Four proposals for the Venice Architecture Biennale from the past decade address planning-based strategies aimed at shaping spatial power relations or improving quality of life—through practices such as enclosure by fences and separation barriers, fortification via secure rooms (mamads), the planning of new cities, and changes in the use of urban spaces by elderly people.
These proposals—both those that critique planning processes and architectural phenomena, and those that seek to offer new and beneficial design and planning solutions—undergo a profound shift in meaning after October 7th. Looking back at them offers a glimpse into a past state of mind, into political outlooks that have failed, and which at times brought down with them the exhibitions that presented them, further eroding faith in the good intentions of planning institutions and in the potential of architecture in Israel to lead toward progress.
