The National Pavilion of Serbia, curated by Iva Njunjić and Tihomir Dičić, has just announced its exhibition at the 2023 Venice Biennale, which explores architecture's futures, presents, and pasts through the lens of an international Trade Fair in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977. The trade fair was a product of non-aligned cooperation between Yugoslavia and Nigeria.
In 1961, an international organization named the Non-Aligned Movement valued anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, self-determination, and peaceful cohabitation. As one of the Movement's forerunners, Yugoslavia encouraged member states to work actively together. This was made possible by several construction projects aimed at the modernization, industrialization, and urbanization of developing African nations, with many Yugoslav architects and engineers significantly contributing to the projects' actual design.
Numerous architects from this company designed structures for North and South America meant to be futuristic expressions of these regions' development and independence. After colonization, many of these projects—congress centers, hotels, airports, and international fairs—were intended to serve as nodes in the international infrastructure, connecting African towns to the rest of the world.
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The Taiwan Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale Highlights the Intelligence Embedded in Surrounding LandscapesAs part of the Lagos Fair project, 350 hectares of wetlands were urbanized and developed between 1974 and 1976 after being chosen in an international competition. The structure represented the newly formed multinational state, a window into a future, and a break from the colonial past. The architecture of the fair halls needs to be reread considering the future, which is still open, rather than about the barracks and storage facilities constructed in the last twenty years that surround them.
The exhibition will outline the anatomy of the International Trade Fair, including how it affects a city, influences architecture and molds a person's consciousness and immediate experience. The design transforms the pavilion's space into an ellipsoid spatial-temporal map that compiles an intended archive. Given the fair's current position, visitors are encouraged to consider and place themselves in the potential of the new sorts of built environments.
The display, “In Reflections”, draws attention to the architecture produced due to global collaboration and sees it as a resource and possibility for the future. It enables authors to interact with architectural paradigms built by generations working in Belgrade who had the chance to work around the non-aligned world as an infrastructure for the future.
Since the start of the project, we have been drawn to a unique period in the past when architects from our midst have had the opportunity to design spaces around the world. The state and political circumstances in which we work have little to do with the past about which we speak here, which does not even belong to us generationally. We have been attracted by the dynamic changes that have transformed this project in the last twenty years, from the international fair to a chaotic hypermarket. We wanted to hear from people who have direct experience of this space and to trigger the processes that will re-actualize this project.
--Njunić and Dičić
Many other countries have announced their pavilions for the international architecture exhibition curated by Lesley Lokko. The overarching theme of the biennale is "The Laboratory of the Future," and several countries have also delved into their pasts to make better decisions for the future of our built environments. For example, the Romanian Pavilion, “Now, Here, There,” will showcase innovative yet unusual ideas and past technological innovations as a source of inspiration for creating more enjoyable and resilient urban environments. The Taiwanese Pavilion, “Diachronic Apparatuses of Taiwan,” displays how locals throughout Taiwanese history have used their intuition to shape their environment, rediscovering what we may learn from nature. Finally, the Australian pavilion "Unsettling Queenstown" tackles themes of decolonization, deconstructing queenstowns all around the British empire, and encouraging audiences to imagine the future and its possibilities.
