For the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, the Vienna-based architecture collective AKT and architect Hermann Czech are planning a socially effective, temporary conversion of the Austrian Pavilion.In the frame of 'Partecipazione / Beteiligung' part of the building will be opened to the adjacent district and freely accessible to the people of Venice.At the centre of this architectural intervention is the question of the power of disposition over space and the social shifts that architecture triggers in its built form.For the publication 'Partecipazione / Beteiligung' AKT and Hermann Czech collaborate with local initiatives such as Biennale Urbana, Forum Futuro Arsenale, Società di Mutuo Soccorso and Osservatorio CIvicO indipendente sulla casa e la residenzialità and We Are Here Venice as well as with experts such as Ines Doujak and John Barker, Laura Fregolent, Franco Mancuso, Claudio Menichelli, Wolfgang Scheppe and Luca Zan, dealing with the special situation in Venice from an economic, socio-spatial, architectural and theoretical point of view.Accompanies the exhibition at the La Biennale Architettura 2023, 'The Laboratory of the Future'. 20 May - 26 Nov 2023, La Biennale Architettura, Venice 2023. Curated by Lesley Lokko. Co-published with Luftschacht Verlag.

Extract from the exhibition website: "For the first time in its recent history, the population of Venice's old town has reached a historic low, falling below the critical 50,000 mark. Spatial displacement processes and the loss of essential infrastructure have led to a steady depopulation of the city over decades. In recent years, political promises have been broken and spatial planning control bodies gradually abolished. Social housing construction has now been de facto discontinued. Local life in Venice is increasingly marginalized.".