The fifth edition of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2019) has been inaugurated in the Estonian capital, with the theme “Beauty Matters”, a celebration of beauty in architecture. The curator of the event Yael Reisner chose a very insidious topic: beauty is a value that has become taboo in the architectural debate, but to which the Israeli architect and educator looks with optimism and a interdisciplinary gaze. TAB 2019 develops an antithetical discourse to that “Form Follow Function” that has addressed most practices and theories in the field of architecture and beyond.

Like it or not, the topic avoids the now conventional rhetoric of contemporary biennials, which evade any statement with the pretext of “raising questions” or “starting a debate”. Instead, here the direction is clear: “Civilization could not exist without the experience of beauty,” you can read on the posters around the city. Yael Reisner states: “engagement with aesthetics and a preoccupation with beauty is back, evidenced by a cultural shift from the supposedly objective to an emerging trust in the subjective.”

With the aim of researching and experimenting with new forms of beauty in architecture, an exhibition and an external pavilion selected through an open call, as well as a symposium and several side events, have been developed.

For “Beauty Matters” the curator invited eight architects to design an installation to experiment unusual relationships between aesthetics and ways of living. Unfortunately, in the spatial organization of the exhibition, the complex curatorial concept results developed confusedly : the few contributions are medium-large in size and would deserve a wider spacing between them. There is no precise rule in their distribution. Having so few cues is finally an unconvincing choice to support such a complex, vast and richly interpreted discourse.

The most enjoyable part of the exhibition is its parallel experience in VR. London based architect Paula Strunden reproduced all the projects in a virtual space, creating immersive and homogeneous experiences. The spacious digital environments offer a combination of visual, acoustic and tactile stimuli that make the virtual visit complete and enjoyable. The outdoor pavilion designed by Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK), and Format Engineers (UK) is also surprising for the relationship between form and construction. The wooden structure, joined with metal plates, was in fact built by unskilled labor, who used VR viewers as a guide for proper assembly.

This technology allows to build in a simple and efficient way structures with complex shapes: a great step forward for DIY-Architecture which is used to elementary construction techniques and trivial projects in the name of the lack of resources and the need for participatory construction.

This project answers a question that has accompanied us throughout our experience in Tallinn: “Who is beauty for?” It reminded us of a famous phrase by the Italian theorist and activist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which we paraphrase (or rather, we cripple a bit): beauty is subversive when it is collectivised.