he worked for five years at Caruso St John Architects in London and Zurich. From 2015 to 2018, he was a design assistant at ETH Zurich with Adam Caruso. In 2019, he taught at TU Munich. From 2020 to 2022, he was a visiting professor at the chair Integral Architecture at TU Graz. Since 2022, he has been a visiting professor at UdK Berlin.

The German contribution to the Biennale Architettura 2023 adheres to principles of reuse and circularity that are resource-efficient but labor-intensive. Achieving this requires the collaboration of a multitude of actors from civil society, researchers, and cultural producers. Without the support of sponsors and corporate partners, the project would not be possible in this form. First and foremost, we would like to thank the BMWSB and the BBSR for funding the project and their very constructive support during the implementation. We are particularly grateful to the following sponsors and institutional partners for their extraordinary support.

BUREAU N
Caroline Wolf, Inga Krumme
Grosse Hamburger Strasse 28
10115 Berlin

Excerpt from the statement on this year’s motto, “The Laboratory of the Future,” by Lesley Lokko, curator of the Biennale Architettura 2023

“The vision of a modern, diverse, and inclusive society is seductive and persuasive, but as long as it remains an image, it is a mirage. Something more than representation is needed, and architects historically are key players in translating images into reality. […] We envisage our exhibition as a kind of workshop, a laboratory where architects and practitioners across an expanded field of creative disciplines draw out examples from their contemporary practices that chart a path for the audience — participants and visitors alike — to weave through, imagining for themselves what the future can hold.”

Statement from Parliamentary State Secretary and MP Cansel Kiziltepe, Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building

“In its contribution for the German Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, the curatorial team around ARCH+ focuses on transforming the building sector in light of the social, political, and economic challenges we are facing today. Transformation and sustainability, in an overarching sense, are extremely relevant topics, especially in the building industry. This urgency is reflected in the intensive cooperation of so many exhibiting nations and local initiatives in Venice. I am thrilled that the 2023 German Pavilion will be presenting exciting approaches to solutions for the complex issues surrounding responsible, climate- and resource-preserving planning and building for our global society.”

Personal statement from Peter Cachola Schmal, Director of the German Architecture Museum, chairman of the selection jury for the German Pavilion 2023

“The jury was surprised by the originality of the concept, emphasizing repair and a workshop character which also involves collecting physical leftovers from the Biennale Arte 2022. In the midst of such improvised, unpredictable surroundings, exemplary projects will be shown and initiatives will be offered a platform. The jury expects these strategies to make innovative use of the German Pavilion while offering a transformative approach to the Biennale as a whole, especially by incorporating and networking specific groups within Venetian civil society.”

Accompanying the exhibition will be English- and German-language issues of the journal ARCH+, which will report on the activist groups involved and will feature pieces by Marco Baravalle, Hélène Frichot, Andrej Holm, Vittoria Martini, Shannon Mattern, Eva Stricker, Françoise Vergès, and others dedicated to the material, social, and urban dimensions of maintenance.