When does a rental property become a home? The contradiction of property being both living space and a piece of real estate is a global issue, one that is highlighted in an exhibition at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.
Titled Home Stage, the Estonian pavilion has been designed as a rental apartment, with a live-in actor performing daily rituals to explore the challenges of home ownership.
For nine months, different actors will each spend a month living in the apartment, carrying out both scripted and unscripted performances that explore tensions between the two functions. The first resident is Arolin Raudva, who is spending her days making replicas of visitors’ keys, meditating, playing board games with visitors, cleaning up and reading.
One room of the ‘house’ has been left vacant and dusty, in reference to properties that are bought as investments but not rented out, in order to keep their value.
In the bathroom, water squirts across the room as if it were a leak, raising questions about maintenance.
For curators Aet Ader, Arvi Anderson and Mari Möldre, all architects at Tallinn-based studio B210, the message behind the project points to Estonia’s lack of housing policy and high rates of home ownership.
“In Estonia, around 80% of people own their homes”, Ader explained.
“That means that we, the younger generation, are facing a lot of questions. With a very small rental market and a vast amount of homeownership, what do we do?”
The curators expect visitors will find the topic resonates with housing issues around the world.
“The contrast between home and real estate embodies a variety of human relationships and contradictory situations: depending on our role, the attitude towards spaces and people around us also changes,” they said.
“The resulting creative mess in the Venetian apartment does not give finite answers but invites imagination and provokes critical thinking.”
