Conversation with Shumi Bose - curator of the exhibition in the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale
Home Economics. The apartment challenge
The exhibition in the British Pavilion at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale was titled “Home Economics”.
Answering the question asked by the Biennale's curator Alejandro Aravenna about reports from the front of architectural battles, curators Jack Self, Shumi Bose and Finn Williams point to the housing problem as one of Britain's most important challenges. But they move the discussion from financial to functional and formal solutions, and submit their narrative not to particular rooms but to the time spent in the house or apartment. We therefore have the home by the hour, week, month or finally year. What is redesigned is the economic model of the home. The curators question the attachment to property that is dominant in British, just like in Polish, culture. They point to solutions that could be moved to the housing field from the sharing economy and show us how a bank providing a mortgage sees a house. The exhibition is a subversive and witty answer to the crisis. The questions presented by the curators and designers might open up new issues in the discussion about the future of Polish housing.