Everyday, the theme of the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, Brazil, proposed by the curators Vanessa Grossman, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Ciro Miguel, seeks to reveal architecture and space through everyday life. Architects and urban planners have long aspired to design total environments, civilizations, even the planet. However, in the current climate of political and economic uncertainty, occurring against the backdrop of unprecedented environmental impacts wrought by rapid technological development, design professionals have begun to acknowledge the vulnerability of their work to global transformations and the challenges of an automated future.
In response, by shifting their focus to the quotidian realm they have started to pose fundamental questions about the core remit of design in an over-designed world—be it banal objects, daily routines, rote maintenance protocols, or even the use of basic resources. This line of inquiry, which is proposed by the XII Biennale, reframes what appears to be the most trivial dimension of reality—the everyday—as an intrinsic mediator in the ongoing production of architecture and the city, in search of a new a new ethic and aesthetic of humbleness.
Everyday is structured according to three curatorial axes: Everyday Stories, Everyday Resources, and Everyday Maintenance. Each showcases pertinent architectural and urban projects, research, speculative works, and installations, as well as other spatial interventions that relate to the contemporary dynamics of the everyday realm at different scales: from the body to the objects, from the interior spaces to the city, to the planet.
Information on the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, and on the Open Call for its core exhibition, is available on the event's website.
Entries must be submitted digitally using an online form. The selection process will be conducted by a jury composed of the curators of the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo together with Javier Agustín Rojas (architect, photographer, and journalist from Buenos Aires, Argentina), Gabriela de Matos Moreira Barbosa (architect and founding coordinator of the Brazilian collective Arquitetas Negras) and Renato Cymbalista (architect and professor at the University of São Paulo).
Proposals for the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo can be submitted via the website only.
Deadline: April 1, 2019 at 5 pm (Brasília time)
Curators
Vanessa Grossman is a Brazilian architect and historian of architecture who graduated from the Universities of São Paulo and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She holds a PhD from Princeton University, and in 2019-2020 she will join the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich-ETHZ as a postdoctoral researcher.
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is a French architect, urban planner and a researcher who graduated from ENSA-Marseille and holds a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich-ETHZ, where she is a teaching assistant and researcher.
Ciro Miguel is a Brazilian architect and photographer who graduated from the University of São Paulo and Columbia University, and is also a teaching assistant and researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich-ETHZ.
