For La Biennale di Venezia 17th International Architecture Exhibition, Studio Other Spaces responds to curator Hashim Sarkis’s question 'How will we live together?' with Future Assembly, a collaboration with six co-designers and fifty Biennale Architettura 2021 participants. The diverse group of designers and spatial practitioners imagine a more-than-human assembly for the future, inspired by the current paradigm for a multilateral assembly – the United Nations.
Located on the mezzanine of the Central Pavilion at the Giardini, Future Assembly comprises a display of fifty more-than-human ‘stakeholders’ from around the world submitted by the participants of Biennale Architettura 2021. These stakeholders – which include, among other things, fungi, estuaries, and ephemeral gases – represent those living and non-living entities whose rights are traditionally left out of human legislation. All fifty stakeholders convene on the shared ground of the Future Assembly World Map, a circular carpet, twelve metres in diameter, woven from up-cycled ocean plastic. Human attempts to recognise and secure the rights of nature during the 75-year history of the Charter of the United Nations are presented in the More-than-human Chart, which spans three walls of the exhibition. Visitors can further explore Future Assembly online at www.futureassembly.earth.
The eight co-designers are Studio Other Spaces (SOS) – represented by its founders, artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann – with Caroline A. Jones, professor of art history; Hadeel Ibrahim, activist; Kumi Naidoo, Global ambassador, Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity; Mariana Mazzucato, professor and founding director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London; Mary Robinson, chair of the Elders and adjunct professor of climate justice at Trinity College; and Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.