2018 Venice Biennale: U.S. pavilion curators announced

“Dimensions of Citizenship”—that’s the title of the United States’ contribution the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. The upcoming exhibition at the event’s U.S. pavilion will explore architecture’s impact on the meaning of citizenship from policy to immigration and the lived experience. Also just announced are the show’s curators: University of Chicago architectural history professor Niall Atkinson, Future Firm co-founder and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Ann Lui, and architecture critic Mimi Zeiger.

“It is urgent that architecture act as an important tool in understanding, shaping, and envisioning what it means to be a citizen today,” said the curators in a statement. “Our goal is to present the United States as a site of critical research and practice in architecture, at the intersection of old and new forms of community engagement, political action, and public policy.”

The exhibition will draw on works by architects, designers, artists, and thinkers “who are responding to today’s shifting modes of citizenship, and putting forth visions of future ways of belonging.”

At the last architecture Venice Biennale, in 2016, the U.S. pavilion exhibition was curated by architects Cynthia Davidson and Monica Ponce de Leon and focused on architecture as a regenerative force in Detroit.

The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled Freespace, is curated by Grafton Architects with the aim of showcasing architecture’s “generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity.” The Biennale will run from May 26 through November 25, 2018.