The Architecture Biennale: Anthropology of a Venetian Experiment is Albena Yaneva's behind-the-scenes account of how the Venice Biennale Architettura is actually made.
About This Book
The Venice Architecture Biennale is the discipline's most prestigious and influential event, and also one of its most opaque—surrounded by speculation about the mechanisms and money that keep it running. Yaneva followed the making of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in 2025, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., to document how such an exhibition is imagined, negotiated, curated and delivered.
Rather than reading the Biennale through press releases, media coverage or aesthetic critique, Yaneva's ethnographic method attends to the people and processes behind it: curatorial assistants, exhibition designers, Biennale staff, exhibitors, and the legal, logistical, financial and political constraints they work within. The result is a portrait of the Biennale as a complex, contested enterprise and a key instrument in shaping architectural discourse.
Key Features
- An ethnographic study of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice 2025
- Brings an anthropological method to architectural theory
- Developed in collaboration with the Politecnico di Torino
- Designed by Maud van Rossum
What You'll Discover
- How a Biennale exhibition is planned, negotiated and staged, from concept to opening
- The roles of the many people beyond the curator who bring the event into being
- How legal structures, logistics, budgets and political alliances shape what visitors see
- Why the Biennale matters so much to the way architecture is discussed
About the Author
Albena Yaneva is Professor of Architectural Theory at the Politecnico di Torino and at Columbia GSAPP. Her work examines contemporary architectural practice and the political reach of design. She received the RIBA President's Award for Outstanding University-based Research in 2010 and the Mark Cousins Theory Award in 2025.
Specifications
- Format: Softback
- Dimensions: 17 x 24 cm
- Pages: 200
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789462089426
- Publisher: nai010 Publishers
Perfect For: Architects, curators and students who have visited—or exhibited at—Venice, and readers interested in how architectural culture is produced.