The Japan Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, explores the architectural intelligence required for the future under the theme of “In-Between.”

Although the use of AI in architecture is still in its early stages, current trends suggest that a time may soon come when buildings and cities are designed and planned, from basic concept development, volume, plan, and image studies, to performance optimization, without human involvement. When that time comes, what awaits us may be a society where AI leads and humans follow–– AI becomes the subject and humans, the object. While we look forward to the expansion of intelligence through AI, we are also concerned about this subject-object inversion.

In the face of this situation, it is time for us to reexamine our perception of the subject-object dichotomy and update our own intelligence. We propose the concept of the in-between.

Japan has long had the idea of ma, or “in-between time-space.” Originally, ma referred not only to the in-between time-space in the everyday sense but more to the tension that arises from the dialogue between two things, and the idea that this tension acts as a metaphysical subject. Based on this idea, the subject is neither us humans nor the world outside of us; rather, subjecthood exists in a world of a completely different realm, the in-between.

In the in-between, there is no distinction among humans, non-humans, nature, and man-made objects. The in-between is the very state of dialogue among those elements, and the new nature of intelligence lies in this space.

This project takes the Japan Pavilion as the experimental grounds for pursuing this new kind of intelligence. The elements that make up the pavilion––the Hole, Wall Columns, Outer Walls, Brick Terrace, Pensilina, Tilted Loop Path, and Yew Tree–– with the human team of curators and two artist-architect pairs, engage in a dialogue, both fictionally and actually. Together, we imagine a future of the Japan Pavilion–– a near future, where things are just a little different. (Jun Aoki)