How can architecture break out of insular modes?

Architecture and design have a long legacy of operating inside their own bubbles: reinforcing their own logics, aesthetics, vocabulary, and networks with the effect of becoming self-referential and exclusive. These bubbles shape who architects collaborate with, how projects take form, and ultimately, who benefits from spatial production. In Bursting Bubbles, the central thematic arc of VOLUME’s intervention at the Venice Biennale, we ask: How can architecture break out of its insular modes and engage more productively with other disciplines and publics? How can we develop ways of working that produce exchange rather than reinforcing hierarchies and silos? What is there to learn from others outside of our bubbles who have challenged and burst out of their own bubble?

Conversations with ‘bubble bursters’

To explore these questions, we are bringing together architects and designers to start conversations with bubble bursters – these bubble bursters are people who challenge disciplinary boundaries, dismantle exclusivity, and introduce alternative ways of thinking, working, and making together. These dialogues will trace encounters that disrupt, expand, and reimagine the role of architecture and design in a world that demands more collective, interdependent, and transformative practices.

Conversation # 3: Ludwig Engel / David Zilber

For Bursting Bubbles Conversations #3, futurologist Ludwig Engel and chef David Zilber discuss unlearning, storytelling and curiosity as tools for transformation.