The Biopolitical Garden
The Biopolitical Garden
The exhibition features the work of StudioPaolaViganò in Europe and includes some of the research developed by the Habitat Research Center and the Lab-U, both directed by Paola Viganò at the EPFL (the Polytechnical School of Lausanne, Switzerland). Deep reading of existing situations, multiscale approach and interdisciplinarity challenge the role of urban design and urbanism, of open space and landscape design in the frame of the actual socio-ecological transition, whose biopolitical dimension concerns living entities and bodies within space.
The future city, here investigated in visions and projects, will be the product of delving into new ways of coexistence and redefinition of borders, distances, porosity among contrasting and disparate proximities: of individuals, groups, society, species, and practices in space. The Biopolitical Garden interrogates those modalities not only as a control apparatus exerted over a population, but as a powerful reservoir of possibilities for the subjects to emancipate themselves, redefining actual relations of power in space, among humans and non-humans. In such a transition, space as a collective capital is paramount: as a support, a rationality, as an agent.
About Paola Viganò
Paola Viganò (Sondrio, 29 May 1961), architect and urbanist, is Full Professor in Urban Theory and Urban Design at the EPFL (CH) where she directs the Habitat Research Center (HRC) and the Laboratory of Urbanism (Lab-U); she is also Professor at IUAV University of Venice (IT). She was the first woman to receive the Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme in France (2013), she is Doctor Honoris Causa by the UCLouvain in 2016 in the frame of “Utopia for our Time” and received the Flemish Culture Award for Architecture in 2017, and the Golden Medal for the Career of Milano Triennale in 2018. In 2022, she was appointed the Schelling Prize for Architectural Theory. Together with Bernardo Secchi, she founded Studio (1990-2014) and later StudioPaolaViganò working on numerous projects and visions in Europe, including the Great Paris vision (published in La ville poreuse, 2011) and the Antwerp Structural plan (published in Territories of a New Modernity, 2006). In 2025 StudioPaolaViganò has been recompensated with the Brussels Architecture Prize for Public Spaces and the Lifetime achievement Award to Paola Viganò. Her recent projects deal with urban and territorial design and the design of public space. The Biopolitical Garden. Space, Life, Transition (Actar 2024) is her latest book.