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Venice Biennale 2008

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Venice Biennale 2008

The British Pavilion for the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale was curated by award-winning architecture critic Ellis Woodman. Woodman used the exhibition to examine how five contemporary architects, all inheritors of the generation gap that ensued when Britain’s programme of post-war reconstruction drew to a close in the 1970s, are beginning to address the question of housing again. The exhibition considered the scale of Britain’s housing challenge and its potential to contribute to progressive architectural, social, commercial and legislative thinking.

The exhibition not only explored the roots of the British obsession with home ownership but the effect of the long-term domination of housing by private-sector developers in the UK. The five featured British architects who have built housing both in the UK and abroad included de Rijke Marsh Morgan, Maccreanor Lavington, Sergison Bates, Tony Fretton and Witherford Watson Mann.

14 September – 23 November 2008