Mugak/ Biennial will kick off this Wednesday at the Kursaal with the 'pritzker' Wang Shu and the attendance of half a thousand people

2023 October 23

• Wednesday will also see the opening of the main exhibition of this edition, 'Inhabiting Change', at the Basque Country Institute of Architecture.
• Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu's keynote lecture at the opening ceremony will kick off a series of conferences in the three capitals of the Basque Country with the protagonists of 'Inhabiting Change': on the 26th it will be the turn of Mireia Luzárraga, from the TAKK studio in Barcelona.
• More than half a thousand people are expected to attend at the Kursaal Palace, in an event presided over by the Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu, which will begin at 19h. Tickets are available and free of charge.
• From Wednesday onwards, an extensive programme with around a hundred free activities will begin, which will last until 24 November.

This Wednesday, 25 October, the fourth edition of the Basque Country International Architecture Biennial Mugak/ will be inaugurated in the Auditorium Hall of the Kursaal Conference Centre in San Sebastian, where there will be the opportunity to enjoy a master conference by Wang Shu, Pritzker 2012, and Lu Wenyu, from the Chinese studio Amateur Architecture Studio. The event, which will begin at 19:00h and will be presided over by the lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu, will bring together half a thousand attendees. Free tickets are still available.

Wednesday will also see the opening of the central exhibition of this year's edition, 'Inhabiting Change', at the Basque Country Institute of Architecture. It is a choral reflection that brings together the works of renowned figures from the world of architecture and the arts in a collective dialogue. Among them, there will be original pieces and representations of the practices of the creators. It will open to the public on 26 October until 25 February 2024.

Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, who also participate in 'Inhabiting Change', will be in charge of opening at the Kursaal a cycle of conferences by the participants in the exhibition, who will visit the three capitals of the Basque Country during the Biennial. On 26 October it will be the turn of Mireia Luzárraga, from the Barcelona studio TAKK, who will be at the Basque Institute of Architecture at 19:00h, bringing us closer to their innovative reform of 'The day after house'.

Start of a month of architecture

Until 24 November, Mugak/ 2023 will bring a month of architecture to the public thanks to a varied programme with a hundred or so free activities. Several of them will take place this week: the musician and PhD Ramón Faura, who will be in charge of closing the opening ceremony on Wednesday at the Kursaal, will address the relationship between the ideas of "destruction" and "displacement" in a conference on 27 October at the Basque Institute of Architecture.

On Saturday, 28 October, three activities will take place for different audiences: COAVN Gipuzkoa and Ahiku propose a guided tour of different significant points in the Trintxerpe-Herrera area to understand the importance of this environment in the internal growth of Pasaia; for its part, Maushaus will offer the first children's workshop of the REMAKE! series, where participants will play at reconstructing/repairing a human body and a building; finally, the architect José María Torres Nadal, one of the protagonists of the exhibition 'Inhabiting Change', will offer a workshop in the 'Lost Forest' pavilion in Sagüés. The participants will turn the pavilion into a small greenhouse for those plants that, despite the fire, are capable of being born.

On Sunday there will be another activity within the 'Periferiak' cycle of COAVN Gipuzkoa: a poetic-performance walk by the poet and performer Jorge Pascual. He invites participants to accompany him on a participatory walk in Trintxerpe-Herrera.

Within the programme of side events Off Mugak/ there will be two activities: the screening of the documentary by Nuria Casal 'If this is a house' (25min), as a prelude to Mireia Luzárraga's lecture on 26 October; and the lecture 'The Igueldo quarries. Memory, longing and entropy', with Óscar Cruz, before Ramón Faura on 27 October.