我们将如何共同生活？——2021年威尼斯建筑双年展主题

哈希姆·萨基斯/Hashim Sarkis

黄华青 译/Translated by HUANG Huaqing

我们需要一份新的空间契约。在激化的政治割裂与日增的经济不平等背景下，我们呼吁建筑师想象这样一种空间，让我们在普遍意义上“共同”生活。

“共同”，作为人类，尽管个人主义不断增强，还是渴望通过数码或现实世界与彼此乃至其他物种连接；

“共同”，作为新的家庭，寻求更加多元化、有尊严的居住空间；

“共同”，作为新兴的社群，要求平等、包容和空间身份；

“共同”，跨越政治边界，想象新的地理联结；

“共同”，随着我们的星球面临危机，需要全球行动方能继续生活。

第十七届国际建筑展的参展人和其他从业人员及支持者合作——不仅有艺术家、建造商、工程师和手艺人，还包括政治家、记者、社会科学家和日常市民。实际上，2021年建筑双年展试图强调，建筑师的角色不仅是热忱的召集者，也是这种空间契约的监护者。

同时，建筑展还坚持如下立场：建筑在其物质、空间和文化特殊性上都能启发我们共同生活的方式。就此，我们呼吁参展人凸显该主题所折射的独一无二的建筑要素。

阐释问题

本届建筑双年展的主题已体现于标题中。该标题提出一个问题：“我们将如何共同生活？”这个问题是开放的。

“我们”：说明主语是复数，因此可以包容其他人群、其他物种，呼唤一种更具共情理解力的建筑学。

“将”：表明在面向未来的同时寻求愿景和决心，从建筑想象中汲取力量。

“如何”：指向操作路径和切实方案，强调建筑学思辨以解决问题为目标的重要性。

“共同”：意味着社群、共同体、普世价值，凸显建筑作为一种集合形式和一种集体表达的形式。

“生活”：意味着不仅仅要生存，还要繁荣，要兴盛，要居住，要表达生活，挖掘建筑学内在的乐观主义。

“？”：是一个开放的问题，而非一个修辞层面的问题，寻求（多种）答案，称颂蕴含于建筑、超越于建筑的多元价值。

“我们将如何共同生活”这个问题，初听起来古老而紧迫。古巴比伦人在建造通天塔时曾如此发问；亚里士多德在其著作中讨论政治问题时也曾如此发问，他的回答是“城市”；法国和美国的革命者亦如此发问。在1970年代早期的动荡背景下，蒂米·托马斯充满激情地在歌声中发问：“我们为何不能共同生活？”

这不仅是社会和政治问题，同样是空间问题。近期，社会规范的快速转变、左翼与右翼的政治极化、气候变化，以及劳动和资本之间割裂的不断扩大，都让该问题变得前所未有的紧迫且无处不在。与此同时，当代政治模型的羸弱使我们不得不寄希望于空间，或许如亚里士多德所言，探寻建筑塑造居住的方式，由此想象我们将如何共同生活的潜在模型。

每一代人都认为有必要提出这个问题，并以自己独一无二的方式来回答。与先前由意识形态驱动的几代人不同，当今的一代似乎存在这样一种共识，即这一问题的答案不可能源自任何单一源头。来源的多元性和答案的多样性，只会丰富我们共同享有的生活，而非形成阻碍。

我们向建筑师提出这个问题，因为我们对当今政治所提供的答案并不满。在威尼斯建筑双年展的语境下，我们向建筑师提出这个问题，因为我们相信，他们有能力给出更具启发性的答案。我们向建筑师发问，因为他们擅长在设计和建造过程中召集不同的行动者及专家。我们向建筑师发问，因为作为建筑师，我们一直全神贯注于塑造让人们共同生活的空间，一直在想象一种不同于社会规范指令约束下的新生活。

从这种意义上说，我们设计的每一个空间都会在拥抱所服从的社会契约的同时，为其提供一条替代路径。我们渴望激发社会契约最好的一面，并提出我们认为能够予以改善的替代措施。单一家庭住宅或许最终仍会延续二战后核心家庭模型的显性价值和隐性压迫，但我们也看到来自建筑师强有力的实验，他们挑战了独立住宅的家庭秩序和性别区隔，转而提出替代性的平面布局和开放程度。

值得期待的是，这个问题会持续推动我们向好的方向发展，并进一步建构建筑和建筑师赖以维持的乐观主义。我们的职业任务是为更好的生活设计更好的空间。我们的挑战并非是否应该保持乐观。我们没有选择。我们的选择是，如何更成功地通过我们以建筑创造的“愿景”来为居者争取更好的生活。

当下的全球疫情无疑使得本届建筑双年展提出的问题变得更为切题和紧迫——虽说在强制隔离措施下，这甚至显得有些讽刺。这或许真是个巧合，因为该主题是在疫情开始前几个月提出的。然而，很多引导我们提出这一问题的原因——日益严峻的气候危机、大量人口流离失所、全球各地的政治不稳定，以及激增的种族、社会和经济不平等——都将我们引向这场疫情，并让一切变得更为休戚相关。

一份新的空间契约

5个人走进只有4把椅子的房间，将会如何安排座位？他们可以玩抢椅子游戏，这是一种空间契约。他们也可以把椅子连排在一起形成一把长椅，这样就可以挤在一起。还有一个例子，当一座城市决定建造一条新的地铁线，它应该连接哪些部分、又抛弃哪些部分？影响决策的或许包括经济因素、政治竞争和技术支撑，但某种意义上，地铁线的布局却取代并成为了一种大部分人口彼此联系的方式，逾越于试图蒙蔽或割裂他们的政治之上。

政治和政策为集体生活铺设了前提和路线图，但人们在空间中聚集，空间则帮助塑造和改变前者所确立的社会契约。例如，当亚里士多德试图描述理想的民主时，他无法脱离城市来阐明。我们很难想象一个社会而不考虑它所占据的空间。从那时候开始，政治理论家便时常依赖空间来解释社会，同时驱动他们想象中的社会。从卢梭到罗尔斯，他们皆认为人所形成社会的过程，应发生在一个能够帮助塑造社会契约的空间中。如果某项社会契约决定了人们进入社会所必须放弃或得到的自由，那么空间契约便决定了人们借助空间互动以协商自由的方法。空间契约领先、预演、阐释、物化，不可避免地催化或抑制又时常取代了社会契约。

城市史学家认为，墙的共享是标志了城市出现的时刻。这个时刻意味着，两栋住宅经过重新思考，走上了节俭和共享的道路。空间契约的奇特之处在于空间需要特定准则的观念，但它在某种意义上非常多元，因为空间具有某种可促发多样性的共时性。因此，观察某社会如何塑造空间以及其空间形塑了怎样的准入和行为准则，或许就和观察他们的道德标准本身一样重要。

我们依旧在按照一个早已过时的关于好生活的理念居住于住宅和城市中。这些空间的建筑韧性或许能够随着我们需求的变化而不断调整，但如今，它们已抵达弹性的极限。

我们的身体需要新的修复术，而且愈发需要全新的自由来表达流动的性别立场。他们变得多元化，从一致性之中解放出来，然而关于其舒适性的建筑标准依然是基于标准化的路径，限制着身体，并将其从环境中脱离。我们的家庭生活早已变得愈发多元化，但人们依然乏味地复制着核心家庭的模型，包括其根深蒂固的关于等级和隐私的偏见。我们的社会联结已变得更为离散和多样，但社区空间依然围绕着联结的价值观展开，后者通常显得更加内向、自闭。我们的城市扩张早已超越不同功能区划和收入群体塑造的中心化模型，但人们依然认为一座好的城市应具有一个中心，具有空间组织上的社会层级，并且背靠乡村和自然。首要的是，我们日益意识到自己的空间实践——包括交通和环境控制——的全球风险，但我们的生活方式依然假定自己独自生活在拥有无限资源的被动星球上。用歌手普林斯的话来概括，我们依然“像1999年那样开派对”。

我们不能再指望政治家来提出通向更好未来的路径。尽管政治持续创造着分裂和隔阂，我们却能通过建筑来提供共同生活的替代方式。毕竟，空间相对那些塑造了它的人类境遇，常常能够预先存在、投射呈现，或是更长时间地留存。空间契约能够构筑社会契约。我们寻求这样一种空间契约，它是普世且包容的，一种可以让所有人群和物种以其多样性共存并茁壮生长的扩充契约。

走向一种新的建筑能动性

2021年威尼斯建筑双年展是由当下世界摆在建筑学面前的一系列新问题所驱动的，同时它的启发还来自年轻建筑师觉醒的行动主义，以及建筑行业为了直面挑战而提出的激进修正方案。

建筑师在本质上都是召集者。他们综合不同的领域，协调不同的职业要求，最后将它们一起呈现给甲方。他们也是契约的监护者。但除此之外，建筑师通过其安排、分隔和联结空间的方式，提供了可能的社会组织。他们同时塑造了社会与社群所拥有的时刻、回忆及表达，创造一种共同的语言，让公众得以讨论和沟通他们的经验和文化。

今天的建筑师，正在重新思考手中的工具，以应对其面临的复杂问题。他们也在扩大眼前的谈判桌，以吸纳其他的从业者及市民。为了更有效地承担他们被赋予的责任，建筑师正致力于发挥他们最重要的作用——不同形式的专业技能和表达方式的整合者。

前所未有地，人们希望建筑师来提供替代路径。我们调用综合的技能将人们团结在一起，以解决复杂的矛盾。作为艺术家，我们蔑视不行动主义，这来自提出“这样又会如何”的不确定性。作为建造者，我们从深邃无穷的乐观主义出发，试图做到最好。在这个混沌的时代，不同角色的交汇只会让我们的能动性变得更强；而我们希望，这也让我们的建筑变得更美好。

5 种尺度

2021年建筑双年展的主展览包括来自46个国家的112位参展人，尤其是来自非洲、拉丁美洲和亚洲的代表不断增加，而参展男女比例也愈发均衡。

这次展览还包括一系列研究站，它们作为对展览项目的补充，提供了针对相关话题的深度分析。这些研究站是由来自世界各地的大学的研究者开发的，包括：英国建筑联盟学院、贝鲁特美国大学、巴莱特建筑学院、哥伦比亚大学、库珀联盟学院、苏黎世联邦理工学院、埃塞俄比亚建筑与城市发展学院、马德里高等建筑技术学院、哈佛大学、香港大学、威尼斯建筑大学、卡尔斯鲁厄技术大学、鲁汶大学、莱斯大学，以及来自麻省理工学院的研究团体——威尼斯实验室。

2021年建筑双年展是按照5种不同尺度来组织的：其中3种布置在军械库展区，另两种在中央展馆。项目的类型包括分析性的、概念性的、实验性的、经过验证的，以及已广泛应用的。每种尺度又进一步指向一系列不同主题，各自在双年展的建筑及场地的独立展厅中进行展示。

这5种尺度包括：多样的生命之间、作为新的家庭、作为新兴的社区、跨越边界、同一个星球。

（1）多样生命之间（军械库展区）

-为新的身体设计：面向人类身体感知和观念的改变；

-与其他生命共存：凸显与其他生命的共情行为及涉入。

（2）作为新家庭（军械库展区）

-满足新的人口结构：回应家庭结构和密度的变迁；

-居住于新的建构学：探索应用于创新住宅建造的技术；

-共同分开居住：拓展公寓建筑作为集合居住类型的可能。

（3）作为新兴社区（军械库展区）

-呼吁市民性：探索让社区在空间上组织起来的新方式；

-重新装配社会：提出新型的社会配套设施（公园、学校、医院等）；

-汇聚在威尼斯：在海平面升高、疫情和人口结构变迁的挑战下构想威尼斯的未来；

-共居：展现我们如何在这些地方共同生活——亚的斯亚贝巴、阿兹拉克难民营、贝鲁特、印巴走廊、拉各斯以及开罗和瓜达拉哈拉的寮屋聚落、纽约、普利斯蒂纳、里约热内卢和圣保罗城市圈。

（4）跨越边界（花园展区，中央展馆）

-超越城乡隔阂：调和全球城市与全球腹地之间日益扩大的社会经济差距；

-联结黎凡特：协商黎凡特地区尖锐的政治隔离；

-寻找庇护：审视被迫迁徙的空间挑战；

-保护全球共同体：调动建筑想象以应对极地、亚马孙、大洋、印度洋-太平洋海域和空域的濒危财产。

（5）同一个星球（花园展区，中央展馆）

-创造世界：预期并校准星球的未来；

-设计未来的大集合：为联合国提出一份不止于人类的未来方案；

-气候变化的设计变革：应对全球环境恶化的解决方案；

-空间网络：联结地球和外太空。

除了在中央展馆和军械库展区室内的展览之外，花园展区和军械库展区的室外场地也陈列了若干与以上5个尺度相关的装置展品。此外，威尼斯内陆部分的福蒂·玛盖拉公园还设置了5个相关装置：我们将如何共同玩耍？□

We need a new spatial contract. In the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, we call on architects to imagine spaces in which we can generously livetogether:

·togetheras human beings who, despite increasing individuality, yearn to connect with one another and with other species across digital and real space;

·togetheras new households looking for more diverse and dignified spaces for inhabitation;

·togetheras emerging communities that demand equity, inclusion, and spatial identity;

·togetheracross political borders to imagine new geographies of association;

·togetheras a planet facing crises that require global action for all of us to continue living at all.

The participants in the 17th International Architecture Exhibition are collaborating with other professions and constituencies - artists, builders, engineers, and craftspeople, but also politicians, journalists, social scientists, and everyday citizens. In effect, the Biennale Architettura 2021 asserts the vital role of the architect as both cordial convener and custodian of the spatial contract.

In parallel, this Exhibition also maintains that it is in its material, spatial, and cultural specificity that architecture inspires the ways we live together. In that respect, we ask the participants to highlight those aspects of the main theme that are uniquely architectural.

Unpacking the Question

The theme of this Biennale Architettura is its title. The title is a question: How will we live together? The question is open.

How: Speaks to practical approaches and concrete solutions, highlighting the primacy of problem-solving in architectural thinking.

Will: Signals looking toward the future but also seeking vision and determination, drawing from the power of the architectural imaginary.

We: Is first person plural and thus inclusive of other peoples, of other species, appealing to a more empathetic understanding of architecture.

Live: Means not simply to exist but to thrive, to flourish, to inhabit, and to express life, tapping into architecture's inherent optimism.

Together: Implies collectives, commons, universal values, highlighting architecture as a collective form and a form of collective expression.

?: Indicates an open question, not a rhetorical one, looking for (many) answers, celebrating the plurality of values in and through architecture.

The question, "How will we live together?" is at once ancient and urgent. The Babylonians asked it as they were building their tower. Aristotle asked it when he was writing about politics. His answer was "the city". The French and American Revolutions asked it. Against the tumultuous backdrop of the early 1970s, Timmy Thomas passionately pleaded it in his song "Why Can't We Live Together?".

It is indeed as much a social and political question as a spatial one. More recently, rapidly changing social norms, the political polarisation between left and right, climate change, and the growing gap between labour and capital are making this question more urgently relevant and at different scales than before. In parallel, the weakness of the political models being proposed today compels us to put space first and, perhaps like Aristotle, look at the way architecture shapes inhabitation in order to imagine potential models for how we could live together.

Every generation feels compelled to ask this question and answer it in its own, unique way. Today, unlike with previous ideologically-driven generations, there seems to be a consensus that there is no single source from which such an answer can come. The plurality of sources and diversity of answers will only enrich our living together, not impede it.

We are asking architects this question because we are not happy with the answers that are coming out of politics today. In the context of the Biennale Architettura we are asking architects this question because we believe they have the ability to present more inspiring answers than politics has been thus far offering in much of the world. We are asking architects because architects are good conveners of different actors and experts in the design and construction process. We are asking architects because we, as architects, are preoccupied with shaping the spaces in which people live together and because we frequently imagine these settings differently than do the social norms that dictate them.

In that sense, every space we design simultaneously embraces the social contract that willed the space and proposes an alternative to it. We aspire to enable the best of the social contract and to propose alternatives where we can improve on it. A single-family home may ultimately replicate the explicit values and implicit oppressions of the post-WWII nuclear family model, but we have also seen powerful experiments from architects who have challenged the detached house's familial hierarchies and gender segregations by proposing alternative layouts and degrees of openness.

Hopefully, the question continues to propel us hopefully ahead and, in doing so, to build on the optimism that drives architecture and architects. Our profession is tasked with designing better spaces for better living. Our challenge is not whether to be optimistic or not. There we have no choice. It is rather how successful we are at transposing the inhabitants to better lives through the "wish images" that we produce with architecture.

The current global pandemic has no doubt made the question that this Biennale Architettura is asking all the more relevant and timely, even if somehow ironic, given the imposed isolation. It may indeed be a coincidence that the theme was proposed a few months before the pandemic. However, many of the reasons that initially led us to ask this question - the intensifying climate crisis, massive population displacements, political instabilities around the world, and growing racial, social, and economic inequalities, among others - have led us to this pandemic and have become all the more relevant.

A New Spatial Contract

Five people walk into a room that has only four chairs. Who sits where? They can play musical chairs. That's one spatial contract. They can also line up the chairs to form of a bench where they all fit together. That's another. A city decides to build a new subway system. Which parts does it connect and which does it leave out? There may be economic issues, political rivalries, and technological drivers that guide these decisions, but somehow the layout of the subway system supersedes and becomes a way in which a larger portion of the population connects with each other above and beyond the politics that bind or divide them.

Politics and policies lay out the terms and processes for collective living, but people convene in space, and the space helps shape and transform the social contract they lay out. When Aristotle, for example wanted to describe the ideal democracy, he could not do so without the city. It was very difficult to imagine a society without the spaces that it occupied. Since then, political theorists have often relied on space to explain but also to enable the society they are imagining. From Rousseau to Rawls, the deliberation of people forming society takes place in a space that helps shape the social contract. If a social contract determines the freedoms lost and gained in order for people to enter society, a spatial contract, determines the methods by which people negotiate these freedoms through their spatial interactions. The spatial contract precedes, rehearses, articulates, materialises, invariably enables or resists, but oftentimes supersedes the social contract.

Historians of cities attest to the sharing of walls as being the moment of emergence of cities, the moment when two houses are rethought in order to economise and share. The spatial contract has a singularity in the idea of space requiring a decorum, but it is very plural in the sense that space has a level of simultaneity that can empower multiplicities. Thus, to look at how societies shape their spaces and what decorum of access and behaviour are shaped by their spaces could be as important as looking at their codes of ethics themselves.

We continue to inhabit houses and cities built on outmoded ideas of a good life. The architectural resilience of these spaces may have adjusted to our changing needs over time, but by now they have reached the limits of their elasticity.

Our bodies have acquired new prosthetics and, increasingly, the nascent freedom to express fluid genders. They are being diversified and liberated from uniformity, but the architectural criteria of their comfort are still based on standardised approaches that confine the body and detach it from its environment. Our family lives have evolved and diversified, but we continue to replicatead nauseamthe model of the nuclear family house along with its embedded biases of hierarchy and privacy. Our social associations have become more diffused and diverse and yet the space of the community is still centred around values of association that tend to be more inward-looking and claustrophobic. Our cities have long expanded beyond the centralised model of separated landuses and income groups, but we often continue to think of the good city as one with a centre, spatially organised societal hierarchies, and with its back turned to the rural and nature. Above all, we have become increasingly aware of the global dangers of our spatial practices, including transportation and environmental controls, but we continue to live as if alone on a passive planet of endless resources. To paraphrase from the singer Prince, we continue toparty like it was 1999.

We can no longer wait for politicians to propose a path towards a better future. As politics continue to divide and isolate, we can offer alternative ways of living together through architecture. After all, space often precedes, projects, and survives the human conditions that shape it. A spatial contract could constitute a social contract. We are looking for a spatial contract that is at once universal and inclusive, an expanded contract for peoples and species to coexist and thrive in their plurality.

Towards a Renewed Agency for Architecture

The Biennale Architettura 2021 is motivated by new kinds of problems that the world is putting in front of architecture, but it is also inspired by the emerging activism of young architects and the radical revisions being proposed by the profession of architecture to take on these challenges.

Architects are inherently conveners. They synthesise among different fields and coordinate among different professionals and represent them in front of the client. They are the custodians of the contract. But beyond that, architects suggest possible social organisations through the way they arrange sequester, and connect spaces. They also shape the monuments, the memories, and the expressions of societies and groups, creating a common language that enables the public to debate and communicate its experiences and cultures.

Architects today are rethinking their tools to address the complex problems at hand. They are also enlarging their table to include other professionals and citizens. To effectively take on the responsibilities being presented to them, architects are extending one of their most important roles, as generous synthesisers of different forms of expertise and expression.

But more than ever, architects are called upon to propose alternatives. As citizens, we mobilise our synthetic skills to bring people together to solve complex problems. As artists, we defy the inaction that comes from uncertainty to ask "What if?" And as builders, we draw from our bottomless well of optimism to do what we do best. The confluence of roles in these nebulous times can only make our agency stronger and, we hope, our buildings more beautiful.

Five Scales

The main exhibition of the Biennale Architettura 2021 comprises works by 112 participants coming from forty-six countries with increased representation from Africa, Latin America, and Asia and with comparable representation of men and women.

This Exhibition also includes a series of research stations that complement the projects on display with in-depth analysis of related topics. These stations were developed by researchers from universities around the world. They include the Architectural Association, the American University of Beirut, The Bartlett, Columbia University, Cooper Union, ETH Zurich, Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), ETSAM - Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Harvard University, Hong Kong University, Iuav University of Venice, KIT Karlsruhe, KU Leuven, Rice University, and the Venice Lab, a consortium of research groups at MIT.

The Biennale Architettura 2021 is organised into five scales: three are exhibited in the Arsenale and two in the Central Pavilion. Projects range from the analytic to the conceptual, the experimental, the tested and proven, to the widely deployed. Each of these is in turn addressed through a series of themes and each one is housed in individual rooms of the Biennale buildings and grounds.

The five scales are Among Diverse Beings, As New Households, As Emerging Communities, Across Borders, As One Planet.

(1) Among Diverse Beings (Arsenale)

- Designing for New Bodies: addressing changes in the perception and conception of the human body;

- Living with Other Beings: foregrounding empathetic behaviour and engagement with other beings.

(2) As New Households (Arsenale)

- Catering to New Demographics: responding to changing compositions and densities of households;

- Inhabiting New Tectonics: exploring technologies that enable innovative housing construction;

- Living Apart Together: expanding the possibilities of the apartment building as a collective housing typology.

(3) As Emerging Communities (Arsenale)

- Appealing to Civicness: investigating novel ways for communities to organise themselves spatially;

- Reequipping Society: proposing new forms of social equipment (parks, schools, hospitals, and so on);

- Coming Together in Venice: imagining the future of Venice in light of the challenges of sea-level rise, the pandemic, and changing demographics;

- Co-Habitats: Showing how we do live together in Addis Ababa, the Azraq Refugee Camp, Beirut, the India-Pakistan corridors, a Lagos squatter settlement compared to one in Cairo and another in Guadalajara, New York, Pristina, Rio de Janeiro, and the Sao Paulo area.

(4) Across Borders (Giardini, Central Pavilion)

- Transcending the Urban-rural Divide: mitigating the growing social and economic differences between global cities and the global hinterland;

- Linking the Levant: negotiating sharp political divisions in the Levant region;

- Seeking Refuge: examining the spatial challenges of forced displacement;

- Resourcing Resources: proposing better distribution of our common resources;

- Protecting Global Commons: bringing the architectural imaginary to engage with endangered treasures such as the Poles, the Amazon, the Oceans, the Indo-Pacific Region, and the Air.

(5) As One Planet (Giardini, Central Pavilion)

- Making Worlds: anticipating and calibrating the future of the planet;

-Designing the Assembly of the Future:proposing a speculative more-than-human future for the United Nations;

- Changing Designs for Climate Change: presenting solutions in the face of the global degradation of the environment;

- Networking Space: connecting between Earth and outer space.

In addition to the exhibitions housed inside the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale, the grounds of the Central Pavilion's Giardini and the Arsenale feature several installations that relate to one of the five scales. In addition, the Park of Forte Marghera on the mainland also features five related installations:How Will We Play Together?□