Platform, container, environment. 2019 Shenzhen Biennale as innovation in practice

In a time of supra-national economic, political and social crises, the architectural profession is acknowledged as necessitating of a fundamental restructuring in order to gain both renewed relevance as a discipline (Awan, Schneider and Till 2009; Till 2014, 9-11) and sustainability as day-to-day practice (Deamer and Bernstein 2010; Deamer 2015; etc.). A tendency to diversify the products of architectural practice - i.e. beyond buildings - is facilitated by a constantly increasing number of curatorial outlets - i.e. Triennales, Biennales - allowing to increase the perceived pace of innovation (Papastergiadis and Martin 2011, 45–62). The paper looks at the curatorial process of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism as a way to access a select sample of internationally mobile contemporary practices whose work is produced at the intersection between profession, academia, and independent research. Drawing on literature pertaining to the concept of communities of practice (Amin and Roberts 2008, 353-369; Faulconbridge 2010, 2842–2858), ethnography of practice (Yaneva 2009) and feminist theory (Frichot and Runting 2015, 397-411), we question the agency of the Biennale and similar curated events as facilitating environments entailing the reconceptualization of design practice (O’Neill & Wilson 2015; Szacka 2019). In order to do so, we look at the practices that populate the exhibition, how they self-represent and how they employ the exhibition to maximize the possibility of producing innovation. Finally, we select a small number of installations that appear the most resilient to contingencies, and analyze their trajectories outside of the Biennale in order to understand the way specific networks are built and effects are achieved, within platforms that are indeed part of day-to-day practice, rather than existing outside of it.