CUI co-hosts public event, ‘Governing, Designing and Educating Urban Futures’ at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia on 31 August
Bringing together mayors, social scientists, designers and educators, ‘Governing, Designing and Educating Urban Futures’ investigated how innovations in urban governance, planning and education can bring about transformative change, with an emphasis on new, inclusive and socially progressive narratives.
Lesley Lokko, CUI member and Founding Director of the Africa Futures Institute, curated the 18th International Architecture Exhibition ‘The Laboratory of the Future’, at La Biennale di Venezia 2023. The theme centres on Africa as the continent with the world’s youngest population, the fastest rates of urbanisation, and at the coal face of climate change at both a regional and planetary level. The festival is intended as a workshop or laboratory where architects and practitioners across an expanded field of creative disciplines draw out examples from their contemporary practices that chart a path for the audience to weave through, imagining for themselves what the future can hold.
As part of the festival programme, the Biennale are hosting a series of public events called Carnival, designed to bridge the gulf between architects and the public.
Conceived as a space of liberation rather than a spectacle or entertainment, Carnival offers a space for communication in which words, views, perspectives, and opinions are traded, heard, analysed, and remembered.”
On 31 August 2023, the Council on Urban Initiatives co-hosted a half-day symposium as part of the Carnival programme of public events. ‘Governing, Designing and Educating Urban Futures’ was structured into two sections. The first session explored how local fiscal spaces and outcomes orientation policies can be harnessed to accelerate innovation in cities, while the second focused on how inherited spatial inequity continues to shape current models of city-making and what the curriculums of the 22nd century architect, urban planner and built environment professional might look like.
Programme
Teatro Piccolo, Arsenale, 31 August 2023
14:00-14:15 - Opening Remarks
Lesley Lokko, Artistic Director of the Architecture Department, La Biennale di Venezia, and Founding Director, Africa Futures Institute; Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value and Founding Director, UCL IIPP.
14:15-15:45 – Session 1: Governing Urban Futures; Fiscal Spaces and Outcomes Orientation
Panellists: Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona 2015-2023; Laura Lieto, Deputy Mayor of Naples; Claudia López, Mayor of Bogotá; Soledad Núñez, Former Minister of Housing and Habitat, Paraguay.
Moderator: Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value and Founding Director, UCL IIPP
16:00-17:30 – Session 2: Designing and Educating: Learning to Unlearn
Panellists: Dan Hill, Director, Melbourne School of Design; Alcinda Honwana, Director, Anti-Racism Team, OUSG/DMSPC, United Nations Secretariat; Rahul Mehrotra, Founding Principal, RMA Architects and Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Richard Sennett, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Moderator: Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies and Director, LSE Cities
A recording of the event is available to watch on the Venice Biennale YouTube Channel.