The ceremony will be held at Ca’Giustinian, the headquarters of the Venice Biennale, where awards for the international contemporary architecture exhibition will be announced. The event, which will run until November 23, 2025, will take place at the Giardini, Arsenale, and Forte Marghera, featuring over 750 participants and 280 projects, many involving multigenerational and interdisciplinary work.
Portugal’s Pavilion, located in the Fondaco Marcello building, had a pre-opening on Wednesday, with a performance by artist Jorge Queijo. It officially presents the project ‘Paraíso. Hoje’, which includes an Atlas with 700 images of the territory and a digital installation that reacts to the movements of visitors.
The project is authored by architects Paula Melâneo, Pedro Bandeira, and Luca Martinucci, alongside associate curators Catarina Raposo and Nuno Cera. They responded to the challenge posed by the chief curator, Carlo Ratti, under the theme “Intelligent. Natural. Artificial. Collective,” focusing on climate change and its impact on human life.
Ratti emphasizes the “urgent need” to shift from mitigation to adaptation to climate change and the growing global population, advocating for multidisciplinary and inclusive solutions.
In response, the curators of Portugal’s official representation—selected through an open competition—created ‘Paraíso. Hoje’, aiming to highlight nature’s regenerative potential and the mobilization of collective intelligence to find positive solutions.
Within the Portuguese Pavilion, the project is showcased through two main elements: the Atlas with 700 analogue images, which will be compiled into a book, and a digital installation of images that function “like a hall of mirrors, reacting to visitors’ movements, simulating a constantly changing Paradise,” as explained by the curators during a presentation in Lisbon in April.
As part of the project creation process, the curators issued a national call for submissions on the theme, receiving over 100 contributions, 36 of which were selected for publication in the book.
Around 30 photographers contributed to the image collection, some invited and including curator Nuno Cera, as well as Paulo Catrica, Francisco Ascensão, Tiago Casanova, and Duarte Belo, who has been documenting Portuguese landscapes for the past 40 years.
A debate titled ‘Paradise, today?’ is scheduled at the Portugal Pavilion today in English, starting at 09:30 (10:30 in Lisbon), featuring Catarina Raposo, Giovanna Borasi, Manon Mollard, Nuno da Luz, and moderated by Julia Albani.
In addition, the Portuguese presence at this biennale includes architect João Branco (from the Branco del Rio office in Coimbra) contributing to the Spanish Pavilion, themed ‘Internalities – Architectures for Territorial Balance’.
The Spanish Pavilion also features works by the Portuguese company ArtWorks in two projects: a wooden structure by Carles Oliver + David Mayol, aimed at reducing the carbon footprint, and a visual installation by curators Manuel Bouzas and Roi Salgueiro Barrio, exploring territorial balance with scales, frames, and LedNeon lights.
ArtWorks, based in Póvoa de Varzim, participated in the Eco Folie project, a prototype by Chilean architects Pedro Alonso and Pamela Prado, designed for the Atacama Desert in Chile.
The 19th Venice Architecture Biennale includes participation from 66 countries exhibiting in the historic pavilions at the Giardini (26), Arsenale (22), and city center (15), with debuts from Azerbaijan, Oman, Qatar, and Togo.
The Vatican Pavilion, curated by Portuguese Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça, under the theme ‘Open Work’, serves as “an invitation to action and openness to the world, focusing on the importance of building social and cultural experiences.”
The curators are Marina Otero Verzier and Giovanna Zabotti, with a project by architect Tatiana Bilbao and collaboration from the Catalan collective MAIO Architects.
Conversely, Brazil’s Pavilion, located in Giardini, is titled “Re(Invention).” It is commissioned by Andrea Pinheiro from the Bienal de São Paulo Foundation and curated by Luciana Saboia, Eder Alencar, and Matheus Seco (Plano Coletivo), proposing a reflection on connections between nature and city, the importance of ancestral infrastructure, and its potential reinterpretations in contemporary Brazil.
Among the 280 projects is the Brazilian ‘Terra Preta’, featuring Nixiwaka Yawanawa, André Corrêa do Lago, Marcelo Rosenbaum, Fernando Serapião, and Guilherme Wisnik, focusing on cooperation between indigenous knowledge and scientific research to create sustainable housing solutions in the Amazon.
In the Bienal College of Architecture 2024-2025 program, which began last year and is aimed at students and emerging creators under 30, eight projects were selected, including one from Portugal led by Rita Espinha Abreu Morais. Each selected project received a 20,000-euro grant for final production.
After its presentation in Venice, the ‘Paraíso. Hoje’ project is set to be displayed in Portugal, at the Centro Cultural de Belém’s Garagem Sul in Lisbon and Casa da Arquitetura in Matosinhos, with dates yet to be announced.
