Between the Port of Oakland and the post-industrial, residential community of West Oakland, over 400 acres of former Army Base land is to be developed for port expansion. West Oakland has long suffered from major health problems directly related to air contamination from port activities, yet the community reaps few direct economic benefits from this hub of international trade. The port expansion is an opportunity for reimagining the relationship with the surrounding community. Our design integrates ecosystem services with port operations, creating an Ecological Processing Zone. We are working closely with community members, port workers and executives, city officials, and primary developer staff. Through pollution mitigation and toxicity remediation strategies, our proposal seeks to increase community health, safety, and mobility. Our plan looks forward 100 years, advocates for progressive legislation and regulatory measures, integrates ecological infrastructure with sustainable urban timber harvesting and renewable energy production, and forges intricate and vital connections between the port and its neighboring community.

“Civil society is made up of individuals and institutions, and these do not always seem capable of identifying the requirements for organizing the space we live in. They are often unable to explore the potential that architecture offers, unable to look at or consider the possible new, the possible different. On the other hand, look at the world of architects: they have too often been asked to construct objects that would be akin to a scream in the midst of mediocrity, to design buildings that would astonish and attract attention because of their communicative effect, thinking in this way that they have crafted a foil against the mediocrity of other building and urban developments. Not by chance architects were in the past entrusted with the creation of celebratory works such as opera theaters, large museums, banks’ headquarters, and luxury hotels in exotic countries. We have used these architects as if they were celebrity pastry chefs who are being asked to create stunning wedding cakes. For this reason the public now increasingly considers them as the lords of the feast, capable of offering us something sensational but that has nothing to do with the organization of individual or civil life.

In order to mend this fracture, la Biennale can make its contribution primarily by posing these as its themes. While not denying that there is a problem in the relationship between architecture and ecology, architecture and technology, and architecture and town planning, the crux is to mend the fracture between architecture and civil society.” – President of la Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta