Latin America at the 2025 Venice Biennale: Exploring Territory, Memory, and Ancestral Knowledge to Build the Present

The 19th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale formally opened to the general public on Might 10, turning into a major worldwide platform for exploring the present state of world structure and sparking conversations in regards to the challenges the self-discipline faces at present—each shared and particular to every territory. This yr’s theme, “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective,” proposed by common curator and Italian architect Carlo Ratti, invitations reflection on structure’s interconnection with different fields—comparable to art, artificial intelligence, and know-how—whereas additionally emphasizing the significance of territories, landscapes, and, above all, the individuals who collectively form our constructed surroundings.

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On this context, the nationwide participations of Latin American countries have enriched the worldwide exhibition with contributions deeply rooted of their native cultures and identities. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay represented Central and South America in Venice. Throughout their proposals, a number of shared themes emerged—most notably, the concept up to date structure should consciously reconnect with its territory and draw from its historical past to be able to construct extra thoughtfully at present. Alongside these strains, the installations explored the re-signification of native components and ancestral information, adapting them to up to date challenges and contexts.

Brazil and Mexico centered their exhibitions on an in-depth investigation of land recording and mapping, addressing the usage of ancestral building applied sciences in relation to agriculture and the pure panorama. Each explored how these conventional methods might be tailored to up to date contexts. Uruguay, recognizing that over half of its territory consists of water, emphasised the significance of contemplating this useful resource as an integral a part of the nation’s historical past, tradition, and growth. Peru and Argentina, in the meantime, targeted on the re-signification of distinctive native components—the silobag, emblematic of the Argentine countryside, and totora, a plant historically utilized in numerous types of building in Peru. In each pavilions, these supplies had been prominently featured, evoking the cultural and symbolic significance they carry. Lastly, Chile’s participation offered a reflective and thought-provoking working desk that examined current debates round synthetic intelligence insurance policies established within the nation.

Siestario – Argentina

Upon getting into Siestario, the Argentine Pavilion positioned within the Arsenale of Venice, guests are immersed in an area of soppy gentle and evocative soundscapes. On the middle, serving because the undisputed focus, is a big pink inflatable bag that instinctively invitations repose. It is a silobag—a storage ingredient generally used within the Argentine countryside for preserving grain, particularly soy, and emblematic of the nation’s export-driven economic system. On this context, the silobag capabilities not solely as a spatial gesture but in addition as a temporal one: an invite to pause and mirror amid the tempo of the Biennale.

On this method, architects Marco Zampieron and Juan Manuel Pachué reach decontextualizing this attribute ingredient—deeply rooted in nationwide id—by re-signifying its operate and putting it inside an area of critique and questioning. The result’s efficient: guests are drawn to the set up, climb onto it, relaxation, and give up to the expertise, surrounded by photographs and sounds that induce a dreamlike drowsiness.

(re) invenção – Brazil

Brazil’s exhibition, curated by Luciana Saboia, Eder Alencar, and Matheus Seco—members of Plano Coletivo—is split into two rooms, presenting analysis on the information drawn from the lands of the Amazon. The set up establishes a dialogue between ancestral knowledge and up to date city infrastructure by exhibition components that additionally function the structural system of the show.

Within the first room, lined with biodegradable picket panels, maps and paperwork are unfold throughout the ground, evoking the direct relationship that Indigenous peoples of the Amazon have with their land. Within the second, a curated choice of architectural and concrete infrastructure initiatives illustrates how these conventional types of information—deeply linked to Brazilian territory—are reworked into collective information, able to adapting to up to date initiatives whereas preserving this cultural heritage.

This stability between native tradition, territory, and up to date challenges is expressed nearly actually by a minimalist and exact set up, composed of vertical panels and a suspended desk made from reforested wooden, each linked by tensioned metal cables. The stability is achieved by stone counterweights and a central steel tube that distributes the forces, turning the desk right into a structural ingredient that redefines the spatial expertise of the room.

Reflective Intelligences – Chile

The Chilean Pavilion presents a strong proposal: upon getting into the room, a central desk—the principle exhibition ingredient—displays a sequence of movies, essays, and pictures on its water floor. These works deal with archival analysis exploring the nation’s rising function within the growth of synthetic intelligence, information middle buildings, and the influence 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 desk not solely as a bodily help but in addition as a reference to the political instrument of the “roundtable” utilized by the Chilean authorities to introduce insurance policies and laws round AI. On this case, the usage of the water’s reflection invitations guests to mirror on what this technological growth actually entails, questioning the exclusion of communities and environmental components in these decision-making areas. On this method, the desk throughout the pavilion turns into a fertile floor for fostering collective dialogue amongst all key stakeholders: architects, researchers, communities, and policymakers.

Chinampa Veneta – México

The expertise of getting into the Mexican Pavilion, positioned within the Arsenale on the Biennale, is totally immersive. Guests are welcomed by a recreation of a chinampa—an historic cultivation system that includes creating platforms of earth over water to type small agricultural islands—which instantly captures consideration by its lush vegetation, the scent of damp soil, and the sounds of water. The remainder of the room, the place greens, flowers, and medicinal herbs planted within the central chinampa are additionally anticipated to develop, is organized to imitate the canals of Xochimilco, drawing a parallel with Venice itself, famously constructed over water.

With this set up, the curatorial staff—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 conventional chinampa agricultural programs to mirror on their adaptation within the current as a sustainable response, because of their self-irrigation system, throughout the context of droughts and international local weather disaster. It additionally stands as proof of a collective system bridging the pure and the constructed surroundings, in addition to sustained care over time.

Residing Scaffolding – Perú

The Peruvian Pavilion, with Alex Hudtwalcker as chief curator and Sebastián Cillóniz, José Ignacio Beteta, and Gianfranco Morales as affiliate curators, is offered on the Biennale’s Arsenale with Residing Scaffolding, a proposal centered round a monumental construction constructed from totora reed wooden. This set up brings to Venice the ancestral information of the Uros and Aymara peoples of Lake Titicaca, who for hundreds of years have used totora to assemble floating liveable islands, properties, boats, and different important components for all times on the lake.

Over time, the refinement of this historic method integrated different important parts—comparable to ropes and logs—that contribute to the soundness and buoyancy of the buildings. All this data is materialized in an set up that may be totally skilled: guests enter and stroll by the scaffolding, exploring its building system from inside.

Residing Scaffolding highlights the technical precision and enduring relevance of this custom, which within the up to date context takes on a brand new which means linked to collectivity, materials reminiscence, and the opportunity of reactivating ancestral methods as a response to at present’s challenges.

53,86% Uruguay Land of Water – Uruguay

Curated by architects Ken Sei Fong and Katia Sei Fong, alongside visible artist Luis Sei Fong, the Uruguayan Pavilion explores the nation’s relationship with its maritime territory, which accounts for simply over half of its whole floor space. Situated in its personal constructing throughout the Biennale’s Giardini, the pavilion incorporates a poetic and musical set up: a wavy ceiling from which amethyst stones cling, dripping water that strikes steel containers on the ground. This sensory and sonic expertise invitations guests to ponder water as a thread that weaves collectively the nation’s reminiscence, id, and growth.

The set up presents a critique of the worldwide water administration mannequin, emphasizing that, as a finite and more and more scarce useful resource, it’s important to ascertain insurance policies and laws for its preservation. On this context, structure performs a key function: it can’t solely supply modern options but in addition promote aware planning round water in cities and territories, appearing as a bridge between the way in which we inhabit and the way in which we collectively handle this very important useful resource.

Latin America’s participation within the 2025 Venice Biennale reveals that structure shouldn’t be solely a design self-discipline but in addition a strong crucial and cultural instrument. Every pavilion, rooted in its particular territorial context and native cultural id, enacts a type of resistance by exploring ancestral information, pure assets, and up to date applied sciences as collective methods of understanding—studying from the previous to construct higher at present. In a worldwide context marked by environmental crises, inequalities, and technological transformations, these architectural and deeply reflective endeavors assemble new and reimagined narratives, the place the native is not intrinsic to a hard and fast context however fairly information that expands, connects, and adapts to shared new realities.