The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is one of the few countries to take an unusually political approach to the biennial theme of “Freespace”, which is appealing in many ways. “The Architecture of the Common Ground” welcomes visitors as a black box with a narrow, brightly lit corridor. What appears to be a barrier-free welcoming gesture quickly reveals itself to be a finger in the wound. This is because the corridor symbolizes the 8% of building land that is available for construction in the public sector.
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is one of the few countries to take an unusually political approach to the Biennale theme of “Freespace”, which is appealing in many ways. “The Architecture of the Common Ground” welcomes visitors as a black box with a narrow, brightly lit corridor. What appears to be a barrier-free welcoming gesture quickly reveals itself to be a finger in the wound. This is because the corridor symbolizes the 8% of building land that is available for construction in the public sector.
Not much for the urgently needed space for affordable housing. This is because Luxembourg, a small country with an area of 2586 square kilometers, in which only 14% of the country’s surface area is built on, has been experiencing population growth for years and the forecast is for continued growth. In Luxembourg City alone, the population has grown from 100,000 to 116,000 inhabitants within 10 years, with 180,000 commuters joining the 602,000 inhabitants (as at 1.1.2018) every day. Economic growth is both a curse and a blessing: new jobs are being created, but at the same time the necessary infrastructure is reaching its limits; urban sprawl is increasing and the lack of affordable housing is growing. Building land and real estate ownership is simply unaffordable for the younger generation. Land is becoming an object of speculation.
What does this mean for civil society? And above all: how can or even must architecture react to this? The creators of the Luxembourg Pavilion – the LUCA Luxembourg Center for Architecture and the University of Luxembourg – are aware that architects and urban planners cannot solve the land issue. Nor is “complete communalization or complete privatization of land” a solution, as Florian Hertweck – who teaches at the university – emphasized in an interview. But through the way they build, planners have a great influence on creating unexpected added value in the sense of freespace by opening up the architecture or the built environment for the benefit of civil society.
The current Biennale presentation of selected built and unbuilt examples from the history of architecture is an excellent demonstration of the possibilities for the sustainable use of urban and rural land – for the benefit of the general public and thus also for the cohesion of society.
