Exhibiting Disciplinarity: The Venice Biennale of Architecture 1980–2012

Abstract

This study examines the changing definition of architecture over the last three decades through the lens of a real institution: the Venice Architecture Biennale. Its conceptual framework has been motivated by two dominant and apparently unrelated debates recently arising in architecture. The first of them is the ever- present discussion on disciplinary crisis and on the position of architecture among a wider group of epistemic cultures. The second regards the emergent concern about the impact of cultural institutions, such as the biennials, on the experience, rhythms, and modes of architectural knowledge construction and communication. The argument presented in this thesis is that there is a mutual dependence between the concepts of discipline and institution, emphasising that the study of architecture needs to consider the new institutional frameworks, in which its discourse has been produced, fixed and disseminated. In this sense, it stems from the assumption that architectural disciplinary knowledge is not exclusively contained in academic structures, neither based on classificatory categories — architecture is a historically discontinuous field and subject of change. This study tells a story about the disciplinary dilemmas and uncertainties of architectural discourse, from the first International Architecture Exhibition, The Presence of the Past (1980), to Common Ground (2012). It looks at the thirteen International Architecture Exhibitions thus subjected to the scope of inquiry, not as a simple succession of isolated events, but as episodes of a storyline supported by a broader constellation of ideas and actors that evolves over time. Accordingly, this study offers an overarching reading over three decades in order to identify the fluctuations and development of concepts, themes, and core values structuring architectural disciplinary culture. Finally, this account attempts to contribute to the study of the discipline of architecture as well as of the Venice Biennale, by introducing new approaches on the conceptualization and analysis of the notion of discipline itself.