To mark the sixteenth edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, 136 entries have been on display since 26 May 2018 at the Giardini and the Arsenale, as well as throughout the city. This offers an opportunity to experience a wide range of curatorial and scenographic approaches.

Following on from Alejandro Aravena’s ‘Reporting from the Front’, Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, of the practice Grafton, have decided this year to challenge and prompt all the Biennale’s exhibitors to reflect on the concept of ‘Freespace’. The aim of this edition, in the words of their manifesto, is to reveal the sometimes unexpected potential of architecture and practices that go beyond its traditional interpretation, with a view to enabling visitors to see and experience the full diversity of the places we pass through every day. Although the scope of possibilities presented by such a theme is exceedingly broad, it invites each exhibitor to explore what architecture can offer more generously, beyond a rigid, one-dimensional relationship with the built environment.