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PG20 embraces time-based design processes that allow designers to think of forms and spaces, as well as behaviours and events in constant flux – programmable, interactive and intelligent.
Some may argue that the future is ‘phygital’ – a combination of physical and digital experiences. As architects, we believe that architecture can provide key skills in theorising and designing phygitality as it understands both the physical environment (materiality, ecology, sustainability) as well as the digital environment (virtual realities, Metaverses, video game worlds).
This year PG20 studied Venice, one of the best-known and most culturally active cities. Elegant and beautiful, simultaneously introverted and extroverted, secluded and yet overrun by tourists, the city in the lagoon is heavily endangered by rising sea levels. More must be done to preserve the city for future generations. Based on their research into Venice, students developed their own visions to turn it into a prototypical phygital city, taking into consideration both human and non-human components.
During our field trip we visited the 2022 Venice Art Biennale, titled ‘The Milk of Dreams’ and curated by Cecilia Alemani. Its three main themes – the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies and the links between bodies and Earth – provided food for thought and a plethora of artistic phygital examples.
The Venice Biennale, established in 1895, today include 29 national pavilions; in addition to the Giardini and the Arsenale sites, there are many more related venues. To make the Biennale more inclusive, students set out to re-imagine a new tradition, envisioning phygital pavilions beyond their scope of national representation and identity, activated not only during the Biennales, but all year long. The new pavilions were designed as flexible, adaptable and performative architectures; they catered for artists and architects exhibiting in loco, as much as for digital-native artists, architects and decentralised international collaboratives. By making them accessible to local physical visitors as well as to global digital audiences, these phygital pavilions may prove to be more equitable, inclusive and sustainable than the existing typologies.