Speculations

As the topic of the Austrian entry for the 17th international “Venice Architecture Biennale” we suggested “SPECULATIONS about future realities”. Speculations about the future are the framework of our actions – no invention without theory.

As long as humans keep their unique ability – to follow fiction – we will keep speculations as our everyday tools.

The practice of Architecture is inherently speculative as the spatial intervention in and around the Austrian pavilion shows. The curators showcase the exhibit as a hands-on experiment in which the “sculptural platform” is the fundament of a “discursive happening”. Both rely on and interpret each other and bring forth a complex, dynamic game with uncertain results.

Five topics crossing the “speculative architecture”. The Austrian entry speculates with spatial planes: Platforms are expanded, tilted, intersected by each other and trimmed by necessities. This speculation makes rooms and floors, stairwells and roofs out of planes.

Our will to speculation does not always contribute to a basis of trust to which we feel drawn. Speculations have a mottled past: They have caused economic crises, fenced in arable land, erected barriers to affordable housing and gambled with the treasures of our past.

Expectations and speculative hopes sometimes take precedent over material security and in the end speculating for speculating's sake bears the risk of  destroying meaning and responsibility. Daily we see this destructive force at play.

The ziggurats of Babylon inspired us. They are the permanent and the mythical construction site as a metaphor for urban density and dynamic, continuous provisions and confusion. They are pointing back to mankind's first cities and it’s most important tool: Speculations about future realities.

For we have to ask: What captivates and cultivates us about the speculative, about the leap into the unknown with nothing at our side but good faith to improve our life?