On 1 March at 18:00, the pavilion created for the 18th Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale – T/C Latvia (TCL) – will be opened at Galerija Centrs on Rīdzenes Street in Old Riga. The exhibition in Venice was visited by almost 300,000 visitors over six months, made the headlines of many prominent professional media, and was one of the most talked-about national exhibitions of the year.

TCL is designed as a reference to the supermarket, an internationally renowned space where the user is invited to browse and make a choice. The authors of the exhibition have cleverly taken architectural ideas and turned them into products for the store. 506 unique products have been created with the help of artificial intelligence and displayed on modular cardboard shelves.

“We are delighted and proud to be working on this project in collaboration with our partners – the Embassy of Italy in Riga, the RIMI retail chain and the Ministry of Culture. Every visitor to Galerija Centrs will have the opportunity to see the internationally renowned T/C Latvia exhibition, which arrives in our shopping centre right after it has been on display at the Venice Architecture Biennale – the most ambitious and prestigious architecture exhibition in the world,” says Lāsma Vilande, shopping centre manager.

“Before architecture becomes physical space, there is an idea, before spaghetti and meat on the supermarket shelf becomes Pasta Bolognese – a recipe that has been loved and nurtured for years. Without architects’ ideas and recipes, we would live in a very different environment and the food would probably not taste the same or be different. We have amazingly capable and talented people who can create new recipes and ideas that inspire the world and with that we can compete globally. The exhibition and we, the TCL team, invite you to explore and combine different ideas in an educational experiment, and to create your own,” says Ints Menģelis, one of the creators of the exhibition.

“Dialogue through creativity has always been the spirit of the Venice Biennale – and T/C Latvia fully lives up to that ideal” comments Alessandro Monti, Ambassador of Italy in Riga. “By helping to bring this project back home we want to celebrate Latvian creativity and invite the people of Riga to visit this year’s 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, that will open to the public from April 20 to November 24 2024”.

The opening event will be attended by the authors of the exhibition, architects Ernests Cerbulis and Ints Menģelis from the T/C Latvia team, as well as the project supporters who have helped to create the exhibition at Galerija Centrs – Ambassador Alessandro Monti from the Italian Embassy in Riga, Agnese Lāce, Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Commissioner Janis Dripe and Inga Bite, PR Manager at the retail chain RIMI.

The exhibition “Supermarket as a Laboratory for the Future” created by a team of Latvian authors will be open to visitors of Galerija Centrs free of charge until 14 April. The following team participated in the creation and realisation of the exhibition:

• Commissioner – Janis Dripe
• Design team – Ernests Cerbulis, Ints Menģelis, Toms Kampars, Karola Rubene
• Curator – Uldis Jaunzems-Petersons
• Project Manager – Austra Bērziņa
• Communication – Kalvis Kidals