The NAI represents the Netherlands at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with the exhibition ‘ArchiPhoenix – Faculties for architecture’. ‘ArchiPhoenix – Faculties of architecture’ will open in the Netherlands Pavilion, Giardini di Castello, Venice (Italy) on Friday 12 September. The exhibition will be open to the public from Sunday 14 September to Sunday 23 November.

Discipline under scrutiny
The profession of architect is taught in the Netherlands at the Faculty of Architecture. The knowledge acquired there is often aimed at building skills. The question, however, is whether those skills lead to the architecture that society needs in the decades ahead. If we anticipate how society is likely to develop and can redefine the position of the discipline, we must ask ourselves what the possibilities and potential of architecture are. What is the strength of architecture? The fire that reduced the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology to ashes on May 13 2008 has prompted the architecture sector in the Netherlands to re-examine the position of the discipline.

Faculties
It is important in this investigation of the potential of architecture to reflect on what expertise is required in order to (continue to) respond to the demands raised by society. And let us at any rate take a wider view than of architecture alone. The Architecture Faculty, after all, could also be the ‘the faculty for unsolicited architecture’ (architecture that no one has asked for), ‘faculty for urban animation’, or ‘faculty for un-building’. These and other lines of thought can produce a very fascinating discipline, one that investigates where the strengths of architecture lie, one that approaches architecture as a discipline that is pre-eminently suited to untangle and expose a multiplicity of relations, tasks and possibilities that are important both now and in the future.

Exhibition
The Netherlands present a testing zone, an exercise in the possible faculties for architecture, in collaboration with STEALTH.unlimited in the Dutch pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. The potential of architecture in the 21st century will be investigated and presented in the pavilion from 14 September to 23 November.

The Netherlands contribution to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is organised by the NAI in collaboration with STEALTH.unlimited at the invitation of and with financial assistance from the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.