In 2016, Alejandro Aravena gave the Venice Architecture Biennale the title ‘Reporting from the Front’. In doing so, he suggested that architects are on the front line of the fight for a better world. This year, Hashim Sarkis takes it a step further with the motto ‘How Will We Live Together?’. Does Sarkis really believe that architecture must or can save the world? Or does this grand rhetoric conceal a deep-seated mistrust of the discipline itself?

Sarkis draws inspiration for the roughly 120 contributions to his main exhibition from fields that lie outside architecture in the strict sense. Sociology, anthropology, neurobiology, technology and field research broaden our understanding of architecture here. That is nothing new. Architects have been drawing on other fields of knowledge since the 1960s. But here, the stretch is gradually running out… At times, you might even imagine yourself at the ‘Arte’ Biennale, in the documentary and activist art section, with the same high level of ‘apprentice sorcerer’ charm.