The 13th Venice Architecture Biennale (1) will take place between the 29th of August and the 25th of November of 2012, in the Giardini della Biennale at the Arsenale Pavilion. With 55 countries, the exhibition invites 111 participants - among architects, photographers, critics and scholars to submit projects specially elaborated under the guise Common Ground, proposed by the guest curator of this issue, the British architect David Chipperfield.

Interestingly, one can take the precise choice of the term common, rather than shared or collective, as an intention to broaden the regard on architecture beyond the public sphere, since the common precedes the public and the private. In this sense, it is placed as a production of knowledge that, at the same time, comprises what is particular and what is universal. While ground refers to the material milieu where urban artifacts are built. Hopefully, the ambiguous combination of these two words can encourage a downturn in the mainstream mentality that in the recent years has coined the urban landscape  with a mediatic celebration of iconic buildings, often over-identified with innocuous green discourses. Unlike previous biennales, whose thematics have related architecture with other disciplines, the present quest for a common ground is a possibility to turn architecture to itself, within the production of its own history and its own language while a collective property. Following this disciplinary reflection, the 13th curating privileges co-authored studies that consciously dialogue with the architectural legacy that precedes them. Therefore, David Chipperfield has called the participants to frankly expose themselves to the critical fortune offered by an international biennale - rather than deliberately showing off their own individual talents to the limelight. Thus, the montage will emphasize the affinities between the projects that, although might differ in their apparent results, can be expected to have in common the relevance of their meaning within the history of architecture. That is, the participants understand the word project as the lifetime construction of an ideal that transcends the pragmatic finality of designing a building. Thus, the work presented in Venice is expected to be primarily motivated by a critical attitude before the political-economic circumstances and technological dimensions of which architects are often expected to be adjuncts.

Besides the exhibition of 63 studies, the 13th Venice Biennale will organize two series of events - the Biennale Sessions and Conversations about Architecture, open to students, educators and research groups from several universities. According to the chairman Paolo Baratta, these initiatives confirm the role of the Biennale as an institution open to the spirit of research. In contrast with the latter Exhibitions of São Paulo and Rotterdam, which were mainly reported to the lay public with simplified studies of participatory urbanism, the Venice Biennale is clearly addressed to the specific audience. Such position can be understood as a lucid counterpoint to the common place where architects trivialize the graphical and literary representation of their projects under the delusional pretext of making them accessible to the public. Fortunately, however, one can expect from the next Biennale the hosting of authors whose trajectories are marked by an intellectual commitment to the practice of architecture and that, thereby, produce texts as a significant part of their work. Among the cast of examples, is the architect Peter Eisenman, the office DOGMA, the essayists of the journal San Rocco, the critic and historian Kenneth Frampton, the architects Rafael Moneo and Juan Herreros. Open only to guest architects and to accredited photographers, the International Jury will award the best interpretations of the theme Common Ground in the forms of critical essay and of photograph.

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Translation: Olivia Marra

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13th International Architecture Exhibition – Common Ground. Directed by David Chipperfield. Venezia Open: from 29th August to 25th November 2012. Preview: 27th 28th August. Awards ceremony and opening: 29th August. Scheduling tours: Tel +39 041 5218828 - Fax +39 041 5218732; promozione@labiennale.org; www.labiennale.org; www.labiennalechannel.org.