At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, curated by the visionary Carlo Ratti, the Golden Lion for Best National Participation was awarded to the Kingdom of Bahrain for its striking pavilion Heatwave. Spearheaded by architect Andrea Faraguna, the project reimagines climate-responsive design by drawing on Bahrain’s ancestral architectural wisdom. Andrea Faraguna’s installation embraces passive cooling techniques—geothermal wells, solar chimneys, modular structures—offering a sustainable vision for working outdoors in increasingly extreme temperatures.
Selected by a jury led by Hans Ulrich Obrist and joined by Mpho Matsipa and Paola Antonelli, Heatwave stood out as a timely and radical proposition. With Andrea Faraguna at the helm, Bahrain’s contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 signals a meaningful shift in how architecture can meet the challenges of a warming world.
In the main exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective, the Golden Lion for Best Participant went to Canal Café by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and collaborators. The New York-based studio, known for pushing the boundaries between design, performance, and the built environment, unveiled a project that quite literally filters pollution into ritual: using natural systems to transform canal water into drinkable coffee. With Canal Café, Diller Scofidio + Renfro collapse the space between ecology, architecture, and daily life—an act that is as conceptual as it is material. Read our interview with Elizabeth Diller on architecture’s sensory possibilities, curating through layers of interpretation, and how MoMA’s redesign redefines museum culture.
Two Special Mentions in the same section were awarded to Alternative Urbanism: The Central Organized Markets of Lagos by Tosin Oshinowo, and Elephant Chapel by Boonserm Premthada. The former highlights urban economies in the Global South; the latter offers a poetic blend of nature and sacred architecture.
Among national pavilions, the Holy See’s Opera Aperta earned a Special Mention for presenting architecture as a living, collective process. The UK’s Geology of Britannic Repair also received recognition for its decolonial lens and cross-continental collaboration between British and Kenyan architects.
The Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 also celebrated intellectual legacy. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement went to American philosopher Donna Haraway, whose work on speculative futures and planetary ethics resonated with the exhibition’s broader themes. A Special Golden Lion in Memoriam honored Italian architect Italo Rota, remembered for his radical contributions to architectural imagination.
And finally, don’t miss our conversation with Carlo Ratti—curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale—on algorithmic ethics, the unpredictability of cities, and the architecture of what comes next.
Photography courtesy of VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2025