Program
Archiv

11 p.m. 
Guided tour through the pavilion

Symposium
“get involved VII – patternlanguage” - to act and impact in space for better living

International symposium of architectural and built environment education for young people. get involved VII is dedicated this time to the development of a non-verbal, internationally understandable spatial sign language and the possibilities of sharing this with young people.

For more information and to sign in please visit https://www.bink.at/en/get-involved-vii-patternlanguage/

2.00 p.m.
Sabine Pollak, who curated AGENCY FOR BETTER LIVING together with Michael Obrist and Lorenzo Romito, guides visitors through the exhibition. 

11 a.m. 

Visit to Isola di Sant'Andrea together with Forum Territoriale Parco delle Energie
hosted by Microclima

Microclima was founded in 2011 in Venice as a research-driven program focused on nature, cultural heritage, and the public sphere. It is based in the Serra dei Giardini, a greenhouse built in 1894 for the Biennale to preserve exotic plants from the first International Art Exhibitions. In addition to various other activities, Microclima aims to activate part of the Island of Sant'Andrea as an independent, non-commercial space for architecture and artistic creation and to integrate it into the cultural life of Venice. 

Meeting point:
Vaporetto station “Giardini” at 10:30 a.m.
We will take the Vaporetto 4.1 at 10:47 a.m. to Certosa. 
From Certosa, there is a shuttle boat to Sant Andrea.
The return trip is flexible. Starting at 2:00 p.m., the shuttle boat will return to Certosa.
Information: +39 3286214798

Please bring your own picnic and let's share!

11 a.m.
Environment, Patrimony, and Mass Tourism.
Encounter with Forum Territoriale Parco delle Energie (Rome), Sarah Gainsforth (Rome), and Maurizio Veloccia (Assessor of Urban Planning, City of Rome)

2.00 p.m.
Curator’s guided tour through the pavilion

3.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m.
OPEN ASSEMBLY

Guests: Michele Colucci (CNR - ISMed, Rome), Michele De Sanctis (Sapienza University, Rome), Forum Territoriale Parco delle energie with Centro di Documentazione Maria Baccante - Archivio Storico della Viscosa, CSOA eXSnia, and Lokomotiv (Rome), Sarah Gainsforth (Rome), Sergio Scalia (Assessor for Urban Planning, V Municipality, Rome) Lina Streeruwitz (Studio Vlay Streeruwitz, Vienna), Philip Ursprung (ETH Zürich), Alessandra Valentinelli (Rome), Maurizio Veloccia (Assessor for Urban Planning, City of Rome).

Planned and spontaneous re-naturalizations in urban environments are giving rise to unpredictable, emerging ecosystems. These are places where ecological dynamics are becoming negentropic — promoting biodiversity instead of reducing it, as is happening in most places today. Such ecosystems are becoming crucial in addressing climate change and global warming in cities. They function as new kinds of urban nature reserves, developing unpredictable ecological relationships right in the heart of urban areas. But how should humans interact with and inhabit these spaces without putting their ecological future at risk? These places are becoming increasingly attractive — for both residents and tourists. But how should they be visited or temporarily inhabited? How should urban development engage with them? Human behavior has always transformed the environment — but could the environment now begin to shape collective human behavior? And as former urban spaces revert to nature, how might their use become truly environmentally friendly? Land use has always shaped environments — but could environments now begin to shape land use?

Michele Colucci is a historian and senior researcher at the National Research Council – Institute of Studies on the Mediterranean. He is the director of the research project History of Mediterranean Migrations in the Contemporary Age. His work focuses on contemporary history and pays particular attention to migration, migration policies, labor, and social policies. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications and the recipient of several academic awards. From 2013 to 2016, he served as Scientific Director of the Naples-CNR Research Unit within the FIRB-MIUR project Mediterranean Sea Borders: What Permeability? Exchanges, Controls, Rejections (16th–21st Century).

Michele De Sanctis is a researcher in botany at the Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome. His research investigates how plant community composition and species diversity respond to environmental, historical, and anthropogenic factors. He has taken part in several international cooperation projects on nature conservation, both in Italy and across diverse biogeographical regions, including the Balkans, Papua New Guinea, Southeast Asia, and Africa. In Italy and Europe, his work has contributed to the design and implementation of the Natura 2000 network under the EU Habitats Directive.

Forum Territoriale Parco delle Energie, since its foundation, has been committed to protecting the abandoned industrial area and publicly advocating for the city to have a naturalistic-archaeological park on the former Snia Viscosa industrial site, where Lake Bullicante emerged in 1992: a unique ecosystem to be protected, which has arisen in the heart of a heavily urbanised neighbourhood. Through the monthly assembly, attended by residents, activists, researchers, artists and local administrators The Forum is the meeting point for the different social forces of the district and the city to manage and look after the entire Parco delle Energie.

CSOA eXSnia is a self-managed social center established in 1995 through the occupation of part of a former artificial silk factory. It was conceived as a permanent outpost to reclaim denied urban spaces and resist real estate speculation, promoting forms of social and collective expression outside of profit or delegation-based systems. The center has become a vital hub of self-management and cultural self-production, supporting experimental arts, migrant communities, and intergenerational encounters. Its initiatives range from folk dance gatherings and Italy’s first schools for migrants, to Epiphany and Carnival celebrations, and theater workshops involving dozens of artists and playwrights. During nearly 30 years of activity, CSOA eXSnia has supported political action on the local, national, and international levels in the fields of migration, the environment, public health, and independent cultural dissemination. It also pays special attention to childhood (with the LudOfficina Mompracem), sustainable mobility (with the Don Chisciotte bike kitchen), and food sovereignty (with the collective vegetable garden and the Solidarity Buyer Group).

Centro di Documentazione Maria Baccante – Archivio Storico della Viscosa
After occupying the former silk factory, activists began recovering and organizing long-abandoned materials, including machinery plans, technical drawings, and workers’ files. In 2012, the Soprintendenza Archivistica of Lazio recognized this collection as being of notable historical interest, leading to the foundation of the Archivio Storico della Viscosa. A few years later, it evolved into the Maria Baccante Documentation Center, which now houses additional archives. The center functions as a self-organized space for participatory research and the promotion of history and contemporary memory from a grassroots perspective.

Lokomotiv is a popular sports club that has been active since the late 1990s and was created by activists from the Ex SNIA Social Centre to meet the sporting needs of a working-class district – hence the name Lokomotiv. Formally established in 2015 as Lokomotiv Prenestino Sports Association, the club now offers fourteen different sports and includes nearly 300 athletes. Its mission is to make sports accessible to all, overcoming economic, social, and gender barriers while fostering a sense of community in a multicultural neighborhood. Respect, solidarity, inclusion, and fairness are the club’s founding values – reflected in its club colors, which are inspired by the flag of Kurdistan.

Sarah Gainsforth independent researcher, non-fiction writer and freelance journalist. Her work focuses on housing, tourism, gentrification, in the context of the social and environmental costs produced by capitalism. She is a contributor to Il Manifesto and Internazionale and the author of Airbnb Città Merce, Storie di resistenza alla gentrificazione digitale (Airbnb city product, stories of resistance to digital gentrification), Premio Napoli 2020 finalist; Oltre il turismo, Esiste un turismo sostenibile? (Beyond tourism. Is sustainable tourism possible?),  Abitare Stanca, La casa: una storia politica (Housing fatigue, a political tale); Dopo la gentrificazione, un quartiere laboratorio dalla crisi economica all'abitare temporaneo (After gentrification, a neighborhood-laboratory, from the economic crisis to temporary living), L’Italia Senza casa, Politiche abitative per non morire di rendita (Homeless Italy, Housing policies for surving rent exctraction).

Lina Streeruwitz studied architecture in Vienna and Buenos Aires. In parallel with her practice as an architect, she has taught in Vienna at TU Wien and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as well as at the University of Stuttgart, and she completed her dissertation entitled GRAS RASTER STAUB NICHTS. She has worked with Bernd Vlay since 2009 and they founded the office StudioVlayStreeruwitz together in 2017. One focus of their joint work is the development and implementation of urban master plans, in which they always interpret existing structures as a resource and a starting point for new possibilities. The planning of large-scale residential buildings in the subsidized and privately financed sectors is directly related to the question of sustainable neighborhood development. In addition to the intensive study of residential typologies, questions of openness and mixed use have become a central theme for the office, which it pursues in research, urban planning, and construction projects.

Philip Ursprung is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Head of the Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zürich. In 2023, he represented Switzerland together with Karin Sander at the Venice Architecture Biennale with the exhibition Neighbours. He studied art history in Geneva, Vienna, and Berlin, and earned his PhD at Freie Universität Berlin. Ursprung has taught at the University of Zurich, Columbia University (New York), Berlin University of the Arts, Cornell University, and TU Vienna. He is the editor of Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (2002), co-editor of Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook (2022), and author of Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, and the Limits to Art (2013). His most recent books include Joseph Beuys: Kunst, Kapital, Revolution (2021) and Architektur der Gegenwart (2025).

Alessandra Valentinelli is an urban planner and landscape historian who works as a consultant to public administrations in the areas of strategic environmental assessment, climate adaptation, and soil protection. She has lectured on these subjects at IUAV Venice, Sapienza University of Rome, and Milan Polytechnic. Her writing explores the intersections between land-use planning, landscape, and environmental protection, emphasizing their importance in safeguarding public assets.

Maurizio Veloccia is the Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning of Rome. An electronic engineer and expert in information and communication systems, he previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the Lazio Region. He was President of Rome’s 11th Municipality from 2013 to 2016. Veloccia has also worked as a business consultant and project manager for several innovative companies, including LaIT – Lazio Innovazione Tecnologica, an in-house company of the Lazio Region.

3.30 p.m.
Curator´s guided tour through the pavilion

4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
OPEN ASSEMBLY

Guests: Andre Krammer (TU Vienna), Nicola Ussardi, Ca’Rapace (Venice), Katharina Weinberger-Lootsma (Linz)

When it comes to a future BETTER LIVING, questions of community will be essential. How do we want to live, work, and love together in the future? A workshop with architecture students from the University of Art and Design Linz is dedicated to questions about the history and the future of community. Students and interested visitors to the pavilion join invited guests to discuss the longing for community as an opportunity for both bottom-up and top-down strategies. If self-organization and activism are indispensable for creating community, it is imperative to ask how these can be initiated and what architecture is necessary for this process. Who will need what kind of community in the future? What formal or informal processes have to be set in motion? And what does community even mean in a city like Venice, Rome, Vienna – or in any other city?

Katharina Weinberger-Lootsma is a Senior Scientist at the Department of Architecture at the University of Art and Design Linz. From 2017 to 2022, she headed the off-space project “kulturtankstelle,” a cooperation between the OK (Offenes Kulturhaus) and the University of Art and Design Linz. She is also a curator and cultural manager. From 2004 to 2017, she was curator of the art collection of the Tiroler Sparkasse, and, from 2003 to 2005, she was involved in the international traveling exhibition “austria west.” In 2016, she co-curated the Montenegrin pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice. In 2021, she curated the international project “NOW,” which is part of the series “Stories of Critical Change” (2020-2024).

Andre Krammer studied architecture at TU Wien and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He subsequently worked in various architecture offices and has been a registered architect since 2009. Since then, he has been engaged in projects across practice (architecture, urban planning, and urban design), theory (research), and teaching (TU Wien). Andre Krammer is a long-time editor of dérive – Magazine for Urban Research. He completed his doctoral thesis “Das Wilde Wien” on the history of informal urbanization in the city at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at TU Wien in 2025. His current work focuses on the interplay between formal and informal processes of urban production.

Nicola Ussardi is a Venetian activist and the co-founder of A.S.C. (Assemble Sociale per la Casa). Since becoming the spokesperson of A.S.C. in 1999, he has been facing and fighting the problem of abandoned sites in Venice and working to combat depopulation. He participated in protests in Genoa during the G8 meeting in 2001, and has also been active in the movement “comitato NO GRANDI NAVI” in Venice since 2012. As a sportsman who has always sought to connect social issues with local sporting needs, he founded “A.S.D. pallacanestro Crabs Venezia,” a basketball club that speaks to the city through the practice of sports, in 2014. He was a candidate in the municipal elections in 2020 with the list “Tutta La Città Insieme.” In 2021, he opened “Cà Rapace,” which is formally the site of the Crabs Club but actually an open space for the community of the quarter.

3.30 p.m. 
Curator´s guided tour through the pavilion

4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
OPEN ASSEMBLY

Guests: Laura Colini (IUAV Venice University, Venice), Celine d’Cruz (urban practitioner & founding member Slum Dwellers International), Kathrin Golda-Pongratz (Department of Urbanism at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia / UPC-BarcelonaTech), Juma Hauser (Studio AJH, Vienna), Judith M. Lehner (Research Center for New Social Housing, TU Wien), Christoph Reinprecht (Departement of Sociology, University of Vienna), Amila Širbegović (City of Vienna, MA50) and Alumni of the Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing

In connection with the AGENCY FOR BETTER LIVING’s aim to explore how spaces, rules, and practices can foster better living for all this assembly opens a critical dialogue on the future of social housing. Under the title (De)Provincialising Social Housing, the discussion challenges the notion of social housing as a fixed, localised practice or policy by foregrounding its embeddedness in transnational networks, global political economies, and historically contingent modes of urban governance.

Applying a postcolonial lens to housing — drawing on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s call to “provincialise Europe” by questioning the assumed universality of European historical and political experiences — the assembly challenges the dominance of celebrated models, such as Vienna’s social housing legacy, by situating them within broader global entanglements: financialisation, climate crisis, and post-welfare transformations.

This assembly #7 brings together housing scholars from Vienna and Venice alongside alumni of the Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing to critically examine the shifting geographies and imaginaries of social housing in the 21^st century. The assembly offers a critical space to reflect on how "social housing" can be re-theorised not merely as a policy instrument or architectural typology, but as a dynamic field shaped by global solidarities, inequalities, and imaginaries. It asks: What does it mean to “de-provincialise” social housing today? How can comparative and translocal perspectives inform housing futures as inhabitation? And what role can academic and multi-disciplinary housing networks, such as the Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing, play in advancing this agenda?

Laura Colini, holds a PhD in Urban, Regional and Environmental Design, Habil. in Urban Studies. Her work covers socio- spatial inequalities, with a focus on public policies addressing migrants and refugees, and housing. She has worked in academia in Italy, Germany, France, USA and currently holds a research position at H-City Cluster on housing and city at IUAV Venice University. She is the co-founder of Tesserae urban and social research, MiMetis SRL migration, member of the artist collective ogino:knauss and INURA and also member of the sounding board of the Research Center for New Social Housing

Celine d’Cruz is an urban development practitioner with extensive experience in strengthening the organizational resilience of urban poor communities and their networks to secure housing and access to basic services in more than 100 cities across 30 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She is committed to bridging divides and shaping relationships between the formal and informal city, community-led processes and national governments, local and global actors, as well as research and practice. As a founding member of Slum Dwellers International, she has built the capacity of urban poor leaders and their organizations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America on issues such as evictions, affordable housing, and settlement upgrading. Today, she serves as Senior Advisor to SDI-Europe. Celine d’Cruz is currently Vice President of the Board of the Block by Block Foundation, which supports UN-Habitat’s global public space agenda through the use of the Minecraft methodology with young people. She also serves on the Board of SELAVIP, a European family foundation that funds small strategic projects in informal communities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to strengthen local capacity, enable scaling, and influence policy.

Kathrin Golda-Pongratz is a Professor at the Department of Urbanism at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC-BarcelonaTech) and Vice-Dean of the School of Architecture of El Vallès (ETSAV). She holds a PhD in architecture from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT (Germany). As a member of the Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona (LUB), she publishes and lectures internationally. Her research focuses on urban memory, urban culture(s) and public space, Hispano-American urbanism, pre-Hispanic heritage, postcolonial urbanization, non-formal housing, urbanism and place-making strategies. Her book (with J.L. Oyón and V. Zimmermann) “John F C Turner. Autoconstrucción. Por una autonomía del habitar” was distinguished with the “FAD Award on Thought and Criticism” in Barcelona in 2019. Her experience expands into curating and cultural transmission. She is a spokeswoman of the Ateneu Memòria Popular in Barcelona, a member of the German Association of Latin American Research (ADLAF), elected member of the German Academy of Urban and Regional Planning (DASL) and the Academia Europaea (AE), external board member of the FAD (Foment de les Arts i del Disseny) in Barcelona and member of the sounding board of the Research Center for New Social Housing at TU Vienna.

Juma Hauser is a conceptual designer, artist, and author. Her research-driven practice explores the transformation of (social) spaces and their visual articulations. She has contributed to and designed numerous publications, exhibitions, and research projects, focusing on issues such as migration and displacement, housing and urban inequality, as well as gender diversity and queer spatial practices. She is the co-editor and designer of the publication The Social Dimension of Social Housing (Spector Books) and the author of Das Marampa Project (Mandelbaum).

Judith M. Lehner is a Senior Scientist and head of the Research Center for New Social Housing, where she promotes institutional and international networking between disciplinary fields of science related to housing studies and transdisciplinary collaboration among actors involved in Vienna’s housing production through teaching and research formats – such as the Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing.Her research centers on inter- and transdisciplinary methods in the context of architecture, housing studies, and urban development. She is the co-editor of books such as The Social Dimension of Social Housing (spector books) and Soziales Wohnen in Wien – Ein transdisziplinärer Dialog (TU Academic Press).

Christoph Reinprecht is Professor of Sociology at the University of Vienna. He conducts research on social transformations with a particular focus on migration and housing. He is the author of numerous publications and co-editor of The Social Dimension of Social Housing (spector books). He is one of the founders of the Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing, former IBA ResearchLab, and in the core team of the Research Center for New Social Housing.

Amila Širbegović is an architect and urban researcher. Her work, research, and teaching are situated at the interface between urban planning, migration, and the production of space. In the course of almost ten years of working at an urban renewal office, she initiated numerous participatory projects in the public realm. From 2018 until the end of 2022, she worked as a project manager within the IBA_Vienna team. Since the beginning of 2023, she has been part of the newly created Department of Strategic Projects and International Affairs in municipal department MA 50 of Vienna City Council, where she continues to work on the social aspects of housing, now focusing on circular economies. Amila Širbegović is also member of the sounding board of the Research Center for New Social Housing

3.30 p.m.
Curator´s guided tour through the pavilion

4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
OPEN ASSEMBLY

Guests: Valentina Cocco (Rome), Gabu Heindl (GABU Heindl Architektur, Vienna), Res Keller, (Kalkbreite Zurich), Amila Širbegović (MA 50, Vienna) and activists from Movimento per il Diritto all'Abitare (Housing Rights Movement, Rome)

High rents, rising construction prices, housing as a commodity, and land as an object of speculation: nothing is more closely associated with (capitalist) economization than housing. Where housing is traded as a commodity, affordable housing is in short supply. Where rental housing is being built, there is high pressure to exploit it commercially. Instead of less profitable social housing concepts, luxury, vacation, and investment apartments are being built. Housing and living in cities (and increasingly also in rural areas) is determined almost exclusively by capitalist market mechanisms. This calls for a critical look at economic models.

On the one hand, this is a question of affordability (what standards and apartment sizes do we want, what can we share?). But it is also a question of the economic evaluation of those qualities that go beyond housing architecture but contribute to the economy of life. The AGENCY asks about possible financing and value models beyond the capitalist market that could contribute to a BETTER LIVING, such as Miethäusersyndikate and habitats, shared economies, commons, and more. How do we value care work, educational and integration efforts that are incorporated into housing solutions, or the equality that is made possible by cleverly built structures and organizational models? Which economies do we want to use for a BETTER LIVING? And, perhaps the most important question: how do we emphatically rid housing of the capitalist pressure to exploit?

Valentina Cocco is an architect and has been working for twenty years at Rome City Council in the Infrastructure and Public Works Department. She designed and directed the works for Piazza Testaccio and Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II through participatory processes. Today, she holds the position of Senior Coordinator of complex programs financed with PNRR funds (National Recovery and Resilience Plan after Covid-19) and has overseen all phases of the definition and implementation of the integrated urban plans for Corviale, Tor Bella Monaca, and Santa Maria della Pietà, as well as the three projects that obtained funding under the PINQuA program (National Innovative Programme for Housing Quality) on quality of life, which she then oversaw as Project Manager.

3.30 p.m. 
Curator’s guided tour through the pavilion

4.30 p.m.
Roundtable with Biennale Urbana, U5, and Florian Dombois together with PhD candidates from Berlin, Linz, and Zurich

We start from the here and now: where are we, when are we? How do we relate to our neighbors and how do we relate to the environment? Laboratorio Laguna is an academy of PhDs under sail, which employs Venice as a method and a site for artistic research. Working as a collective of artists, we navigate critical zones in small sailboats and expose ourselves to the changing streams of wind and water. By synchronizing our bodies spatially, temporally, and intellectually, we question balance – literally. In our roundtable discussion, we will invite the audience to synchronize with us and with the surroundings of the pavilion, the Giardini, the lagoon, the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon.

Laboratorio Laguna is a project of Biennale Urbana, U5, and Florian Dombois. It is being carried out in cooperation with the partner universities Berlin University of the Arts, the University of Arts Linz, and Zurich University of the Arts.

Giulia Mazzorin and Andrea Curtoni are architects and professors of space&designstrategies at the University of Arts Linz. Their work focuses on public art and participatory processes in territorial transformation. They are co-founders of BUrb (Biennale Urbana) and Laboratorio Laguna.

Berit Seidel is an artist, researcher, and lecturer. She is a founding member of the artist collective U5 and has a special interest in surveillance and the challenges that come with our colonial heritage. She is currently senior artist of space&designstrategies at the University of Arts Linz and is a co-founder of Laboratorio Laguna.

Florian Dombois is an artist and professor for transdisciplinarity at Zurich University of the Arts. In his work, he has focused on wind, time, labilities, and tectonic activity. He is a co-founder of Laboratorio Laguna.

Sarah Bovelett teaches in the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture and the City at the Technical University of Braunschweig. She researches spatial practice in the face of the climate emergency. As part of the team behind the Floating University, she is actively involved in the production of space and program in this urban water infrastructure.

Tomiris Dmitrievskikh is an artist and researcher with a master’s degree in space&designstrategies at the University of Arts Linz. In addition to her background in painting, she employs transmedial methods and works on site-specific, environmental topics with a personal connection.

Céline Ducret is an artist and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2019 in textile mixed media and cultural and historical studies. She uses textile, sculpture, writing, and installation as artistic media and her works reflect on the human-made impact on post-industrial ecologies and their tangible traces.

Florian Goeschke is a sound artist, researcher, and composer. His artistic practice ranges from site-specific interventions and spatial compositions to (non-)human music-making, exploring the possibility of bridging ecological and technological thinking.

Lorenzo Iannantuoni is a designer and artist. His practice focuses on site-specific design interventions and artistic research, drawing from the observation of various public spaces as choreographed performances, and with the tools that contribute to the act playing their part in the show. 

Johannes Kiel develops complex installations based on emergent technologies. He is currently researching resource cycles, self-constructed and programmed robots, artificial intelligence, historic handcraft, fermentation, and innovative materials such as bioplastics and auxetic structures.

Smirna Kulenovic is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher, filmmaker, and lecturer. Her artistic research weaves together the resilience of indigenous knowledge, wartime memories, and fragile ecosystems by delving into the narratives of Sarajevo.

Arden Surdam is an artist and researcher who engages with environmental media. Her photographic and sculptural work addresses material reorganizations in natural landscapes resulting from extractivism, synthetic pollutants, and invasive species. Through her research, she focuses on the spectral material complexities of new earthly geophotographic landscapes.

3 p.m. - 6 p.m.

UAH! GOES BIENNALE 
Talking about Unconventional Affordable Housing!

3 p.m. - 4 p.m. Can’t we just demolish it?
4 p.m. - 5 p.m. Who manages and takes care of it?
5 p.m. - 6 p.m. What if no one owned it?

Guests: Constanze Wolfgring (Vienna, Milan), Francesca Serrazanetti (Milan), Gennaro Postiglione (Milan), Angela Barbanente (Bari), Massimo Bricocoli (Milan), Elena Marchigiani (Trieste), Daniele Petrosino (Bari)

The exhibition repeatedly raises the question of existing buildings. How can former administrative and office buildings work as spaces for unusual living concepts? How can existing residential buildings be adapted for new ways of living, working, and loving? What can we do with derelict sites and dilapidated buildings? And could existing buildings be a decisive resource in the realization of a BETTER LIVING for all? The pavilion hosts a research team from Italy together with a network of design studios from European universities. UAH! – Unconventional Affordable Housing – explores new possibilities for contemporary housing and living at the interface between affordability and unconventionality. Starting from a reflection on existing housing practices, policies, and projects, the project experiments with transformative reuse in three Italian contexts – Bari, Milan, and Trieste –, methodically carried out as “research by design.” The projects, research, and research questions are critically discussed in six ASSEMBLIES.
www.uah.polimi.it

Constanze Wolfgring is a research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano, where she earned her PhD in urban planning, design, and policies. Her research focuses on housing policies, urban regeneration, ecological transition policies, social inequalities, and innovative housing solutions, with a focus on Italy and Austria.

Francesca Serrazanetti, PhD in architecture, is an adjunct professor and research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests focus on the relation between architecture and people, permanence, reuse, unconventionality, and the performativity of space. She is an editor of the architecture magazine Casabella and a co-founder of the multidisciplinary magazine Stratagemmi.

Gennaro Postiglione is a full professor of interior architecture and Vice Director of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His research focuses on domestic interiors – and the relationships between dwelling culture, domestic architecture, and modernity –, on transformative reuse through research-by-design, and on unconventional housing models. He is the Principal Investigator of the project UAH! Unconventional Affordable Housing.

Angela Barbanente is a full professor of urban and regional planning at Politecnico di Bari. Her research focuses on the analysis of processes and practices of territorial transformation – investigated through the lenses of theories of social learning and social mobilization – and on the role of institutions and regulatory systems in these processes. From 2005 to 2015, she served as the Regional Councilor for Territorial Quality in Apulia.

Massimo Bricocoli is a full professor of urban planning and policy design and Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His work focuses on the interface between welfare and urban policies, housing policies and projects, urban ethnography, and urban regeneration in both academic and applied research. He is the Scientific Coordinator of OCA, Observatory on Housing Affordability, in Milan.

Elena Marchigiani is an architect and an associate professor in urban planning at the Department of Engineering and Architecture at Università degli Studi di Trieste. Her research focuses on planning tools, urban projects, and policy design in the fields of social housing and neighborhood regeneration, welfare and inclusive mobility, the building of collaborative processes, town planning and city management, and territorial and landscape planning and design.

Daniele Petrosino is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Political Sciences at Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. He holds a PhD in sociology and was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting scholar at McGill University and the University of Barcelona. His research focuses on ethnonationalism, ethnic relations, migration, identity, and social inequalities.

3 p.m. - 6 p.m.

UAH! GOES BIENNALE 
Talking about Unconventional Affordable Housing!

Guests: Constanze Wolfgring (Vienna, Milan), Francesca Serrazanetti (Milan), Gennaro Postiglione (Milan), Angela Barbanente (Bari), Massimo Bricocoli (Milan), Elena Marchigiani (Trieste), Daniele Petrosino (Bari)

3 p.m. - 4 p.m. (Why) do we have to share?
4 p.m. - 5 p.m. Affordable for whom, and for how long?
5 p.m. - 6 p.m. Where’s the line between the home and the city?

The exhibition repeatedly raises the question of existing buildings. How can former administrative and office buildings work as spaces for unusual living concepts? How can existing residential buildings be adapted for new ways of living, working, and loving? What can we do with derelict sites and dilapidated buildings? And could existing buildings be a decisive resource in the realization of a BETTER LIVING for all? The pavilion hosts a research team from Italy together with a network of design studios from European universities. UAH! – Unconventional Affordable Housing – explores new possibilities for contemporary housing and living at the interface between affordability and unconventionality. Starting from a reflection on existing housing practices, policies, and projects, the project experiments with transformative reuse in three Italian contexts – Bari, Milan, and Trieste –, methodically carried out as “research by design.” The projects, research, and research questions are critically discussed in six ASSEMBLIES.
www.uah.polimi.it

Constanze Wolfgring is a research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano, where she earned her PhD in urban planning, design, and policies. Her research focuses on housing policies, urban regeneration, ecological transition policies, social inequalities, and innovative housing solutions, with a focus on Italy and Austria.

Francesca Serrazanetti, PhD in architecture, is an adjunct professor and research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests focus on the relation between architecture and people, permanence, reuse, unconventionality, and the performativity of space. She is an editor of the architecture magazine Casabella and a co-founder of the multidisciplinary magazine Stratagemmi.

Gennaro Postiglione is a full professor of interior architecture and Vice Director of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His research focuses on domestic interiors – and the relationships between dwelling culture, domestic architecture, and modernity –, on transformative reuse through research-by-design, and on unconventional housing models. He is the Principal Investigator of the project UAH! Unconventional Affordable Housing.

Angela Barbanente is a full professor of urban and regional planning at Politecnico di Bari. Her research focuses on the analysis of processes and practices of territorial transformation – investigated through the lenses of theories of social learning and social mobilization – and on the role of institutions and regulatory systems in these processes. From 2005 to 2015, she served as the Regional Councilor for Territorial Quality in Apulia.

Massimo Bricocoli is a full professor of urban planning and policy design and Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His work focuses on the interface between welfare and urban policies, housing policies and projects, urban ethnography, and urban regeneration in both academic and applied research. He is the Scientific Coordinator of OCA, Observatory on Housing Affordability, in Milan.

Elena Marchigiani is an architect and an associate professor in urban planning at the Department of Engineering and Architecture at Università degli Studi di Trieste. Her research focuses on planning tools, urban projects, and policy design in the fields of social housing and neighborhood regeneration, welfare and inclusive mobility, the building of collaborative processes, town planning and city management, and territorial and landscape planning and design.

Daniele Petrosino is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Political Sciences at Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. He holds a PhD in sociology and was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting scholar at McGill University and the University of Barcelona. His research focuses on ethnonationalism, ethnic relations, migration, identity, and social inequalities.

6 p.m.

Meeting with Quarticciolo at ZENOBIA
Campo Junghans, 487/B
Giudecca
30133 Venice

Founded in March 2024, ZENOBIA is a non-profit sports and social promotion association dedicated to making sports accessible to all, breaking down barriers and fostering community. Beyond sports, ZENOBIA is also a cultural hub with a beautiful library, where book presentations, musical moments, and social events are organized to strengthen the sense of community and create shared spaces for all.

A dialogue between Quarticciolo and new Viennese neighborhoods

August 30

11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Quarticciolo Ribelle presents itself
Book presentation of Zerocalcare la foresta contro il deserto
Presentation of all the activities of the PoloCivico Quarticciolo, as well as the new Bottega Quarticciolo project 

2 p.m.
Guided curator’s tour through the pavilion

3.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. 
OPEN ASSEMBLY
A dialogue between Quarticciolo and new Viennese neighborhoods

Guests: activists of Quarticciolo (Rome), Elke Rauth, Christoph Laimer (dérive - Magazine for Critical Urabn Research, Vienna), Robert Temel (Architectural and Urban Researcher, Vienna)

Lively ground floor zones, mixes of living, production, and culture, usable green areas, and spaces for the community make a good neighborhood, but these are often difficult to realize in new districts. The pressure of “usability” is too strong and there is often a lack of initiative on the part of residents. The AGENCY asks about the future of neighborhoods. What creates solidarity? Which initiatives need which spaces? How do you get inhabitants to take care of a neighborhood? In search of answers, the AGENCY looks to Rome, to an existing neighborhood.

Quarticciolo is a fascist Borgata that was designed by the architect Roberto Nicolini in the 1940s and became one of the garrisons of the resistance in Rome. Here, the Casa del Fascio, the abandoned former police headquarters, later became a housing occupation. “Quarticciolo Ribelle” was born and a public gym was started, followed by an after-school program, a brewing laboratory, a medical clinic, and a printing workshop – all self-organized activities that reacted to the disappearance of public services from the neighborhood. Recently, the government reacted to drug dealing by calling for the militarization of the area – the Red Zone – in order to clear away all illegal activities: drug dealing as well as the self-managed social network. Reuniting the city’s social movements, the neighborhood answers: we already have a plan!

Elke Rauth is the Director of urbanize! International Festival for Urban Explorations and a member of the Editorial Board of dérive - Magazine for Critical Urban Research.Through the self-organized housing project Bikes and Rails in Vienna she is part of the habiTAT Mietshäuser Syndikat (Tenement Houses Syndicate). Elke Rauth is interested in the city as socio-political space, the expansion of radical democracy, and the organization of the post-capitalist transition in theory and practice.

Christoph Laimer is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of dérive - Magazine for Critical Urban Research. He is a member of INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action), Bikes and Rails, and habiTAT Mietshäuser Syndikat (Tenement Houses Syndicate). In 2021, he published the book Gemeinschaftliches Wohnen und selbstorganisiertes Bauen together with Andrej Holm.

Robert Temel is an independent architectural and urban researcher and consultant in Vienna. He studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and completed the postgraduate program in sociology at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. He is concerned with the use and production of architecture and the city with a focus on housing, urban design, and public space. Since 2013, he has been a spokesperson of the Plattform Baukulturpolitik (Platform for Building Culture Policy) and a member of the Advisory Board for Building Culture at the Ministry of Culture. Temel is author of Baukultur for Urban Neighbourhoods. Process Culture through Concept Tendering (BBSR 2020), Ein Stück Stadt bauen. Leben am Helmut-Zilk-Park (Building a piece of the city. Living at Helmut Zilk Park, Stadt Wien/ÖBB 2019) and “Design instead of participation. The Vienna Sargfabrik as a sample project of urban life” in Together! The New Architecture of the Collective (2017).

3.30 p.m.
Guided curator’s tour through the pavilion

4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
ASSEMBLY

Video-Documentation ASSEMBLY #3

Guests:
Florencia Andreola, Azzurra Muzzonigro, Julia Girardi-Hoog, Elena Fusar Poli

Gender planning is a long-established means of ensuring the quality of life in many cities. With regard to BETTER LIVING, however, we need to do more than merely create a city that is suitable for everyday life. In this context, the strategy of intersectional feminism could provide a basis for many things: a multiple view of a city’s problems, activism for an inclusive public realm, radical new housing typologies, and co-habitation with nature. A true caring city is inconceivable without an intersectional feminist perspective. This starts with the fair distribution and payment of all care work, which is fundamental to everything. BETTER LIVING & FEMINISM deals with intersectional feminist strategies for creating a BETTER LIVING for all, i.e. for a life beyond families, post-private spaces, supportive structures, and potential commons in a future caring city.

Florencia Andreola is an independent researcher with a PhD in Architectural History from the University of Bologna. Her work combines theory and practice as it explores the intersections between architecture, the city, and gender. She is the author and editor of several publications.

Azzurra Muzzonigro is an architect, curator, and urban researcher. She teaches Urban and Social Design at NABA and Domus Academy and holds an MSc from The Bartlett (UCL) and a PhD in Urban Studies. She is a co-founder of Waiting Posthuman Studio and the author of many publications. In 2022, they jointly founded Sex & the City, a nonprofit organization that explores the city through a gender perspective. The association uses public programs, research, and practical projects to advocate for urban policies that prioritize the well-being of all citizens. Its key publications include Milan Gender Atlas (2021), a mapping of gendered experiences in Milan, and Free, not Brave. Women and Fear in Public Space (2024), which investigates the relationship between urban planning and women’s fear of crime in the city.

Julia Girardi-Hoog holds a PhD in the Sociology of Architecture and has been working for Vienna City Council since 2013. She managed the EU Horizon 2020 funded project “Smarter Together” with Munich, Lyon, and Venice, which implemented inclusive smart city projects. Julia Girardi-Hoog has been Vienna’s Gender Planner since 2023 and is responsible for ensuring that the city’s public spaces and social housing respond to the needs of different target groups and, especially, vulnerable sections of society. Julia also teaches at the University of Vienna.

6 p.m.
ASC (Assemblea Sociale per la Casa) 

Screening of the film Mama Mercy (1h12, 2023) by Alessandra Cutolo in the presence of the director and some of the actresses 

11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Spin Time presents itself:

Chiara Cacciotti, author, presents the book Qui è tutto abitato (Here everything is inhabited)
Ottavia Cernuschi, Giacomo Ruben Florenzano, Emmanuel Koami Yovogna, Sara Moutawakil presents Spin Time Fanzine At Home
Celilia Pellizzari and Rebecca Venzi from Scomodo, present the special issue L'abbandono non è vuoto (Abandonment is not empty)

3.30 p.m.
Guided curator´s tour trough the pavilion

4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m
OPEN ASSEMBLY
A dialogue in between members of Spin Time (Rome) and Sargfabrik (Vienna)

Video-Documentation ASSEMBLY #2

Guests:
Robert Korab / Sargfabrik Vienna
Chiara Caciotti, Ottavia Cernuschi, Alessandra Cutolo, Mattia Ferrari, Giulia Fiocca, Giacomo Ruben Florenzano, Emmanuel Koami Yovogna, Sara Moutawakil, Cecilia Pellizzari, Paolo Perrini and Rebecca Venzi / Santa Croce / Spin Time Labs, Rome

How do we want to live, work, and love together in the future? The AGENCY poses the question of new typologies for new forms of coexistence. Santa Croce/Spin Time, a 10-story squatted former administration building in Rome, serves as a case study. The multiple uses of Spin Time are remarkable. In addition to housing for 450 people from 27 nations, it offers more than 30 different social and cultural infrastructures such as a theater, a carpentry workshop, a restaurant, a printing workshop, a museum, a youth club, a learning workshop, the headquarters of the well-known youth magazine Scomodo and more. Protagonists from Spin Time will join a representatives of a co-housing project in Vienna to discuss possible future typologies in which the coexistence of many could be the principle that underlies all considerations. Which structures support such coexistence? What spaces, what legal means, and what policies are needed? What do the Sargfabrik in Vienna and Spin Time have in common, and what distinguishes them?

Robert Korab

Robert Korab has worked as an environmental scientist, urban planner, project developer, general planner, and property developer. With his company raum & kommunikation, he has developed and implemented more than 20 residential and commercial real estate projects, with a focus on community and co-housing initiatives. His other professional priorities have included the programming and managing of cooperative planning processes, as well as the strategic development of large real estate portfolios. Korab has served on various juries and advisory boards, including the Housing Subsidy Advisory Board of the City of Vienna and the Expert Advisory Board of the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund. Since 1992, he has been a lecturer at Austrian universities in the

REHEARSING CHANGE
What if architecture wasn‘t a solution, but a rehearsal?
Speaker: Amy Perkins (Zurich), Daniele Santucci (Zurich), Michael Obrist (Vienna), Yves Behar 

At Architecture During Art, LAUFEN brings together the curators of the Austrian, German and Swiss pavilions of the Biennale Architettura 2025—alongside designer and entrepreneur Yves Behar—for a conversation on how architecture and design can respond to climate stress, social inequality and institutional transformation. How do we create spaces—physical, political,
imagined—for coexistence in times of rupture? A d ialogue on responsibility, imagination and collective agency.

Panel moderated by Tanja Heuchele.

ARCHITECTURE DURING ART is a recurring event of thought-provoking conversations to coincide with ART BASEL, established by LAUFEN.

You can find more information about the panellists and how to register here.

Talk with Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak, and Lorenzo Romito
Moderation: Anh-Linh Ngo

How can we readdress the issues of affordable housing and the right to the city? Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak, and Lorenzo Romito are the curators of the Austrian Pavilion at this year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice and are presenting their project in the Austrian Cultural Forum Berlin. The project focusses on a comparison between two models – Vienna’s subsidized housing meets the self-organization of Rome’s civil society – and asks whether a combination of the two could show us new ways out of the social and ecological crisis.

The event will take place in German and English.
Please register at: Link

12 a.m.
Tour of the city with ASC, Assemblea Sociale della Casa

Meeting point: Vaporetto Station Palanca (Giudecca)
(Short-term change due to the Vogalonga)

11 a.m.
Open presentation of a range of social realities from Venice in the courtyard of the pavilion

2 p.m.
Guided curator’s tour through the pavilion

3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Assembly Founding Event: BETTER LIVING in Venice

Guests: ASC, Microclima, OCIO, Officina Marghera, Pandora, Poveglia per tutti, ReBiennale, Rivolta, Sale Docks, Veras

The AGENCY FOR BETTER LIVING launches the series of ASSEMBLIES: What can we do and how can we act? The kick-off event of the AGENCY will embrace the social and environmental realities of Venice, our guest city. The presentation of various groups and their activities will mark the establishment of the ASSEMBLY. Guests and visitors will help to define the rules for the ASSEMBLIES: the form of discussions and procedures, the possibilities of participation, and the documentation of the process. Urgent topics will be addressed, experiences of living will be exchanged, and strategies for BETTER LIVING developed: an “Intelligens” will emerge.