Ahhh, the Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale is coming again in 2008! The exhi­bi­tion runs from the 14 Sep­tem­ber to the 24 Novem­ber and I’m totally stoked for another visit to the mag­i­cal city.

This year’s 11th Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Exhi­bi­tion will be curated by Aaron Betsky, the former direc­tor of the Nether­lands Archi­tec­ture Insti­tute and now direc­tor of the Cincin­nati Art Museum. You can find an inter­est­ing inter­view from 10.2004 between Archinect and Betsky here.

This year’s theme will be:

Out There: Archi­tec­ture Beyond Building

These days –in Betsky’s vision– build­ings are not enough, or too much, to answer to the call of making our­selves at home in our modern world. We must be will­ing to use all forms, shapes, images and tac­tics to help us frame, figure out and order a world that is con­tin­u­ally changing.

The worlds of art, inte­ri­ors, land­scapes, pro­jected media and lit­er­a­ture can and must be mined for such ele­ments. We must not let build­ings be the tombs of archi­tec­ture, but must make an archi­tec­ture that helps us to feel at home in, figure out and rep­re­sent the world we live in.

This year’s theme seems uncan­nily sim­i­lar to the man­i­festo of Volume mag­a­zine, pub­lished by Archis:

About Volume
Volume is an inde­pen­dent quar­terly mag­a­zine that sets the agenda for design. With going beyond architecture’s def­i­n­i­tion of ‘making build­ings’ it reaches out for global views on design­ing envi­ron­ments, advo­cates broader atti­tudes to social struc­tures, and reclaims the cul­tural and polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of archi­tec­ture. Cre­ated as a global idea plat­form to voice archi­tec­ture any way, any­where, any­time, it rep­re­sents the expan­sion of archi­tec­tural ter­ri­to­ries and the new man­date for design.

And the offi­cial Aaron Betsky biog­ra­phy pub­lished through the biennale:

Aaron Betsky

Born in Mis­soula (Mon­tana, USA) in 1958, Aaron Betsky trained in the Nether­lands and the United States. Betsky brings vast and varied expe­ri­ence as cura­tor, man­ager, his­to­rian, critic and in cre­at­ing archi­tec­ture exhi­bi­tions to the Bien­nale di Venezia.

Direc­tor of the Nether­lands Archi­tec­ture Insti­tute (NAI) of Rot­ter­dam –one of the most impor­tant archi­tec­ture muse­ums and cen­tres in the world– from 2001 to 2006, for three edi­tions (2002, 2004, 2006) he held the post of Com­mis­sioner for the Dutch Pavil­ion at the Bien­nale di Venezia’s Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Exhi­bi­tion. At the 8th Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Exhi­bi­tion (2002), the Dutch Pavil­ion, curated by Aaron Betsky, won the Golden Lion for best for­eign pavilion.

After fin­ish­ing his sec­ondary edu­ca­tion in the Nether­lands, Betsky grad­u­ated from the Yale School of Archi­tec­ture (USA) and gained a Ph.D. in the His­tory of Archi­tec­ture from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity in Delft (Netherlands).He is cur­rently Direc­tor of the Cincin­nati Art Museum (since 2006), one of the most impor­tant and oldest (125 years) in the United States. Before this, between 1995 and 2001, he was Cura­tor for archi­tec­ture at the San Fran­cisco Museum of Modern Art.

Betsky is a pro­lific writer and jour­nal­ist and the author of a dozen books and numer­ous arti­cles with lead­ing inter­na­tional spe­cialised peri­od­i­cals. He has writ­ten for the “Los Ange­les Times” (1991-1994), and amongst the many other news­pa­pers and peri­od­i­cals he has con­tributed to, the “New York Times”, “The Vil­lage Voice”, “Domus”, “Elle” and “Met­ro­pol­i­tan Home”.

He has held the Eero Saari­nen chair in archi­tec­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan and has been Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor at some lead­ing US uni­ver­si­ties: at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity in New York, at the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts in San Fran­cisco, at the School of Archi­tec­ture in Hous­ton, and at the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Santa Monica. He is an hon­orary member of the British Insti­tute of Archi­tects (2004) and has won an award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects (2001). From 1985 to 1987, he worked with Frank O. Gehry Asso­ciates, Inc. (Venice, California).

Among his books are What is Mod­ernism (Phaidon Press, to be pub­lished in autumn 2008) and The United Nations Build­ing (Thames & Hudson, 2006).

You can follow these links to see photos from the 10th bien­nale in 2006 from Darrel Ronald and Thomas Stellmach.