The Institute for Urban Design (@IfUD) of New York City has been selected by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) to organize United States representation at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, to take place from August through November 2012 (precise dates TBD). The United States will present the exhibition Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, which documents projects initiated by American architects and designers aimed at bringing positive change to the public realm.

The commissioner of the pavilion is Cathy Lang Ho, New York-based architecture writer and editor and board member of the Institute for Urban Design. Ho will curate the exhibition with Ned Cramer, editor-in-chief of Architect magazine, based in Washington, D.C. David van der Leer, assistant curator of architecture and urban studies at the Guggenheim Museum, will serve as curatorial strategist. The curatorial advisory team includes Paola Antonelli, senior design curator of the Museum of Modern Art; Zoe Ryan, curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago; Michael Sorkin, critic, principal of Michael Sorkin Studio and president of the board of the Institute for Urban Design; and Anne Guiney, journalist and executive director of the Institute for Urban Design.

Spontaneous Interventions will frame a compelling archive of actionable strategies, ranging from urban farms to guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowdsourced city planning. Provisional, improvisational, guerrilla, unsolicited, tactical, temporary, informal, unplanned, participatory, open-source—these are just a few of the words that have been used to describe a growing body of work that ventures outside conventional practice to solve problematic urban situations, creating new opportunities and amenities for the public. These efforts cut across boundaries, addressing architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and the digital universe, and run the gamut from symbolic to practical, physical to virtual, whimsical to serious. Spontaneous Interventions presents a fascinating contemporary approach that blends entrepreneurship, activism, craft, and ingenuity, ultimately reasserting design as an integrated practice capable of solving problems of all types and scales.

In the open spirit of the theme, the curators are inviting designers to submit projects online for consideration for inclusion in Spontaneous Interventions, and to document the exhibition's organization, at www.ifud.org/venice.

About the Institute for Urban Design
Since 1979, the New York–based Institute for Urban Design has served as a central platform for debate among architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, academics, journalists, and urbanists. The Institute operates as a think tank and advocacy group, drawing on the collected experience and knowledge of its large fellowship to bring important issues into wider public debate through lectures, events, and publications.

About the U.S. Representation at the Venice Biennale
The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs supports and manages official U.S. participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The selection of the Institute for Urban Design resulted from an open competition and followed the recommendation of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE), convened by the National Endowment for the Arts. U.S. representation at this global event ensures that the excellence, vitality, diversity and innovation of the architecture in the United States are effectively showcased abroad, and provides an opportunity to engage foreign audiences to increase mutual understanding.

Top image: U.S. Pavilion, 54th International Art Exhibition, presented by the Indianapolis Museum of Art
View inside the U.S. Pavilion: Allora & Calzadilla
Armed Freedom Lying on a Sunbed, 2011. Photo by Andrew Bordwin.