ARCHITECTURE IS BOTH A DISCIPLINE AND AN ART, according to the president of La Biennale di Venezia. “And we see it as a lesson.” Roberto Cicutto was speaking to a crowd at the opening reception for one of hundreds of installations at the eighteenth edition of the architecture biennale, the largest and most prestigious architecture event in the world. His words seemed chosen to anticipate the critics’ arguments that architects have given up on showing buildings at the biennale.
Sure enough, in the weeks after the opening, commentators complained about too many lessons in Venice. The biennale, they argued, was now more interested in didactic films, abstract art installations and interminable research.
The most prominent critic was Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, who, in a Facebook broadside, worried about a profession at risk of “discursive self-annihilation”. He said he “gave up” on
