At Italy's prestigious Architecture Biennale next year, U.S. to showcase 'quintessential' porch

Aug. 14 (UPI) -- In its effort to showcase American art abroad, the U.S. Department of State on Wednesday announced its selection for next year's Architecture Biennale in Italy as part of the Venice Biennale.

The work's U.S. Pavilion will be curated by the University of Arkansas' Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

The State Department announced that the American exhibition at Italy's 19th Architecture Biennale in Venice from May 10 to Nov. 23 will be "PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity." It will take place at the Giardini, the Arsenale and various other venues in Venice.

The U.S. Pavilion at the exhibition will be commissioned, organized and curated by the University of Arkansas' Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, in a partnership with Design Connects and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

The title of the Biennale Architettura 2025 is "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective."

The State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs supports and manages official U.S. participation at the international event. The department called the concept of the porch "an unheralded American archetype" that is found in all cities, states and regions across the nation.

The "PORCH" exhibition is co-commissioned by Peter MacKeith, dean and professor of Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design; Susan Chin, principal of DesignConnects, and Rod Bigelow, executive director of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

The interior of the U.S. Pavilion will feature approximately 50 projects and practices drawn from across the United States via an open call for projects to be announced in the fall.

MacKeith said exhibition's format emphasizes "a diversity of voices and perspectives," but also a set of "common causes for productive action through architecture and design."

"The emphasis will be on imperative issues, national and global, addressed through architecture and design, and on public engagement and civic building for the greater good, founded on a generous architectural diplomacy of creative expression, representing the best of the nation's past, present and future," he said in a University of Arkansas news release.

The Venice Biennale, established in 1895, is considered to be the most prestigious international art and architecture exhibition in the world, introducing hundreds of thousands of visitors to new architecture every two years.

An American presence at this particular global event, according to the State Department, ensures the "excellence, vitality, and diversity of the arts in the United States are effectively showcased abroad and provides an opportunity to engage foreign audiences to increase mutual understanding."

Next year's exhibition will focus on U.S. representation through "the contemporary manifestation of the porch in American architecture," which the State Department says is "a quintessential constructed place that is at once social and environmental, tectonic and performative, hospitable and intimate, generous and democratic."

It is expected to be an exhibition design of multiple scales, experiences, media and engagements. The department added that the co-commissioners and design team intended to spotlight the "character, value and contemporary purpose of the porch in American culture across the nation."