In response to the theme of the 2025 Architecture Biennale, curated by Carlo Ratti, "Intelligence. Natural. Artificial. Collective," the curators of the Hong Kong exhibition, Fai Au, Ying Zhou, and Sing Yeung Sunnie Lau, have selected thirty-three projects developed by local architects that are representative of the city's dynamic and changing paradigm.
In contrast to the well-known nostalgic images of the neon-lit streets of Hong Kong's Kowloon side, these projects have been understudied, underdocumented, and under-disseminated. Many of these architectures, including the vernacular villages, are either about to be redeveloped or have already closed, making them the only examples of Hong Kong's future heritage.
"Memory Eggency -- The Sonic Life of Urban Memory". Projecting Future Heritage: A Hong Kong Archive. Photograph by Oliver Yin Law.
With the aim of cataloging these representations of the recent past, the exhibition is organized in two distinct parts of Venice's Campo della Tana: the exterior courtyard and the former warehouses. Inside the warehouses, visitors will interact with archaeological documentation of an urban cosmology: scale drawings, models, photographs, diagrams, texts, artifacts, and ephemera. Opening the archival drawers, they will discover scholarly research on Hong Kong's future heritage.
The site itself evokes the ancient production of elbows and ship ropes, crafted at the Venetian Arsenale, the largest pre-modern industrial complex in the world. To underscore this connection, the exhibition invites Hong Kong's "shifu," or bamboo masters, to build a bamboo scaffold in the courtyard outside.
"Social Condenser Extraordinaire: Hong Kong’s Municipal Services Buildings". Projecting Future Heritage: A Hong Kong Archive. Photograph by Oliver Yin Law.
Bamboo scaffolding is a ubiquitous, though now embattled, element of Hong Kong and its circular economy, where some built between the post-war period and the turn of the millennium are already slated for replacement. Choreographing the courtyard as a space for a projective future, the temporary scaffolding frames Campo della Tana's rich history, while also serving as a backdrop to juxtapose the hub cities of Hong Kong and Venice in their shared precariousness between the natural and the artificial.
