The Latvian Pavilion has installed a black box made of "an uncanny web of black pipes" to interrogate the contradictory nature of our relationship with technology at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale which opened to the public on 22 May in Venice, Italy.

The pavilion, themed as It's Not For You! It's For the Building, sets a in intrinsic question on the role of technology in our daily lives it is posing and its answers and solutions to urban global issues. 

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto ( Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Located at the Arsenale venue, the pavilion is curated by Latvian architecture office NRJA whose members include Uldis Lukševics, Elīna Lībiete, Ivars Veinbergs, Ieva Lāce-Lukševica, Zigmārs Jauja, Inga Dubinska, Līga Jumburga.

Taking the role of technology at the core of the pavilion, the curators requestion the duality of technology that human race faces in today's era. According to the curatorial team, while technologies are creating and finding solutions, they also put a risk creating new problems along the way.

"With climate crisis at our doorstep, every architect now has an urgent global problem to solve," said the curatorial team. 

"As crucial as technologies are in finding solutions, they also risk creating new problems along the way." 

"Our exhibition and the accompanying book explore human resistance to technology as a pressing issue in contemporary architecture."

While the exhibition focuses on instances of unsettling techno-nonsense, the pavilion evaluates the importance of the human perspective in architecture and emphasizes the need to help people learn to live together with today’s intelligent machines. 

"In so doing, we pursue an informed and balanced coexistence of comfort-seeking individuals with sustainability-driven technology as the condition for a liveable future for humanity," added the team.

To reflect this idea, the team has created an uncanny web of black pipes that belong to an unknown source. The enormous apparatus first appears to be a foreign organism parasitizing on space that used to belong to humans. 

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto (Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Inviting visitors to change their perspective, the installation also helps to discover an amusing neighbour in this seemingly threatening intruder — "one that reacts to our presence and even addresses us in an incomprehensible yet comforting language of its own."

The team added that "this immersive experience of learning to live with technology spells out a promise of a sustainable partnership between humans and machines which are, after all, our own creations made for our own good — notwithstanding any initial negative sentiments."

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto (Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto (Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto (Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto (Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Ēriks Bozis and Alessandro Zorzetto (Architetture Precarie), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Part of the curatorial team (from the left – Ivars Veinbergs, Elīna Lībiete, Austra Bērziņa, Līga Jumburga, Ieva Lāce-Lukševica, Uldis Lukševics). (Photo by Andrejs Strokins for NRJA, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Transformed Latvian pavilion exhibited in Riga, Latvia in 2020. (Photo by Ēriks Božis for NRJA, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License)

Illustration of the Latvian pavilion at the la Biennale di Venezia. (By Ivars Veinbergs for NRJA)

illustration of the transformed Latvian pavilion exhibited in Riga, Latvia in 2020. (By Ivars Veinbergs for NRJA)

Photos of the book "It’s not for you! It’s for the building" (By Alexey Murashko)

The 17th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice has opened to the public on 22 May 2021. The exhibition will be on view till 21 November 2021. 

This year’s architecture biennale is themed as "How will we live together?" by the curator Hashim Sarkis, the theme explores a widening context that helps architects to "imagine spaces in which we can generously live together".

We invite our readers to find out WAC's detailed coverage about the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale on our Italy page. 

It's Not For You! It's For the Building exhibition facts

Curators: NRJA (Uldis Lukševics, Elīna Lībiete, Ivars Veinbergs, Ieva Lāce-Lukševica, Zigmārs Jauja, Inga Dubinska, Līga Jumburga)

Installation design team: NRJA

Realization: NRJA, Edgars Ošs, Ansis Bergmanis, Mārtiņš Dāboliņš, Pēteris Riekstiņš, Juris Simanovičs, Artūrs Tols, Viesturs Laiviņš, Artūrs Kalvāns.

Book “It’s not for you! It’s for the building”: NRJA and Levelup (Olga Procevska, Igors Gubenko, Jekaterina Firjane)

Idea of the title: Peter Trummer 

Graphic design: Alexey Murashko

Illustrations: Ivars Veinbergs

Audio design: Gatis Ziema

Photography: Ēriks Božis, Andrejs Strokins

Video: Ēriks Božis, Marta Elīna Martinsone

Project management: Austra Bērziņa

Project manager’s assistant: Jeļena Smelova

Communications: Linda Bērziņa

Translators and proofreaders: Raxti (Mārtiņš Sīlis, Oskars Jansons), Will Mawhood, Elīna Lībiete, Marco Benda

Subtitles: Pēteris Masļenčenko

Commissioner: Jānis Dripe (Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia)

On behalf of: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia

All images © Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia unless otherwise stated. 

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