Detail from The Garden of Privatised Delights. Photo: Cristiano Corte. © British Council.
The Apple store—a rendezvous for much of my generation in our adolescence (granted, I occupy more of a Gen Z / Millennial cusp space, and yes, that distinction matters)—once provided somewhere to loiter, to leave behind Photo Booth selfies for the next unsuspecting Mac customer, and ironically, to purchase that device that would ultimately, many years later, diminish the need for such physical meeting places. As our existences were increasingly scaled online, or rather, split in two—one self lived in cyberspace and the other in… space—our generation lost touch. Lost touch with one another, lost touch with those tangible venues for social interaction.
“There’s loads of research out there to show you that Gen Z are the loneliest generation,” remarks Madeleine Kessler, a 33-year-old architect and director of Madeleine Kessler Architecture, as well as co-founder of Unscene Architecture. Loneliness, it seems, is an epidemic, so much so that Kessler’s home country of the United Kingdom appointed its first minister of loneliness in 2018. Despite the studies and social trends suggesting this concerning state of social being is deeply rooted and historically germinated, Kessler seeks to conceptualize and create conditions for the nourishment of Gen Z—and the generations that precede them—more nutritious, social, accessible, and fortuitous.
Detail from The Garden of Privatised Delights. Photo: Cristiano Corte. © British Council.
Kessler, alongside her Unscene Architecture colleague and co-founder Manijeh Verghese, have co-curated the British Pavilion at the current Venice Architecture Biennale, commissioned by the British Council. “They’ve been forced online,” continues Kessler. “So I think that there’s also this understanding that it’s great to have access to the digital realm, but there’s also an important physicality that has to come alongside that in order to physically meet people that you just can’t recreate online.” And it’s that physical meeting space that Kessler and her colleagues explore through _The Garden of Privatised Delights_.
Kessler hops on a call from across the pond after having just returned from visiting Venice and finally exploring the _Garden_ she’s spent two years planting. “It does photograph quite well,” she exclaims via our own digital meeting space. “There’s also a lot of sound to it, and all these other parts of the experience that don’t quite get across until you’re actually there.” The _Garden_, split into seven parts—each designed by a different design team—strays from a traditional Biennale Pavilion, opting for the creation of simulated spaces rather than schematics and drafts of would-be structures. Wander through the _Publicani_, designed by The Decorators, and consider how a pub is more than a place for drinking; perhaps swing around the _Play With(out) Grounds_, designed by vPPR, which calls for the designing of cities to allow space for teenagers to explore independently; or walk out into Unscene Architecture’s _Garden of Delight_s, which is not only the focal point of the Pavilion, but calls into question the use of outdoor space—an atmosphere and proposition quite prescient, as evidenced by the ever-buzzy C-word.
Detail from The Garden of Privatised Delights. Photo: Cristiano Corte. © British Council.
When guests enter the Pavilion, they immediately encounter a guard rail, which, as Kessler says, immediately engages with the conversation of public versus private space. The restrictions affirm this space does not _belong_ to the people. In the _Garden of Delights_, though, the artists flip that: affirming what visitors _can_ do in this space through signage. “Often, there’re just all these rules, which are telling you what you can’t do in a space,” says Kessler. Though often, in these privatized public spaces, like public parks, “you don’t know who owns the land that you’re on, and we break the rules.” Through affirmative signage, the scene invites guests to use spaces in a constructive way. Kessler continues, “I think it’s so important to have places that everyone feels welcome in.”
Kessler, an architect young in her field, approaches design and municipal planning from a fresh vantage point. “You’ve not got a reputation necessarily to live up to,” she remarks. “So that kind of frees you to test new ideas.” Among her many ventures, some of which include master planning and public works projects working to make public and cultural spaces more accessible, _The Architects’ Journal_ 40 under 40 designer sits on the National Infrastructure Commission’s Design Group where she’s helped develop the Commission’s four principles—climate, people, places, and value. Additionally, in step with the themes explored in the _Garden_, she led a study on infrastructural design, via the Commission’s young professional’s panel, to combat loneliness—some examples of which include water refineries’ potential to double as parks or seawalls providing allotments, as is done in Tokyo. It’s here where Kessler offers a boots on the ground perspective for young voices amidst an otherwise hyper-established and, shall we say, older crowd.
Detail from The Garden of Privatised Delights. Photo: Cristiano Corte. © British Council.
Indeed, it could be argued that it takes a younger voice to understand the needs of one’s generational peer set. “Being younger, you experience the world in a slightly different way,” remarks Kesssler. And while we venture to foster a more ideologically, environmentally, and economically sturdy world, perhaps that begins with infrastructural soundness. When we talk about building a better world for everyone, could that start with _literally_ _building_ a better world? Perhaps, it’s time to leave the Apple Store and reconvene again—in person and in public—and see what we might just get up to.
Detail from The Garden of Privatised Delights. Photo: Cristiano Corte. © British Council.
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