In 2018, for its second edition, the Venice Design Biennial (formerly Design.Ve) combined again the discovery of design with the immersive experience that Venice offers, under the theme of Design After Darwin. Adapted to Adaptability. This edition was divided into a Main Group Exhibition curated by Luca Berta, Francesca Giubilei and Alice Stori Liechtenstein, and various Collateral Projects distributed throughout the city.
Curatorial theme
An object or a space can be designed in a way to ensure it performs the desired function with optimum efficiency. But what happens when the function continuously evolves, or becomes stratified as it is duplicated, triplicated, and multiplicated?
Our occupation of space and our utilize of objects change repeatedly. The allocation of function loses definition, replaced by a polymorphous management process of time and the use of space. Work and leisure are superimposed and often exist simultaneously in more and more spaces we call “home”, whether it is for economic, professional, or familial reasons. The home may also represent the “office” responding to the spatial needs of multiple people, resulting in phenomena of sharing increasingly seen across society such as co-working, co-housing, and more simply, renting through Airbnb.
Venice in this sense represents an avant-garde observatory, with the residential population in vertiginous decline (56,000 compared to 174,000 in 1951) that can be linked to the high number of commuters travelling from the mainland, university students sharing rooms, Venetians and foreigners alike living in Venice only temporarily, and the annual presence of 28 million tourists distributed across hotels, B&Bs, and tourist rented apartments. The existence of large cultural manifestations such as the Biennale propel the city towards a form of hybrid use as residential, manufacturing, and commercial spaces are provisionally transformed into exhibition spaces. This offers an experience of the city that is situated at the intersection of the fabric of everyday life and the uniqueness of art, design, and architecture.
Throughout the course of a single day, the same table can serve as a breakfast table for the family, a workspace for a meeting, a visual aid for an exhibition, a compositional backdrop for an Instagram post, or a prop for a YouTube video. What type of challenge does this fluidity present in the planning and design of an object or space? It is more than a question of creating a design in order to meet a specific singular function as it becomes more pertinent to produce a design adequately equipped to adapt to a progressively evolving set of multifarious functions.
Herein lies the notion of “adapted to adaptability”. It implies a relaxation of spatial confines and opening space up to indeterminacy, presenting the user with the freedom to play around and reinvent its use. As a result, both spaces and objects are capable of offering an unlimited and unpredictable range of functions. This idea has garnered support from Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara from the Grafton Architects, the curators of the Architecture Biennale 2018 entitled ““Freespace describes a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda, focusing on the quality of space itself. Freespace focuses on architecture’s ability to provide free and additional spatial gifts to those who use it and on its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers. Freespace celebrates architecture’s capacity to find additional and unexpected generosity in each project - even within the most private, defensive, exclusive or commercially restricted conditions.” Design.Ve “Adapted to Adaptability” presents a number of installations in various locations disseminated across the city of Venice that intend to exalt the extensive value of design, seen through its readiness to incorporate other uses, and the use by others. This facet of the nature of design becomes an active component in the transformation of everyday life due to the power to integrate with the unpredictable paths of the future, and a reinvention of what was only previously imaginable.
Within this are four concepts through which to interpret and comprehend the works, each proposing alternative approaches to design and establishing diverse forms of interaction between object and user:
Multiplicity: Objects that are multifunctional and able to adapt to different uses. This multifunctionality may be intentional in the design of the work or it may be the result of an emergence of new contextual needs, representing the evolutionary notion of exaptation.
Reconfiguration: Objects that communicate a potential reconstruction of the space in which it is placed due to its presence, articulation or position.
Reuse: Objects that utilize unusual or innovative materials suited to a specific function, objects that make use of recycled materials through recycling and upcycling, or alternatively, objects that have been designed using parts or the entirety of other objects thus transforming the previous function.
Transfiguration: Objects that are designed to satisfy a specific function, but that incorporate materials and or forms illustrating an investment in an aesthetic transfiguration and therefore elevating the object to a piece of consistently adaptable design based on its visual beauty.
