Bureau Spectacular

Township of Domestic Parts


Installation, 2014

Place: 14th International Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy


Administered by: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Ministry of Culture


Team: Jimenez Lai, Joanna Grant, Felipe Oropeza, Kevin Pazik, Shun-Ping Liu, Jacob Comerci, Manon Brissaud-Frenk, Eugenia Macchia, Aaron Spiering, Jay Studer, Alexander Petrakos


Consultants: Wei Tseng, Nilton Huang / Fabricator: Johnson Liao / Graphic Design: PENTAGRAM, Natasha Jen / Video Production: Matthew Mesner / Supported by: The Graham Foundation / Photography: Iwan Baan


Township of Domestic Parts is the Taiwan Pavilion at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture. It is an architectural installation within the Palazzo della Prigioni.

By deconstructing typical activities within domestic architecture, we treated each program as their own buildings. For example: House of Sleep, Altar of Appearance, House of Work, etc. Nine independent structures were placed within the exhibition space to create an interior urbanism of micro-buildings. What is the status of domesticity, particularly if program-specificity is both diminishing but also accentuating at the same time? When the bedroom is not used exclusively as a bedroom, the designation of program becomes a different symbolic gesture within contemporary domesticity. This project is at once a total separation but mixing of architectural programs.

Alongside this installation, we worked on a video documentary where we interviewed a series of architects from Taiwan, or worked on projects in Taiwan in the recent past.