Netherlands (The)

The Dutch pavilion addresses the spatial configurations, living conditions, and notions of the human body engendered by disruptive changes in labour ethos and conditions. The project seeks to foster creativity and responsibility within the architectural field in response to technologies of automation. The curator, Marina Otero Verzier, has envisioned the pavilion as a collaborative research endeavour by an international network: Amal Alhaag addresses technologies of the body and how these are informed by the concept of the cyborg, enslaved and ethnographic body. Beatriz Colomina reexamines the bed as a unique horizontal architecture in the age of social media and looks at its use as a workspace transforming labour. Marten Kuijpers and Victor Muñoz Sanz explore the architecture of full automation in the city of Rotterdam. Simone C. Niquille unravels the parameters embedded in design software shaping contemporary work spaces and bodies optimised for eiciency, ergonomics and human/machine interactions. Mark Wigley revisits Constant’s New Babylon, and discusses its proposal for an alternate architecture and an alternate society in which human labour is superfluous. The exhibitors test and disseminate outcomes during and after this Biennale Architettura.