Among the twenty-two Guests from the Future included in Venice Architecture Biennale curator Lesley Lokko’s Laboratory, Juergen Strohmayer (Istanbul, 1990) and Glenn DeRoché (New York, 1985) are the authors of Plugin Busua, a video installation at the far end of the Corderie section of the Arsenale, where a quote from Ban Ki-moon invites visitors to reflect on sustainable development as the best way to address climate change-driven environmental destruction. According to Lokko, Strohmayer and DeRoché offer a vision on who will most likely be the architect of the future and what may be their interests, their worries, and their ambitions. Within this context, Surf Lodge Busua, in coastal Ghana, aims at being an eco-sustainable tourism destination, developed together with local communities starting from an existing modernist building. The community hub design integrates functional, climate, urban, and community parameters with a reduced ecological footprint thanks to using an extant building, innovative materials, and a careful organization of space. Plugin Busua is the maquette in the exhibition, an immersive installation where visitors can experience the harmonious environmental and communitarian vision of the surf lodge. A video produced by Nii Obodai depicts scenes of local life in an impeccable black-and-white. The exhibit shows the effect of architectural adaptive reuse and offers visitors a geographically-specific, intense audio-video experience.

Featured image: © Julien Lanoo