Through the Cover Story for ARCHINESIA#14, we display our reportage from the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale for our readers, starting with a brief history of the Venice Architecture Biennale to a coverage on the new participant of the Biennale, namely the Holy See which exhibited “Vatican Chapels” within a separate island. We also appreciated the national pavilions of Southeast Asian countries which took the stage in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Among them were Indonesia with the Sunyata Pavilion, which answered the theme of Free space through a meditation of empty spaces found even in its traditional houses, and Singapore with the pavilion titled “No More Free Space?” which offered solutions to the lack of space for socialising. INSIGHT : RIDWAN KAMIL
For our Insight profile, we chose the figure of Ridwan Kamil who is currently serving
as a Head of State as the Governor of the West Java Province. Ridwan Kamil has an
educational background in architecture. He was also a practicing architect and the owner
of the office Urbane Indonesia. After a lengthy practice as an architect, he took the political route with the aim of improving regions, not only through practice but also through policy.
We took this interview opportunity to dig deeper about how to manifest a love of architecture to improve people’s lives through town and regional planning. At the end of the interview, Ridwan Kamil also delivers a reflective message for our readers amidst the busy tumult of the architectural profession.