Venice Biennial Architecture exhibition: Equatorial Utopia
22 May - 21 Nov | The Equatorial Utopia exhibition by Future Cities Laboratory will portray how architecture and urban design in Singapore have been tempered, adapted, and transformed by socio-cultural, economic, climatic, and political conditions.
Over the past half century, Singapore’s urban development has been fast-paced. After becoming an independent republic in 1965, the small island state with limited land and natural resources and a current population of approximately 5.6 million embarked rapidly on industrialisation and urbanisation programs to provide jobs and housing for its people.
Ever since, the built and natural environment have been high priorities on Singapore’s agenda and its urban vision has evolved from a ‘Garden City’ to a ‘City in a Garden’ and now a ‘City in Nature’. In this context, Singapore has been a place of many visionary projects that can be interpreted as ‘modernist utopian constructs’ for the building of the nation.
At this year’s external pageVenice Biennial Architecture Exhibition, Prof. Dr. Thomas Schroepfer and Prof. Sacha Menz from the Future Cities Laboratory have collaborated with Maison de l’Architecture Genève and G8A Architecture & Urban Planning to show an excerpt of a large traveling exhibition that will be launched in full at Pavillon Sicli in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 2022.
The exhibition titled “Equatorial Utopia”, portrays how architecture and urban design in Singapore, often with strong Western influences, have been tempered, adapted, and transformed by the socio-cultural, economic, climatic, and political conditions. The projects selected for the exhibition demonstrate the utopian dimension of architecture and urban design in Singapore. These projects have had a significant impact on the discourse regarding the built environment in Southeast Asia and beyond.
About the co-curators
The external pageMaison de l'Architecture Genève (MA), established in 2007, is a non-profit organization with the mission to foster exchange about and reflection on the art of building. Every year, MA organises thematic conferences and exhibitions on topics related to territory, urbanism, engineering and architecture. These events are open to other disciplines as well, with the aim of raising awareness and sensitising the public to the larger discourse on the built environment.
external pageG8A Architecture & Urban Planning is an architecture, urban planning, and interior design company with offices in Geneva, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Singapore. From design principles established in Switzerland, then learning from the contrasting context of the East, the company has been able to strengthen their designs with projects in Asia for over a decade.