SPACE July 2025 (No. 692)
Danish Pavilion, ‘Building of Site’. Image courtesy of Danish Pavilion / ©Hampus Berndtson
Bahraini Pavilion, ‘Heatwave’. Image courtesy of Bahraini Pavilion / ©Ishaq Madan
The 2025 Venice Biennale’s national pavilion exhibition featured a record-breaking 66 countries, among them Azerbaijan, Oman, Qatar, and Togo, all of whom were participating for the first time. The national pavilions are located not only in the Giardini – meaning ‘garden’ in Italian – and the Arsenale, where the main exhibition is taking place, but also scattered throughout Venice. While curator Carlo Ratti proposed a unified theme for the national pavilions for the second time, following Rem Koolhaas, some countries responded to the main exhibition while others took independent approaches that set them apart from the messages of the main exhibition. Here, SPACE will explore the key current issues raised by the global architectural community by taking a detailed look at this year’s national pavilion exhibition—from the attention-grabbing national pavilions to the award winners, including the Gold Lion winner.
In contrast to the Arsenale, which featured a very densely packed main exhibition displaying the exhibits of almost 750 participants, the Giardini, where the national pavilions are located, was relatively quiet. This was due to the ongoing renovation of the Central Pavilion and as several national pavilions did not open their doo...
