At the conclusion of the meeting, the President of the Biennale Paolo Baratta declared:

“The Board first wished to thank the Minister for the Cultural Heritage and Activities Lorenzo Ornaghi and the Parliamentary Commissions for having expedited the procedures and having thereby been able, just a few days after their designation, to reach a decision on the appointment of the President and the members of the new Board of Administration of la Biennale di Venezia. La Biennale could only reciprocate by proceeding with the same alacrity to take the decisions required to begin operations on the next four-year period, in particular in the fields for which the decisions were most urgent.

For Architecture, the Board of Administration knew that David Chipperfield had already been contacted, and that he had shown great interest in being appointed as Director of the International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale. We thank him for accepting and for having patiently awaited the official designation. Kazuyo Sejima’s appointment brought this Exhibition back into the hands of an architect, and Chipperfield’s pursues the same course. After a series of Exhibitions that illustrated the many different ways of approaching the theme of architecture in the contemporary era (sociological, technological, urban), it appeared useful to turn to an architect who demonstrates great interest in architecture as a discipline and raises questions about the elements of which it is composed, about the objectives it pursues, about the constraints that affect it, about the tools that it uses to shape places, spaces, buildings. The next Architecture Exhibition will be characterized by the emphasis on a series of relationships that connect great architects and younger generations that refer to them. This Exhibition will represent a major opportunity to bring both the general public and the world of architecture up to date. This is also why it has already begun to organize the program involving Universities from all around the world, entitled Biennale Sessions, successfully tested during the last edition of the Exhibition."