Biennale Newsletter
7.5.25
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Agency for Better Living
WHAT WOULD BE
“BETTER LIVING” FOR ALL?
Austrian PavilIon
Biennale Architettura 2025
Curated by:
Sabine Pollak, Michael Obrist,
Lorenzo Romito
Lorenzo Romito, Sabine Pollak, Michael Obrist
Photo: Michael Obex
Concept
The objective of the AGENCY FOR BETTER LIVING is to explore opportunities, spaces, and rules that provide BETTER LIVING for all. The exhibition asks how such BETTER LIVING can be successfully implemented, illustrated by examples from two cities, Vienna and Rome. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to join the AGENCY and, in doing so, to become part of a transformation. During the Biennale, the courtyard of the pavilion will become the AGENCY’s working and negotiation space, in which models and processes for and architectural approaches to BETTER LIVING will be developed together with visitors and other actors as part of a packed program of events.
SPECULATION VERSUS
THE RIGHT TO A HOME
Nothing is more urgent today than the issue of affordable housing. Apartments have long since become tradable financial products or, seen another way, objects of speculation. The provision of living space is widely left to the private sector, rents are rising rapidly, and cities are becoming increasingly uninhabitable. Investment or luxury apartments are being built instead of social housing and existing properties are being let out via Airbnb. Capitalist market mechanisms are increasingly determining how well or badly one can live in a city. People who have to spend more than half of their income on rent are no longer able to afford life in the city and are being squeezed out. The situation is explosive, which is why this is precisely the moment for beginning to approach living in a new way.