Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, curators of the 20th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, have unveiled the first details of the highly anticipated 2027 edition. Titled "Do Architecture - For the Possibility of Coexistence Facing a Real Reality," the exhibition will take place from May 8 to November 21, 2027, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and throughout Venice.
The curatorial direction reflects many of the ideas developed through the work of Amateur Architecture Studio, founded by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu in 1997. Their projects have consistently explored the reuse of salvaged materials, regional construction techniques, and the continuity between historic and contemporary forms of building. Across both urban and rural contexts, the studio's work often emphasizes craft traditions, collective memory, and the spatial qualities embedded within everyday environments.
In their curatorial statement, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu describe the contemporary world as increasingly shaped by instability, rapid transformation, and disconnection from lived reality. They argue that architecture has become overly influenced by abstraction, commercialization, and image-driven production, often losing its relationship with local conditions and human experience. "We believe that architecture is not only something to be discussed but, more importantly, something to be done first-hand," the curators state. "The philosophy of architecture is a philosophy of how to do: a practice that confronts real reality, in real places, through real construction."
The exhibition proposes architecture as a direct and material practice grounded in construction, bodily experience, and engagement with place. Through a series of questions, the curators examine the possibility of coexistence between seemingly opposing conditions: active and passive environmental strategies, urban and rural models of development, technological advancement, and tactile forms of making, as well as memory and innovation. "All these questions point to one essential path: facing real reality and local practice, and directly 'do architecture,'" they write. "It is precisely through this concrete act of 'do' that things which seem impossible to bring together can gather in one place."
Central to the exhibition is a broader critique of the homogenization of architecture and urbanization at a global scale. The curators argue that the rapid expansion of construction, coupled with increasingly standardized forms of development, has contributed to the erosion of local cultural and spatial identities. Referencing their long-standing experiments with reclaimed materials and traditional building techniques, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu position reuse and craftsmanship not as nostalgic gestures, but as critical architectural tools capable of addressing environmental, cultural, and social challenges simultaneously.
Parallel to their professional practice, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu have also played a significant role in architectural education in China, founding the Department of Architecture at the China Academy of Art in 2003 and later establishing its School of Architecture in 2007. Education is expected to play a central role in the Biennale, with the curators describing younger generations and architectural pedagogy as fundamental to navigating an increasingly uncertain future.
As in previous editions, the 20th International Architecture Exhibition will feature national participations presented in the pavilions of the Giardini and the Arsenale, alongside exhibitions and interventions distributed throughout the historic center of Venice. The 2025 edition, curated by Carlo Ratti under the title "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective." examined architecture's capacity to respond to climate change, demographic transformation, and artificial intelligence through interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches.
