Germany at the Architecture Biennale Venice 2008

Updating Germany shows small and large steps into a better future – ecologically and socially sustainable projects that are conceived, planned, or built in Germany or by German architects, designers, artists and engineers. Primarily these are research projects design experiments and pilot projects – and not just in architecture and urban planning. This interdisciplinary approach corresponds with the overall theme of this year’s Biennale Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, focussing on experimentation and research and examining the wider impact of architecture. The 11th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is running from 14 September until 23 November, 2008.
Updating Germany is curated by Friedrich von Borries and Matthias Böttger from the Berlinbased agency raumtaktik, which pursues investigation of space and spatial intervention. Both were appointed as general commissioners by the German Federal Ministry of Transportation, Building and Urban Affairs. They are the youngest curators that were ever commissioned to curate the German contribution to the world’s biggest and most important exhibition on architecture and urban development, the Architecture Biennale in Venice.
Updating Germany is collection, documentation and discussion: The exhibition Updating Germany asks: How do we want to live tomorrow? Contemporary schemes and research projects from the extended field of architecture provide a framework for a way forward in a socially and ecologically responsible and sustainable manner. The catalogue Updating Germany presents, as the subtitle suggests, 100 Projects for a Better Future: from realistic architecture to visionary experiments, research projects and futuristic fantasies. The second accompanying publication A Better Future? In Search of the Spaces of Tomorrow imagines possible worlds in which we might have to live tomorrow.
The press preview of the German pavilion will take place on 11 September, 2008. A press conference will be held on 12 September, 2008. For further information, interview requests and images, please contact: sally below cultural affairs (Berlin)
Franziska Eidner, Tel. +49 30 69 51 85 27, E-Mail: eidner@sally-below-ca.de

Introductory Statement by the General Commissioners
Consumption, participation, fun, solidarity, growth, modesty, engagement, balance, austerity, love, hope, cooperation… How do we want to live? Global injustice is increasing ever more visibly, and climate change and environmental destruction contribute their part. One can no longer feel comfortable with this even in the rich West. At the same time, the majority does not appear willing to do without the amenities of their bubble of affluence. How long can we continue to afford this indifference? Is it possible to dissolve the contradictions? Is there a future between consumption and cooperation, between growth and austerity, between fortification and freedom?
These are big questions. Architecture can and does contribute to answering them. Buildings are sealed, insulated and optimized. But that will not be enough. That’s why we are interested in concepts, ways of thinking and strategies that aim to change behaviour patterns and our ideas of life. As radical pragmatists, we thereby operate with updates. We are familiar with updates from the computer: the system is further developed in steps. Each version brings improvements and innovations, but sometimes also new mistakes. For the problems of our world we also need many small steps that can rapidly become larger. Updating Germany shows such small and large steps – ecologically and socially sustainable projects that are conceived, planned or built in Germany or by German architects, designers and engineers. Primarily these are research projects, design experiments and pilot projects – and not just in architecture and urban planning. Here the point is not right or wrong, nor completeness. The challenges are much too complex for that. Rather, the aim here is a joint search we must all carry out. The projects we present are merely suggestions and inspiration for this. One may laugh at some of the ideas some day, while in retrospect others will be recognized as pioneers of a new way of thinking, perhaps even of a new epoch.
One thing is clear: we must think and act in many directions at the same time. There will be detours and wrong turns. We will have to live with this multi-optionality. We see it as opportunity, perhaps our last opportunity. A new idea about life will emerge, a new culture.
An architecture that is more than building will be part of it. Friedrich von Borries, Matthias Böttger, May 2008