For this year’s 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Singapore Pavilion activates discussion on new methods of measuring and evaluating the intangible and asks explicitly: how much is enough? The exhibition explores a community’s interaction with its surroundings, suggesting that they are not currently measured within the same measurable, quantifiable and gradable standards that buildings and the built environment are designed and built to. Moreover, the pavilion suggests that connecting these two pillars of city architecture, it is essential to rethink innovation in design. The exhibition asks how architects can quantify the immeasurable values of architecture: agency, attachment, attraction, connection, freedom, and inclusion.
Led by curators Ar. Melvin Tan, Ar. Adrian Lai and Ar. Wong Ker How, “WHEN IS ENOUGH, ENOUGH?” proposes how to begin measuring these intangibles. The exhibition's center piece is The Values Measurement Machine, a series of analog plotting devices that mark data on five-meter-tall calligraphic scrolls. Visitors are asked to answer six questions that highlight the intangible characteristics of the city to encourage reflection on the traits that can elevate the urban environment from a human-centered metropolis to a beloved, global one. Visitors will choose the ideal combination of characteristics to evoke their ideal habitat by navigating through various creative renderings, weighing their choices, and registering these values at the pavilion.
The Biennale Architettura 2023's six-month period will see this act of weighing and registering values represented on the giant calligraphic scrolls inside the Pavilion in a real-time display of consensus and contradiction. The machine is accompanied by exhibits with 41 additional questions that invite visitors to pause and learn more about the research conducted by the architectural firms involved in the Pavilion and their efforts to measure intangibles while exploring the fields of design for dementia and neurodiversity, rewilding, biodiversity, nutrition, and biomimicry ecosystems.
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"Architecture - A Place To Be Loved": Japan Announces Pavilion for the 2023 Venice BiennaleTogether with scholars and architects whose work focuses on agency, attachment, attractiveness, connection, freedom in the city, and inclusion, a series of exhibitions and discussion questions were developed. The Singapore Pavilion examines design strategies that achieve these six objectives, revealing obstacles and inconsistencies, and highlighting approaches for dealing with various preferences and the resulting problems. Throughout the display, the empirical data collected from the Values Measurement Machine will provide an overview of how turning intangible traits into facts can help people understand the importance of developing inclusive standards from the bottom up. The Pavilion experience also serves as an invitation for visitors to consider how much effort is necessary to realize the goals they have for their cities.
“WHEN IS ENOUGH, ENOUGH? The Performance of Measurement” proposes that a just society depends on its members constantly making sense of competing interests, values, and meanings, particularly in increasingly diverse and multiethnic cities. The Singapore Pavilion enables visitors to envision the intangible aspects significant to them in their own country and the roles architects and the public play in creating and bringing this reality to fruition.
Under the overarching theme of the biennale, “The Laboratory of the Future,” curated by Lesley Lokko, many other countries have announced their exhibitions' program. In a recent interview with ArchDaily, Lesley Lokko expressed that she hopes the annual exhibition “provokes the audience to think differently and more empathetically.” Similar to the Singapore Pavilion, the Polish Pavilion “Datament”, explores humanity’s relationship with data. The display showcases how prevalent data has become, shaping the reality in which we live, create, and dwell. Finally, the Japanese Pavilion “A Place to be Loved” explores the post-pandemic realities of developments, asking visitors to rediscover amazement and joy in shared physical urban spaces.
