The High Street of Exchanges (part of the British Pavillion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2020)

Studio Polpo are part of the team for the next British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Unscene Architecture, with a theme of the Garden of Privatised Delights. Our room, entitled the High St of Exchanges, explores how social spaces and exchanges are accommodated within and alongside retail units and commercial transactions. Working with audio artist artist Alex de Little, we gathered examples including conversations in the hairdressers that embody practices of care; audio from activities at Foodhall revealing the economies and ecologies of food production and consumption; and created an audio piece around libraries with Ben Cornish and Katherine Quinn exploring these as public sites of learning. This audio is embedded in a series of re-useable furniture objects and elements designed by Studio Polpo. These exchanges have been a starting point for a series of actions, spatial strategies and propositions for developing community-led high streets, which engage in how the high street—as a social space—is understood, used and owned.