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Alejandro Aravena was largely unheard of outside of his home country of Chile until he won last year’s Pritzker Prize. Now, he’s directing this year’s International Architecture Exhibition in Venice...

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Words by Stephen Hitchins

Have you ever Heard of Alejandro Aravena? No? Rephrase that. Had you ever heard of Alejandro Aravena before he won the Pritzker Prize? Be honest. Did you really even register his name at the Milan Furniture Fair in 2010?

That was where Aravena was inspired by bundles of cloth that Ayoreo Indians in Paraguay turned into makeshift seats. Let's start again. Notwithstanding the Ayoreo Indians, when you heard that Aravena had won the Pritzker did you think you might be losing it? Were you really that out of touch with what was happening in your professional world that you honestly did not know who this guy was?

Try harder. When you finally discovered that Aravena's claim to fame was that he had done an incomplete structure and little else besides, did you inwardly think that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for you? Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but one day? Who is this guy? Well, we are about to find out, big time. Not only famed for that half house (albeit half of a very good house) he is the director of this year's Mostra di Architettura di Venezia, the 15th International Architecture Exhibition.

A part of La Biennale di Venezia, the most prestigious cultural organisation in the world that has stood at the forefront of research and trends in the arts since 1895 (and apart from fine art, today includes dance, music, theatre, cinema -- the Venice International Film Festival has run since 1932 -- and, since 1980, architecture).

Apart from when the supply of starchitect curators appeared to have dried up and Paolo Baratta and the management team resorted to a journalist running the event, an experiment that has so far gone unrepeated, Aravena joins a long line of distinguished names invited to curate the event. Peter Palumbo, who chaired the Pritzker jury, said that as they visited his projects they felt a sense of wonder and revelation, even quoting Keats: they 'felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken'. Aravena's resumé really is quite unlike his predecessors. For starters, he is a lot younger. He also stands at a slight angle to the architectural universe.

Alejandro Aravena's Innovation Center at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, named Design of the Year in 2015 by the Design Museum

Following on from Rem Koolhaas, David Chipperfield, and Kazuyo Sejima, Chilean Aravena is the 41st Pritzker laureate, and only the fourth winner from Latin America. It is not quite true that he has only built half a house. But it is certainly true to say that he has not designed the iconic cultural belters usually associated with the prize. There are a series of energy-efficient buildings at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago that include the Innovation Centre, the Medical School, the School of Mathematics and, inevitably, the School of Architecture. In China there is an office building for Novartis under construction, and there is a design proposal for the stock exchange in Tehran.

But it is as executive director of Elemental, a 'do tank' as opposed to a think tank, that he has achieved fame. It focuses on projects of public interest and social impact such as the low-cost housing that has become the group's hallmark, and where the 'half a good house' tagline comes from. Elemental's design is participatory, with the residents completing the process.

Following the tsunami that hit Chile in 2010 the group became involved in the reconstruction of the city of Constitución with relief work, master planning, and 'incremental housing' -- the name given to Elemental's innovative, collaborative, collective approach.

It has also been responsible for so-called 'Chairless' furniture in 2010 for Vitra, housing in Monterrey in Mexico, a Montessori School, and yes, there was a cultural centre, in Constitución. There might also have been one in Moscow when Elemental proposed halls that would have been longer than the Tate's, higher than MoMA's, purer than the Guggenheim's, and was shortlisted to develop a new museum and exhibition complex for the new National Center for Contemporary Arts in a competition eventually won by Heneghan Peng.

Residence and dining hall (2008) at the St Edwards University in Austin, Texas, designed by Aravena

Giving economic opportunity to the less privileged, mitigating the effects of natural disasters, reducing energy consumption, and providing welcoming public spaces, Aravena's work is fuelled by public service, focusing our imagination away from aesthetics and the economics of building development. He is into social organisation and civic engagement.

He has risen to prominence without being a starchitect. His buildings are often modest and understated. They do not necessarily command attention or grab headlines, but he is now the focus of a great deal of attention.

He has nothing left to prove. He has the freedom to experiment. For the Venice Biennale, and given carte blanche, Aravena has focused on the challenges ahead in the built environment, such as migration and climate change. He wants to raise the volume of debate around global urbanisation.

The language being used about the Biennale is of 'battles to be won' and 'frontiers to be expanded', sharing success stories where 'architecture did make a difference in those battles and frontiers'. After the previous expo, 'dedicated entirely to the director's research' (Koolhaas: 'I wanted my biennale to disconnect from contemporary architecture') it will be a sharp contrast. Where 2014 was an exhibition of architecture without any architecture in sight (Koolhaas: it 'is nothing to do with design'), something that led to it being described as 'accomplished', 'brilliant' and 'taking the piss', the new world on display in 2016 will be one of engagement with civic society.

For the first time the Biennale will last for six months from 28 May to 27 November with exhibits and sessions in the Giardini, the Arsenale, and across the city. It is called 'Reporting From the Front'. The language is consistently military. Is it really a battle?

Is there any good news? Just how turning the Australian pavilion into a swimming pool gels with that will be interesting to see.

The work of Amelia Holliday, Michelle Tabet and Isabelle Toland, the exhibit explores the history of the pool and its role in Australian society, 'from pools of necessity to the pools of excess'. It will be the first architectural exhibit in the new pavilion, designed by Denton Corker Marshall. The black granite box leans out over a canal and appears as mysterious as the exhibits inside may well be. It joins a celebrity list of Scarpa, Rietveld and Aalto who all designed pavilions in the park.

Elemental, headed by Aravena, began involved in the reconstruction of the Chilean city of Constitución, following the 2010 Tsunami, including this cultural centre

The Architectural Imagination is a show of speculative projects on four sites across Detroit showcased in the American pavilion. Birthplace of the auto industry, free-span factory floors, concrete-paved roads, Motown and techno music, Detroit requires a great deal of resourcefulness to overcome the social and environmental issues that arise in post-industrial cities. The 12 practices whose work will be included are not the usual roster.

Selected from 250 submissions they include Zago, Greg Lynn FORM, and Pita & Bloom all from Los Angeles; SAA, and MOS from New York; T+E+A+M, and A(n) Office from Michigan; BairBalliet, and Marshall Brown from Illinois; Preston Scott Cohen from Cambridge; Present Future from Houston, and Mack Scogin Merrill Elam from Atlanta.

The Nordic pavilion comprises the largest survey of contemporary architecture in the region ever compiled, demonstrating collective and individual identities. In addition to its participation in the Nordic pavilion, there is also a Finnish exhibit of temporary housing for refugees. Finland's neighbour Estonia is presenting a range of ideas that spot global patterns visualised through the lens of an Estonian context.

Reflecting Aravena's social work and in particular its public housing component, the UAE pavilion will focus on Sha'abi, the country's social housing programme, which has been in existence since the country's foundation 1971.

Founder of the Amsterdam-based architecture think tank FAST, Malkit Shoshan is responsible for the Netherlands pavilion demonstrating a mix of design, human rights and activism. It will be a presentation of Camp Castor in Gao, Mali, a region of nomads where the 'blue men' of the Tuareg mix with the blue helmets of the UN peacekeeping mission based there.

Turkey has chosen to focus on Istanbul and Venice, the 'twin harbours of the Mediterranean called 'Darzanà: Two Arsenals, One Vessel'. Darzanà is an inlet for shipbuilding, with its roots in Ancient Greek, Latin, Jewish, Arabic, and Turkish cultures. It aims to carry 'the Istanbul dock and its accompanying historic associations, exchanges, discussions, similarities, and visions of the future to a shipyard in Venice'.

Canada's exhibit was selected through a national competition. For a country that emerged as a political entity not despite its geography but because of it, the exhibit is an exploration of the nation's culture of extraction, the rise of a 'global resource empire' and its architectural impact. With half of the world's mining projects operated by Canadians, and 75 per cent of prospecting and mining companies on the planet based in Canada, the scale of these statistics bring with them a responsibility to debate the complex ecologies of resource extraction, their legacy and the future potential, and that is the starting point for the pavilion.

Having selected Washington Fajardo as the president of the Rio World Heritage Institute and the Council of Cultural Heritage Protection, you can guess the direction of the Brazil pavilion, especially at a time of so much debate over urban transformation resulting from the city playing host to the Earth Summit, the World Cup and the Olympics hard alongside the impact of poverty, violence, and general urban degradation. As the bang has gone out of the B in BRICS, so the urban infrastructure upgrades have faded along with the economic miracle. Rio's revival has not taken advantage of the historic opportunity presented to it by the transitory legacy of staging great events. What the future now holds will be on display.

The Spanish pavilion is prominently located on the main thoroughfare close to the entrance to the Giardini. As such, its two curators felt a responsibility to draw up a list of the country's professionals whose work they felt deserved to be represented. They came up with an initial list of 500. Despite its prominent location, the building is one of the smallest.

This is a challenge, but they have been determined not to feature just one project, nor the work of one firm alone, and certainly not one enormous public project as so many of the other countries have traditionally done.

With a commitment to reuse, redevelop, reform, rehabilitate and rebuild, the exhibit demonstrates what can be created through interventions on a smaller-scale.

More traditional in its approach, Switzerland is represented by the work of a Venezuelan-born Swiss architect, Christian Kerez, whose international recognition has come through large-scale social housing projects in Brazil, and a residential project, the House with One Wall, in Zurich. This is a building with a wall that divides it into two, the only wall in the entire house that fulfills functions conventionally assigned to several elements. The simplicity of the concept, the reduction of the design to a single element, that is both the loadbearing structure and the installation core, makes the building both simple and very complex.

Germany has chosen Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) to represent it in a pavilion focused on examples of buildings transformed for refugees and migrants, with everything from reception centres to bicycle workshops. How do you integrate so many new citizens? How do newcomers become socially integrated? Where should arrivals be located? What can urban design contribute to the process? 'Making Heimat' will examine such questions. As Angela Merkel becomes progressively more embattled politically at home and isolated across Europe, the state of leadership over the refugee crisis is such that the future of the EU currently rests on her strength, or weakness, with respect to asylum seekers. This exhibit may go some way to giving some answers.

Elemental designed the Villaverde housing project (2013) in the Chilean city of Constitución. This large-scale scheme used basebuilds that allow residents to expand as they need more space

Also, on the theme of displacement and migration, the Albanian design collective Åbäke will present the tantalisingly entitled I Have Left You the Mountain that seeks to 'evoke places and loss through polifonic singing, or multi-part lyric' through minimalism. Wow!

Equally challenging is the Irish presentation by Níall McLaughlin. Shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the practice has worked alongside Yeoryia Manolopoulou to improve the quality of life for those suffering from Alzheimer's, examining how their spatial experiences do not resemble any conventional architectural representation. A condition that progressively destroys the ability to remember and to navigate one's way in the world, to know where you are and to be at ease with where you are, is destroyed by dementia. That is a profound challenge for architects and designers and one the exhibit addresses.

The British pavilion presents 'Home Economics', one of four shortlisted proposals from 56 original submissions to the British Council. Continuing the recent tradition of the pavilion being a space for research and debate, it addresses the future of housing, how patterns of domestic life are collapsing through social and technological change, something with which the design of the home has as yet to come to terms. Whether the home can ever escape its economic status as an asset, whether homes should still be considered private spaces, and how new types of families and households produce different spatial needs, have been addressed.

Curating the exhibit are Shumi Bose, Jack Self and Finn Williams. Not only are they the youngest team to take responsibility for a British pavilion, they are the youngest ever for any exhibit in the architecture biennale's history. The trio is working with a diverse range of talent representing a broad church of creativity, with advisers and collaborators that include Arup, Fergus Henderson, Generation Rent, Pegasus Life and Naked House Community Builders.

As the traditional rhythms of everyday life have collapsed, the impact on design and architecture is profound. Thus, the exhibit unfolds through a series of propositions based not on function but on time: hours (the responsibility of the co-curators); days (by Ayr, a London-based art collective focusing on interiors, domesticity and internet culture); months (by DOGMA and Black Square, a teaching practice looking at the political relationship between architecture and dwelling); years (Julia King, a British-Venezuelan architect working in the UK and India); and decades (by Hesselbrand, an architecture practice based in London and Oslo). Hesselbrand is also responsible for the overall exhibition design with graphic identity by OK-RM (Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath -- 'For us design is a conversation'.

When is it not, you may well ask?). The teams have all produced room-sized 1:1 environments in the spirit of the modernists' attempt to explain ideas to people who could not read drawings nor understand models.

As we live through the kind of housing crisis for which council houses were invented, hold your breath for 'building the austerity city' meets Doha-on-Thames -- 'austere luxury flats, the tasteful 50s-style modernist non-dom investment'.

There are lots more. And it is a good thing. If indeed thousands of new cities from hypercities to techno-hubs to refugee centres will be needed to house an ever-increasing global population, projected to hit 10 billion by 2060, then urban infill and densification schemes seen at architecture schools today will not cut it. Privately financed satellite cities around the world all look the same right now. Bland non-place development is the order of the day, with none of the design being done by local teams let alone ones that are conversant with local culture.

So-called 'smart city' rhetoric is a buzzword that has outlived its usefulness, but nevertheless India's BJP party wants no fewer than 100 'smart cities' to be built across India, and has highly controversial land-acquisition plans in place to make these 'insta-cities' happen and let the status symbol megatall skyscraper-as-competitive-sport take off.

The Monterrey housing project (2011) in Santa Catarina, Mexico, took on the 'half house' concept pioneered by element. This project was the group's first outside of Chile

(On sale this year are 300 apartments at the 442m-high World One Tower in Mumbai, with 117 floors, interiors by Giorgio Armani, and prices that start at £1.4m.) Quiet pieces of architecture these are not.

Published plans all have that generic gated-community, urban enclave, air-conditioned golf-club style that is a recipe for social apartheid. Where they do have a look, for example African infrastructure, it has a remarkably Chinese quality about it, unsurprisingly perhaps as China is financing much of this development. Meanwhile, in China, the idealised copying of European cities that gave rise to the 'one city, nine towns' project by the Shanghai Planning Commission is giving way to something else as Holland Town, Thames Town, Spanish Town, Swedish-style Luodian, the Italianate Pujiang based on Venice looking like the monumental EUR, Mussolini's neoclassical vision celebrating fascism, and Anting, that might have been crafted by Albert Speer the elder rather than his son, who is responsible: all remain eerily empty.

Buildings without people, people without buildings, social injustice, irrational waste; such cities are the wrong ideas pitched in the wrong way to the wrong people in the wrong places. As Sicinius, a tribune, asked the crowd in Coriolanus: 'What is the city but the people?' to which the citizens cried: 'True, the people are the city.' High-end urban centres minus all character will not solve the real problems.

There are a great many far better ideas and initiatives to see in Venice. In all, there are 88 participants from Armenia to the Yemen, China to Thailand, the Ivory Coast to Uruguay. And all at the behest of a new star. Alejandro, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.