html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" The São Paulo International Architecture Biennale is one of the most important venues for the promotion and discussion of Brazilian architectural culture. Its history begins in 1951, when it was part of the São Paulo Art Biennale as the International Architecture Exhibition. There were eleven editions between 1951 and 1971. Under 1973, the first BIAsp under the current format was conducted. Over two million individuals are thought to have attended the 13 biennales since then; certain editions, such as the 12th, had over 300,000 guests.This year, the 14th São Paulo International Architecture Biennale will take place from September 18 to October 19, 2025, at the Oca Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, an iconic building designed by Oscar Niemeyer.The curatorial proposal is "Extremes: Architectures for an Overheated Planet", emphasizing the problem of climate extremes. The point of no return challenges us to reconsider how we live on Earth, looking for solutions not just in production studies and scientific discoveries but also in the knowledge of Indigenous villages, quilombos (traditional communities of enslaved people who have escaped), and urban peripheries. By offering tangible solutions to global warming and methods for adjusting to the extreme occurrences we are already seeing, the Biennale will act as a meeting place for various knowledge systems.The 14th BIAsp's curators have identified five thematic axes that will direct the event's talks, ideas, and proposals, drawing inspiration from the IPCC's (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) findings, especially the AR6 report:–Preserving Forests and Reforesting Cities–Embracing Water–Refurbishing More and Building Green–Moving and Reaching Places Together with Renewable Energies–Ensuring Climate Justice and Social HousingSix architects—Renato Anelli, Karina de Souza, Marcos Cereto, Clevio Rabelo, Marcella Arruda, and Jerá Guarani—are part of the collective curatorship for the 14th BIAsp this year. Through their professional activities, they represent many regional contexts throughout Brazil.The top image in the article courtesy of São Paulo International Architecture Biennale.> via São Paulo International Architecture Biennale

The Photography Seoul Museum of Art (PhotoSeMA) officially opened its doors in May 2025, marking a significant milestone as South Korea’s first public institution solely dedicated to the art of photography. Situated in the Dobong District of northeastern Seoul, this architectural marvel is the result of a collaboration between Austrian firm Jadric Architektur and Korean studio 1990uao Architects. The museum’s dynamic, twisting facade not only serves as a visual landmark but also symbolizes the fluidity and transformative nature of photography itself. Spanning six levels, four above ground and two below, the museum encompasses a total area of 7,048 square meters. Its design emphasizes the interplay between light and space, with broad concrete surfaces and filtered lighting creating an environment conducive to introspection and artistic appreciation. Designers: Jadric Architektur and 1990uao Architects Interior spaces are thoughtfully punctuated by voids and light wells, allowing natural light to shape the visitor experience throughout the day. The building’s exterior features a twisting monolithic shape that integrates seamlessly with the surrounding public space, inviting visitors to engage with the museum both inside and out. This design choice reflects the architects’ intention to create a “walk-in object” that fosters community interaction and cultural engagement. PhotoSeMA’s opening is marked by two inaugural exhibitions that delve into the history and evolution of Korean photography. The Radiance: Beginnings of Korean Art Photography showcases seminal works by artists such as Jung Haechang, Lim Suk Je, Lee Hyungrok, Cho Hyundu, and Park Youngsook. Drawing from a collection of over 20,000 works and archival materials dating from the 1920s to the 1990s, the exhibition offers a comprehensive look at the medium’s development in Korea. Meanwhile, Storage Story features contemporary artists Dongsin Seo, Won Seoung Won, Jihyun Jung, Joo Yongseong, Melmel Chung, and Oh Jooyoung. This exhibition explores the museum itself as a subject, examining themes of classification, memory, and the evolving role of cultural institutions in society. As part of the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) network, PhotoSeMA extends the institution’s reach and reinforces its commitment to diverse artistic expressions. The museum not only provides a dedicated space for photographic art but also contributes to the cultural revitalization of the Dobong District, aligning with the city’s broader efforts to establish a “cultural mile” in the area. With its innovative design and focused curatorial approach, the Photography Seoul Museum of Art stands as a testament to the dynamic intersection of architecture and photography, offering visitors a unique space to explore and appreciate the visual narratives that shape our world. The post South Korea’s first public museum for photography now open first appeared on Yanko Design.

Latin America at the 2025 Venice Biennale: Exploring Territory, Memory, and Ancestral Knowledge to Build the PresentSave this picture!Andamio Vivo - Perú. Image © Gonzalo Vera Tudela De MontreuilThe 19th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale officially opened to the public on May 10, becoming a significant international platform for exploring the current state of global architecture and sparking conversations about the challenges the discipline faces today—both shared and specific to each territory. This year’s theme, "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective," proposed by general curator and Italian architect Carlo Ratti, invites reflection on architecture’s interconnection with other fields—such as art, artificial intelligence, and technology—while also emphasizing the importance of territories, landscapes, and, above all, the people who collectively shape our built environment.In this context, the national participations of Latin American countries have enriched the international exhibition with contributions deeply rooted in their local cultures and identities. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay represented Central and South America in Venice. Across their proposals, several shared themes emerged—most notably, the idea that contemporary architecture must consciously reconnect with its territory and draw from its history in order to build more thoughtfully today. Along these lines, the installations explored the re-signification of local elements and ancestral knowledge, adapting them to contemporary challenges and contexts.Brazil and Mexico centered their exhibitions on an in-depth investigation of land recording and mapping, addressing the use of ancestral construction technologies in relation to agriculture and the natural landscape. Both explored how these traditional techniques can be adapted to contemporary contexts. Uruguay, recognizing that over half of its territory is composed of water, emphasized the importance of considering this resource as an integral part of the country’s history, culture, and development. Peru and Argentina, meanwhile, focused on the re-signification of unique local elements—the silobag, emblematic of the Argentine countryside, and totora, a plant traditionally used in various forms of construction in Peru. In both pavilions, these materials were prominently featured, evoking the cultural and symbolic significance they carry. Finally, Chile’s participation presented a reflective and thought-provoking working table that examined recent debates around artificial intelligence policies established in the country. Related Article Between Algorithms and Ancestral Knowledge: Expanding the Concept of Architectural Intelligence Siestario - Argentina Save this picture!Save this picture!Upon entering Siestario, the Argentine Pavilion located in the Arsenale of Venice, visitors are immersed in a space of soft light and evocative soundscapes. At the center, serving as the undisputed focal point, is a large pink inflatable bag that instinctively invites repose. This is a silobag—a storage element commonly used in the Argentine countryside for preserving grain, especially soy, and emblematic of the country’s export-driven economy. In this context, the silobag functions not only as a spatial gesture but also as a temporal one: an invitation to pause and reflect amid the pace of the Biennale.In this way, architects Marco Zampieron and Juan Manuel Pachué succeed in decontextualizing this characteristic element—deeply rooted in national identity—by re-signifying its function and placing it within a space of critique and questioning. The result is effective: visitors are drawn to the installation, climb onto it, rest, and surrender to the experience, surrounded by images and sounds that induce a dreamlike drowsiness.(re) invenção - BrazilSave this picture!Save this picture!Brazil’s exhibition, curated by Luciana Saboia, Eder Alencar, and Matheus Seco—members of Plano Coletivo—is divided into two rooms, presenting research on the knowledge drawn from the lands of the Amazon. The installation establishes a dialogue between ancestral wisdom and contemporary urban infrastructure through exhibition elements that also serve as the structural system of the display.In the first room, lined with biodegradable wooden panels, maps and documents are spread across the floor, evoking the direct relationship that Indigenous peoples of the Amazon have with their land. In the second, a curated selection of architectural and urban infrastructure projects illustrates how these traditional forms of knowledge—deeply connected to Brazilian territory—are transformed into collective knowledge, capable of adapting to contemporary projects while preserving this cultural heritage.This balance between local culture, territory, and contemporary challenges is expressed almost literally through a minimalist and precise installation, composed of vertical panels and a suspended table made of reforested wood, both connected by tensioned steel cables. The balance is achieved through stone counterweights and a central metal tube that distributes the forces, turning the table into a structural element that redefines the spatial experience of the room.Reflective Intelligences - ChileSave this picture!Save this picture!The Chilean Pavilion presents a powerful proposal: upon entering the room, a central table—the main exhibition element—reflects a series of videos, essays, and images on its water surface. These works focus on archival research exploring the country’s growing role in the development of artificial intelligence, data center buildings, and the impact this has on the territory and, above all, its inhabitants.Serena Dambrosio, Nicolás Díaz Bejarano, and Linda Schilling Cuellar, the architects behind the pavilion, conceive the table not only as a physical support but also as a reference to the political tool of the "roundtable" used by the Chilean government to introduce policies and regulations around AI. In this case, the use of the water’s reflection invites visitors to reflect on what this technological development truly entails, questioning the exclusion of communities and environmental factors in these decision-making spaces. In this way, the table within the pavilion becomes a fertile ground for fostering collective dialogue among all key stakeholders: architects, researchers, communities, and policymakers.Chinampa Veneta - MéxicoSave this picture!Save this picture!The experience of entering the Mexican Pavilion, located in the Arsenale at the Biennale, is completely immersive. Visitors are welcomed by a recreation of a chinampa—an ancient cultivation system that involves creating platforms of earth over water to form small agricultural islands—which immediately captures attention through its lush vegetation, the scent of damp soil, and the sounds of water. The rest of the room, where vegetables, flowers, and medicinal herbs planted in the central chinampa are also expected to grow, is arranged to mimic the canals of Xochimilco, drawing a parallel with Venice itself, famously built over water.With this installation, the curatorial team—comprising Estudio Ignacio Urquiza and Ana Paula de Alba, Estudio María Marín de Buen, ILWT, Locus, Lucio Usobiaga Hegewisch & Nathalia Muguet, and Pedro&Juana—proposes revisiting these traditional chinampa agricultural systems to reflect on their adaptation in the present as a sustainable response, thanks to their self-irrigation system, within the context of droughts and global climate crisis. It also stands as evidence of a collective system bridging the natural and the built environment, as well as sustained care over time.Living Scaffolding - PerúSave this picture!Save this picture!The Peruvian Pavilion, with Alex Hudtwalcker as chief curator and Sebastián Cillóniz, José Ignacio Beteta, and Gianfranco Morales as associate curators, is presented at the Biennale’s Arsenale with Living Scaffolding, a proposal centered around a monumental structure built from totora reed wood. This installation brings to Venice the ancestral knowledge of the Uros and Aymara peoples of Lake Titicaca, who for centuries have used totora to construct floating habitable islands, homes, boats, and other essential elements for life on the lake.Over time, the refinement of this ancient technique incorporated other essential components—such as ropes and logs—that contribute to the stability and buoyancy of the structures. All this knowledge is materialized in an installation that can be fully experienced: visitors enter and walk through the scaffolding, exploring its construction system from within.Living Scaffolding highlights the technical precision and enduring relevance of this tradition, which in the contemporary context takes on a new meaning connected to collectivity, material memory, and the possibility of reactivating ancestral techniques as a response to today’s challenges. 53,86% Uruguay Land of Water - Uruguay Save this picture!Save this picture!Curated by architects Ken Sei Fong and Katia Sei Fong, alongside visual artist Luis Sei Fong, the Uruguayan Pavilion explores the country’s relationship with its maritime territory, which accounts for just over half of its total surface area. Located in its own building within the Biennale’s Giardini, the pavilion features a poetic and musical installation: a wavy ceiling from which amethyst stones hang, dripping water that strikes metal containers on the floor. This sensory and sonic experience invites visitors to contemplate water as a thread that weaves together the country’s memory, identity, and development.The installation presents a critique of the global water management model, emphasizing that, as a finite and increasingly scarce resource, it is essential to establish policies and regulations for its preservation. In this context, architecture plays a key role: it can not only offer innovative solutions but also promote conscious planning around water in cities and territories, acting as a bridge between the way we inhabit and the way we collectively manage this vital resource.Save this picture!Latin America’s participation in the 2025 Venice Biennale reveals that architecture is not only a design discipline but also a powerful critical and cultural tool. Each pavilion, rooted in its specific territorial context and local cultural identity, enacts a form of resistance by exploring ancestral knowledge, natural resources, and contemporary technologies as collective ways of knowing—learning from the past to build better today. In a global context marked by environmental crises, inequalities, and technological transformations, these architectural and deeply reflective endeavors construct new and reimagined narratives, where the local is no longer intrinsic to a fixed context but rather knowledge that expands, connects, and adapts to shared new realities.Save this picture! Image gallerySee allShow less About this authorPaula PintosAuthor••• Cite: Pintos, Paula. "Latin America at the 2025 Venice Biennale: Exploring Territory, Memory, and Ancestral Knowledge to Build the Present" [Latinoamérica en la Bienal de Venecia 2025: territorio, memoria y saberes ancestrales para construir el presente] 23 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030213/latin-america-at-the-2025-venice-biennale-exploring-territory-memory-and-ancestral-knowledge-to-build-the-present&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream