Honorable Mention: International Architecture Awards 2022 
Open the Box: Public Participation with Art | Venice, Italy | 2021

Architects: Louise Braverman Architect
General Contractor: Louise Braverman Architect
Client: European Cultural Centre
Photographers: Matteo Losurdo

OPEN THE BOX Public Participation with Art Installation at the Time Space Existence Exhibition 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale Experiencing art creates the capacity for an insightful, aesthetic, and aspirational curated life that can touch people from all strata of society, potentially moving their existence to a better place. Architecture designed for the arts can amplify this impulse, constructing connective tissue across seemingly intractable boundaries.

Open the Box, an environmental installation currently on display at the Time Space Existence Exhibit at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, challenges those in the art world to break down the barriers that separate diverse people from the potential threshold that art can create in their lives. Open the Box is sustainable, composed of a brickwork pattern of closed re-cyclable corrugated boxes interspersed with open boxes depicting images, audio/video, and text of our architecturally accessible cultural sites.

It is a clarion call to cultural stakeholders to encourage critical thinking, shared conversations, and public participation. Early precedence abounds for civic space becoming the heartbeat of participatory aesthetic enlightenment. Built in 367 BC, the Mouseion at Alexandria not only stored historic texts, but also regularly engaged the public with multi-disciplinary dialogue about the arts. Fast forward to the 1960’s when this practice was intensified with provocative art projects in the public domain that further blurred the lines between art and architecture.

Critically positioned as idea-driven, off the wall and in the landscape, art became more expansive and approachable. Today with the dynamism of 21st century digital technology, the historical trajectory of this participatory paradigm can further evolve as we reconfigure multi-functional public places such as airports, distribution centers and underutilized retail facilities into hybrid sites that celebrate the local and global civic role of art in our lives. At its best, architecture for arts and culture is a porous vessel, a living organism, sometimes bounded by a semi-permeable container, that can communicate directly with its community. Art silos are now a part of the past.