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With almost 3.000 architects, designers, and students from over 20 countries visiting the event, the first week of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale was a record breaker. The exhibition will run to November 20 at the Estonian Center for Architecture and other locations around the capital. The record numbers might have something to do with the event theme, Edible; Or, the Architecture of Metabolism, a topic that’s as complex as the problems it aims to address. Curated by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou in collaboration with local advisor Ivan Sergejev and curatorial assistant Sonia Sobrino Ralston, the sixth edition of the event asks if it’s possible to imagine architecture that can produce resources, digest its own waste, and self-decompose. In other words, how it might be possible to harmonize architecture with the life of the planet, the growth of its organisms, their sustenance, and their responses to changes in the environment.
“Today, within the context of interconnected global crises – namely, the climate emergency, the public health crisis, and social inequity – the idea of a world where resources are recirculated is vital for planetary habitability,” commented curators Kallipoliti and Markopoulou. It’s increasingly important to think about how we produce our food, where it comes from, and how its production within cities and redistribution could reshape our lives and infrastructures. Estonia is one of the world’s most digitally developed epicenters, and the exhibition Edible could inspire us to look even further towards innovative solutions that reform urban territories like Tallinn.”
The first Edible exhibition set itself the goal of re-imagining the system of food production and consumption through architecture’s ability to give form to metabolic processes. The projects selected for the exhibition therefore explore the principles of alliance and interdependence between species, circularity, and localization. These projects are divided into five different themed areas: Metabolic Home, From Bricks to Soil, Food and Geopolitics, The Archeology of Architecture and Food Systems, and Future Food Deal. This last section is a display library of manuals, cookbooks, visionary drawings, and posters that look at how architecture can respond to the problems – among others – of food supply at a time of increasing urbanization.
“With Edible’s installations, we hope to reveal how architecture constructs, distributes, and leverages power via material upcycling, interspecies alliances, biopolitics, and excremental processes,” concluded the curators.
Until the end of November, there will be many more exhibits, installations, and talks, all focused on circularity and on new ways of envisioning the relationship between humans, architecture, and nature.
Location: Tallin, Estonia
Head curators: Lydia Kallipoliti (Greece/USA), Areti Markopoulou (Greece/Spain)
Local Advisor: Ivan Sergejev (Estonia)
Assistant Curator: Sonia Sobrino Ralston (USA)
Date: September 7th – November 20th, 2022
Please refer to the individual images in the gallery to look through the photo credits
