Sharjah24 – AFP: The world's most prestigious architecture event, the Venice Architecture Biennale, opens Saturday for a six-month show exploring the question of coexistence in a post-pandemic world.

Postponed from last year, the 17th International Architecture Exhibition is titled "How will we live together?", with curator Hashim Sarkis asking architects to reflect on the future and its challenges.

There are 63 national pavilions set up among the vast gardens on the eastern edge of Venice, as well as within the immense halls of the Arsenal, Venice's former shipyard and armoury, and some areas of the city's historic centre. 

In the exhibition open through November 21, strict sanitary measures will remain in place, as Italy makes its first tentative steps towards normalcy amid a drop in new Covid-19 cases.

With Grenada, Iraq, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan participating for the first time, this year's show boasts a high number of participating countries from Africa, Latin America and Asia. 

The Biennale poses the question whether the post-pandemic age is the start of a new era or just a passing phase. 

Walking through the Arsenal's 3,000 square metres (32,300 square feet) and the garden pavilions, that question is addressed through installations, videos, projects and ideas. 

Virtual maps, giant wooden models, interactive machines, designs for poor neighbourhoods -- all of them proposals that question the model of coexistence for the future.

The Biennale will award its Special Golden Lion to the late architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), an Italian-Brazilian modernist who designed Sao Paolo's Museum of Art.