Yale at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale

It was then that I understood the enormity of this event, the Venice Biennale—here in full flourish for the first time since the onset of COVID-19—which brings together architects from around the world. Although this year’s exhibition takes place against a backdrop of an American retreat from the international scene, and despite the somber appearance of the global architectural uniform, the experience was celebratory. For many, it was the first time they were able to greet colleagues in person in more than half a decade. The damp and misty city was filled with a big design family—and above all, it was full of Yalies.

The exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion, PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity — co-commissioned by Peter MacKeith(MArch ’85), dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas —generated a lot of buzz even before the opening. The pavilion examined the traditional American porch typology, where public and private meet, inviting architects to contribute contemporary examples of the typology. During the opening weekend, Design Connects organized a series of talks under the new porch structure erected in front of the pavilion building, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, such as the conversation between AIA Gold Medal winners, including Dean Deborah Berke. Several firms of Yale alumni are featured in the exhibition: WXY Studio (Claire Weisz, MArch ’89; Jacob Dugopolski, MArch ’11); Jerome Haferd Studio (Jerome Haferd, MArch ’10); EskewDumezRipple(Steve Dumez, MArch ’89); and Weiss/Manfredi (Marion Weiss, MArch ’84). At the reception for the U.S. Pavilion on May 8, hosted at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the American ambassador to Italy made a surprise announcement, speaking above the clinks of spritzes and prosecco: “Habemus Papam Americanum.”

Speaking of which, the Holy See Pavilion, Opera Aperta, features Tatiana Bilbao, who has taught regularly at YSoA over the past decade, most recently as the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice. Housed in the Chiesa di Santa Maria Ausiliatrice Complex, the pavilion is a work in progress that will revitalize and restore the historical church over the run of the exhibition. Viewing architecture as “a living practice of repair and collective care,” the team—which, in addition to Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, includes curators Marina Otero Verzier and Giovanna Zabotti, Bilbao, and Barcelona-based collective MAIO — “resists conflating innovation with newness.” Opera Aperta received a Special Mention award from the Golden Lion jury.

The British Pavilion, the other Special Mention, was curated by Spring 2025 Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi, of Nairobi-based Cave Bureau, along with Kathryn Yusoff and Owen Hopkins. GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair explores the relationship between architecture and colonization with a focus on the Great Rift Valley. Vena Cava, an installation by assistant professor Mae-Ling Lokko and Gustavo Crembil, formally recalls the botanical colonization performed by the Palm House at Kew Gardens, in patterned panels of fly ash, biomass, bioplastics, and fungi instead of glass, heralding a turn away from mechanical environmental regulation toward twenty-first-century material streams. The installation was produced with assistance from Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture’s Oswaldo Chinchilla (MArch ’24, PhD ’30), Xingyue Elis Huang (MArch ’26), Sae Jun Kim (MFA ’21), Thomas Roland, and Alireza Zamani Samani (PhD ’30).

The UAE Pavilion, Pressure Cooker, provides a platform for many recent alumni to shine. Curated by Azza Aboualam (MArch ’18), the exhibition examines food production in the desert context of the United Arab Emirates, along with the many technological adaptations necessary, such as greenhouses. The space, on the lower level of the Sale d’Armi, features several assemblies with plants and shading structures interspersed among books and architectural drawings. The exhibition design is by Holesum Studio, founded by Aboualam, Dimitri Brand (MArch ’18), and James Coleman (MArch ’18). The companion book has essays by Aboualam, Brand, Sarah Saad Alajmi (MArch ’20), Elisa Iturbe (MArch ’15, MEM ’15), Daniel Jacobs (MArch ’14), and Brittany Utting (MArch ’14).

The Chinese Pavilion, Co-Exist, was curated by Fall 2024 Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor Ma Yansong (MArch ’02). Featuring ten works, the exhibition draws on the classical Chinese worldview of harmony between humanity and nature to showcase “the spatial and emotional possibilities of a built environment where natural systems, cultural values, and technological innovation are intertwined.”

On the grass among the Art Deco pavilions of the Giardini is Production Potential: The Future of Vacant Buildings, curated by Field States’ Matthew Claudel (BA ’13). The installation looks at how high-tech manufacturing (3Dprinting, dimensional knitting, etc.) might be brought back to abandoned or underused factories, rekindling the “production heritage” of America’s industrial cities. It focuses on the production potential of buildings through the lens of shoe innovation in Portland, Oregon.

In the main exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., arranged throughout the Corderie of the Arsenale, there is not a single room without a Yalie contribution. Projects displayed along the 316-meter length of the walls include, for example, The Earth After X Billion, by Joyce Hsiang (BA ’99, MArch ’03) and Bimal Mendis (BA ’98, MArch ’02); and Born in a Camp, by Alice Cochrane (MArch ’25).(See the full list on page 14.) Some larger scale exhibitions move from the walls to the central “nave” of the space. At the entry to the exhibition, Terms and Conditions, co-organized by Daniel A. Barber (MED ’05), brings the exterior units of air conditioners inside, with their waste heat markedly raising the temperature of the vestibule to emphasize the externalities of our ways of building. In the “Natural” section of the exhibition, Diana Balmori Assistant Professor Anthony Acciavatti’s Grounded Growth: Groundwater’s Blueprint for Intelligent Urban Form brings aquifers to the surface with an installation recalling his Spring 2024 YSoA exhibition Groundwater Earth: The World Before and After the Tubewell. In the “Out” section, Ma Yansong makes another appearance with City of Plants, a series of domed terraria; Ariel Ekblaw (BA ’14) and Brent Sherwood(BA ’80, MArch ’83) showcase Space Garden, a collaboration between Aurelia Institute and Heatherwick Studio that proposes an autonomous orbiting greenhouse.

The most prominent installation is Speakers’ Corner, co-organized by senior critic Christopher Hawthorne (BA ’93), Johnston Marklee, and Florencia Rodriguez. Taking the form of a diamond at the end of the nave, where triangular seating rises like a ziggurat over the rest of the exhibition, it is inspired in part by the Critics Corner exhibition at the inaugural Architecture Biennale, in 1980, by Charles Jencks, Vincent Scully, and Christian Norberg-Schulz. A series of events and talks at the space, titled “Restaging Criticism,” kicked off with a conversation on the architectural exhibition as a critical tool with participants including Rem Koolhaas. The space also hosted a discussion on the opening weekend between Hawthorne, Ekblaw, and Dean Berke, as well as Claire Gorman Hanly (’20), principal assistant to the curator, who was a driving force in organizing the exhibition. Hawthorne returned to the installation in July, bringing a group of Yale students along.

Out in the city, the exhibition Time Space Existence, though not part of the Biennale, also welcomed the global architecture scene in multiple locations. At the Palazzo Bembo, Louise Braverman exhibited Renovation=Renaissance, which presents several of her architectural projects themed around restoration and adaptive reuse. At Palazzo Mora, Mae-Ling Lokko’s Willow Technologies was featured as part of ArchDaily New Practices, and Excess Entitlements, a collaboration between Almost Studio (Dorian Booth, MArch ’16, and Anthony Gagliardi, MArch ’16) and Nanette Carter, filled a room with wall painting, prints, and a large model.

Yale School of Architecture is everywhere at this year’s Biennale, thanks to the excellence of its alumni, faculty, and students. In an age of anomie, events like this remind us that architecture is made of gatherings and that the YSoA community is part of a larger global network of colleagues and friends.

— AJ Artemel is YSoA director of communications and a founding member of Citygroup.