Living Room Collective uses live cyanobacteria within 3D printed biostructures to capture carbon dioxide from air in the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025. Named Picoplanktonics, the exhibition commissioned by The Canada Council for the Arts is on view from May 10th to November 26th, 2025. designboom speaks with Living Room Collective’s lead and biodesigner Andrea Shin Ling about the project. In our interview, she says that architecture often uses the term ‘regenerative design’ when referring to circular or upcycled material systems. ‘In Picoplanktonics, we are talking about the biological definition of regeneration, which means the literal ability to regenerate or renew from damaged or dead parts,’ she tells designboom.

The research team has merged two ancient metabolic processes for Picoplanktonics: photosynthesis and biocementation. For the former, they turn to cyanobacteria, one of the oldest groups of bacterial organisms on the planet. ‘Cyanobacteria are among the first photosynthetic organisms and are believed to be responsible for the Great Oxygenation Event, where 2.4 billion years ago, the atmosphere transformed from a high CO2 environment to a high O2 environment because of photosynthesis,’ Andrea Shin Ling explains. They can also produce biocementation, or the process of capturing carbon dioxide from air and turning it into solid minerals, like carbonates. Because of this, the resulting minerals act like ‘cement’ and can store the carbon permanently, keeping it out of the atmosphere.

all images courtesy of The Living Room Collective | photos by Valentina Mori, unless stated otherwise

Infusing the bacteria during the printing stage

Before bringing them to Venice, Andrea Shin Ling and the Living Room Collective fabricated the 3D printed biostructures at ETH Zürich’s laboratory. The biodesigner shares with us that when they make these structures, they already infuse the living cyanobacteria during the printing stage instead of later on. Then, they need to let the bacteria grow and take care of them so they can grow. This means they have to provide enough light, warmth, and humidity so that they can proliferate and slowly harden the prints.

‘The idea is that the bacteria cooperate in a human-initiated fabrication process and, with our care, can continue and finish that process (in this case, hardening the printed structures they live in),’ says Andrea Shin Ling. She adds that for the 3D printed biostructure with live cyanobacteria in Venice, favorable conditions mean warm sunlight, high humidity, and access to salt water. ‘These are conditions that are common in Venice and achievable in the Canada Pavilion, which informed our design process,’ the biodesigner explains to designboom.

Living Room Collective uses live cyanobacteria within 3D printed biostructures to capture carbon dioxide from air

Microorganisms that can repair themselves to a healthy state

In Picoplanktonics, the Living Room Collective works with bacteria as the living component of their material system. It has the ability to grow and die within the 3D printed biostructures, as shown in Venice, and the colony can restore itself under favorable conditions after periods of decline. Andrea Shin Ling says, however, that the process isn’t necessarily consistent since it depends on the environmental conditions at a particular point in time.

‘So, for instance, a bioprint might dry out if the air is too dry that week, and many of the bacteria die. But because the system is regenerative, the bacteria population has the potential to restore itself when favorable conditions return and then continue their carbon sequestration work,’ she shares with designboom.

these biostructures are inside the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

During their research process, the group has also had samples where the bacteria have gotten ‘sick’, worn out, or where they looked like they were over-oxidized. With some care, the live cyanobacteria were able to repair themselves back to a healthy state. This is what Andrea Shin Ling means when she describes regenerative design. It looks more into the potential of biological material systems that are dynamic and restorative.

‘But their responsivity can also create situations that we don’t want. So much of the project is then trying to understand what is causing these situations and monitoring conditions so that we can respond accordingly,’ the biodesigner adds. Visitors to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 can see the research process and progress of Picoplanktonics firsthand inside the Canada Pavilion. It remains on-site from May 10th to November 26th, 2025.

the research group takes care of the bacteria throughout the exhibition to maintain their healthy state

the bacteria need warm sunlight, high humidity, and access to salt water to thrive

the research group already infuses the living cyanobacteria during the printing stage | image © designboom

the bacteria harden the printed structures they live in | image © designboom

the research team has used ancient metabolic processes for Picoplanktonics | image © designboom

the cyanobacteria can also produce biocementation, or the process of capturing carbon dioxide from air

Living Room Collective’s lead And biodesigner Andrea Shin Ling

the exhibition is on view until November 26th, 2025

project info:

name: Picoplanktonics | @picoplanktonics

group: The Living Room Collective

team: Andrea Shin Ling Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui, Clayton Lee

commission by: The Canada Council for the Arts | @canada.council

event: Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 | @labiennale

location: Calle Giazzo, 30122 Venice, Italy

dates: May 10th to November 26th, 2025

research and development: Andrea Shin Ling, Yo-Cheng Jerry Lee, Nijat Mahamaliyev, Hamid Peiro, Dalia Dranseike, Yifan Cui, Pok Yin Victor Leung, Barrak Darweesh

photography: Valentina Mori | @_valentinamori_

production

eth zurich: Huang Su, Wenqian Yang, Che-Wei Lin, Sukhdevsinh Parmar; Tobias Hartmann, Michael Lyrenmann, Luca Petrus, Jonathan Leu, Philippe Fleischmann, Oliver Zgraggen, Paul Fischlin, Mario Hebing, Franklin Füchslin; Hao Wu, Nicola Piccioli-Cappelli, Roberto Innocenti, Sigurd Rinde, Börte Emiroglu, Stéphane Bernhard, Carlo Pasini, Apoorv Singh, Paul Jaeggi; Mario Guala, Isabella Longoni;

toronto metropolitan university: Venessa Chan, Minh Ton, Daniel Wolinski, Marko Jovanovic, Santino D’Angelo Rozas, Rachel Kim, Alexandra Waxman, Richard McCulloch, Stephen Waldman, Tina Smith, Andrea Skyers, Randy Ragan, Emma Grant, Shira Gellman, Mariska Espinet, Suzanne Porter, Stacey Park, Amanda Wood, Lisa Landrum, Dorothy Johns, Cedric Ortiz

university of toronto: Daniel Lewycky, Philipp Cop

visualisation: Adrian Yu, Nazanin Kazemi, Ariel Weiss

structural advisors: Andrea Menardo, Kam-Ming Mark Tam

graphic design: Shannon Lin

website: Sigurd Rinde, Shannon Lin

local project logistics: Tamara Andruszkiewicz

project advisors: ETH Zurich, Benjamin Dillenburger, Mark Tibbitt

support: Canada Council, Digital Building Technologies, Institute of Technology & Architecture, D-ARCH, ETH Zurich, Department of Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada; Advanced Engineering with Living Materials (ALIVE) Initiative, ETH Zurich; Additive Tectonics GmbH; ABB Switzerland; Vestacon Limited and NEUF Architect(e)s

The post 3D printed biostructures with live bacteria capture carbon dioxide from air at venice biennale appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Part of the Korean Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale, Time for Trees by Heechan Park + Studio Heech presents a series of spatial installations and sensing devices marking the pavilion’s 30th anniversary. The project explores the evolving relationship between the architecture of the Korean Pavilion and the surrounding trees within the Giardini della Biennale, framing this interaction through visual, auditory, and spatial means.

The installations, ‘A Shadow Caster,’ ‘Giardini Travelers,’ and ‘Elevated Gaze 1995,’ operate as observation tools, offering a framework to perceive how the pavilion coexists with its natural surroundings over time. Emphasizing the pavilion’s original integration into the site without displacing any trees, the project highlights the long-term coexistence of built form and landscape. Rather than treating architecture as separate from nature, the installation acknowledges both as equal components in the spatial composition of the Giardini. Developed through collaborations with various Korean workshops, the work reflects on the logistics and implications of constructing international exhibitions. It also addresses the broader conditions of biennale production, positioning the project as both site-responsive and globally connected. Unlike the closed typology of white cube exhibition spaces, the Korean Pavilion remains visually and spatially open to its surroundings. The installations within are designed to interact with environmental conditions such as light, shadow, and sound, reinforcing the role of time and place in the experience of architecture.

Time for Trees celebrates the Korean Pavilion’s 30 years | all images by Yongjoon Choi unless stated otherwise

Time for Trees showcases three site-specific spatial installations

‘A Shadow Caster’ is a site-specific spatial installation that allows visitors to read and experience the shadows cast by the trees around the Korean Pavilion. The work captures the patterns, shades, and subtle movements of the surrounding Giardini environment, evolving with time, seasons, and changing climate conditions. Visitors experience the relationship that the Korean Pavilion has with the vegetal and topographic conditions

Created by Studio Heech’s team in collaboration with a woodworking shop and a metal workshop in Seoul, the ‘Giardini Travelers’ are structural and modular architectural devices created for site-specific events and rituals at the Venice Biennale. Moving through various national pavilions of Giardini, they explore and celebrate the rich and intriguing histories connected to the surrounding trees and natural environment. These adaptable modular trusses can function as an observation deck, ladder, bench, seating area for visitors, stage for special events, or a setting for temporary exhibitions. In particular, in this exhibition, they are used as a ladder and bench, allowing visitors to experience the stories created through relationships with the surrounding trees. ‘Giardini Travelers’ remains an ‘artwork’ that, even in the 21st century, must be created on the other side of the globe and embark on a long journey to Venice. It serves as both a ritualistic tribute and a critical inquiry into the efforts and dedication of those who create national pavilions every year, as well as the long-standing history and traditions of the Biennale.

‘Elevated Gaze 1995’ is inspired by the quote ‘free independence of the human gaze, tied to the human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray, alone, as far as it may choose,’ from Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way.’ In this passage, the human gaze moves freely and independently, experiencing its surroundings. Through this piece, visitors transcend the limits of their own gaze, rising higher to take in the landscape of the Giardini and the sounds of trees and forests. The long-standing story created by the equal symbiosis of architecture and trees in the Giardini is reinterpreted and shared with visitors through ‘Elevated Gaze 1995.’ The exhibition’s title, ‘Time for Trees,’ draws from Sufi Boise’s essay of the same title in Architectural Review (April 2023).

the project explores the relationship between architecture and surrounding trees in the Giardini

three key installations frame the dialogue between built form and landscape

‘A Shadow Caster’ captures the movement and seasonal changes of tree shadows

visitors engage with environmental patterns created by nearby trees

light and shadow define a shifting spatial experience around the pavilion

the human gaze moves freely and independently, experiencing its surroundings

each installation interacts with sound, light, and time to frame natural processes

the project acknowledges the equal presence of nature and structure in the Giardini

‘Giardini Travelers’ are modular structures built for observation and interaction

project info:

name: Time for Trees
architect: Heechan Park – Studio Heech | @studioheech

venue: Korean Pavilion, Giardini, Venice

dates: May 10th – November 23th, 2025

digital interaction collaborator: Yoosuk Kim (RGB lab)

fabrication coordinator: Il Park (Design Lab)

technical advisor: Junhyuk Park, Junghoon Kim (Archi Terre)

fabricator: KD-Art, Catharsis, RGB lab

project assistant: Yurim Kim (Studio Heech)

photographer: Yongjoon Choi, Yongbaek Lee

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

The post site-specific installations by studio heech fuse korean pavilion with biennale’s giardini trees appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives transforms the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens into a stage for over 60 international artists grappling with one of the most urgent ethical questions of our time: how do we live with, and not over, animals? 

Running until January 7th, 2026, the museum-wide show spans five floors, combining visual art, science, philosophy, and activism to challenge speciesism and advocate for animal rights, sentience, and voice. ‘At its core, Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives is an attempt to shift our gaze from a purely anthropocentric worldview to one that recognises the rights, agency, and suffering of non-human beings.’ Katerina Gregos, curator of the exhibition and EMST’s creative director, explains, speaking with designboom. Inspired by John Berger’s seminal 1980 essay, Why Look at Animals? underscores the notion of ‘listening beyond language.’ It implicitly strives to ‘speak for those who have no voice,’ as the curator frames it, a driving force that shaped the entire process.

from left to right: Mark Dion, Men and Game, 1998. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, Los Angeles | Rossella Biscotti, Clara, 2016. Courtesy of the artist | all installation view images by Paris Tavitian, unless stated otherwise

listening beyond language: art as a site for interspecies empathy

The curatorial framework by the art historian Katerina Gregos pierces through the anthropocentric lens that has rendered animals invisible, both culturally and ecologically. ‘I’ve always felt the subject of animal rights and well–being to be an urgent one, and was puzzled how the so-called ‘art world’ did not consider it worthy of attention until very recently,’ she shares with designboom. Far from romanticising nature, the show boldly confronts the systems that exploit animal life: industrial farming, vivisection, the exotic pet trade, hunting, and entertainment. Works on view make visible the brutal disconnections of modernity, where animals have been relegated from myth, companion, and co-inhabitant to product and spectacle. Berger’s claim that animals have ‘disappeared’ from daily life is literal here – their erasure becomes the focal point of critical reflection and creative resistance.

While rooted in ethics, Why Look at Animals? also delves into science, drawing on neuroethology and animal studies to dismantle outdated ideas like Descartes’ bête-machine, the animal as automaton. ‘I’ve long been concerned with questions of injustice and inequality, particularly within the human sphere,’ Gregos tells us, adding that she ‘realised early on that they are sentient, intelligent beings who are disadvantaged in our world because they do not possess speech.’ Visitors are prompted to engage with animals as complex beings with emotional lives, intelligence, and social structures that may differ from human norms but are no less profound. Texts by thinkers like Peter Singer, Martha Nussbaum, and Tom Regan shape the theoretical spine of the exhibition, bringing together philosophical, legal, and environmental dimensions of animal advocacy. ‘This systemic disconnection from the lives and deaths of animals mirrors a broader ethical and ecological rupture, one that the exhibition at EMST seeks to confront,’ insists Gregos. In a world where animals are often framed as voiceless, this show turns up the volume, demanding a reconfiguration of how we think and live. Dive into our in-depth discussion with Katerina Gregos below.

Nikos Tranos, Terrain (bridle for horses), 2024. courtesy of the artist and Zoumboulakis Galleries, Athens | Jonas Staal, Exo-Ecologies, 2023. Commissioned by Power Station of Art l 14th Shanghai Biennale Cosmos Cinema, Shanghai. Courtesy of the artist

INTERVIEW WITH KATERINA GREGOS

designboom (DB): How did John Berger’s 1980 essay shape your vision for this exhibition? Are there particular passages or ideas from the text that served as a curatorial compass? 

Katerina Gregos (KG): The title of the exhibition is drawn directly from John Berger’s seminal 1980 essay Why Look at Animals?, which was both a starting point and a conceptual anchor for the project. Berger’s reflections on the estrangement of humans from animals resonated deeply with me and informed my curatorial explorations. He begins his essay by highlighting the important role that animals played in human societies; ‘The animals first entered the human imagination as messengers and promises’ he writes, thus acknowledging the deep symbolic and spiritual role animals once played in human cultures. However, he goes on to point out a sea change in the relationship between humans and animals during modernity, highlighting the fact that ‘In the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared.’ This is a reference not only to extinction or physical absence but to their cultural and symbolic disappearance from human life. ‘Everywhere animals disappear’ he emphasizes, ‘In zoos they constitute the living monument to their own disappearance.’ This is a striking statement on how animals have been marginalized and isolated in modern society, especially through artificial settings like zoos or circuses where they have been reduced to a spectacle or commodity – confined to manmade spaces, such as theme parks, factory farms, and, ultimately, to the abstraction of the supermarket shelf.

This systemic disconnection from the lives and deaths of animals mirrors a broader ethical and ecological rupture, one that the exhibition at EMST seeks to confront. Berger’s idea that animals have ‘lost their centrality’ in the human imagination helped shape the curatorial vision, which does not aim to romanticise animals or nature, but rather to challenge the mechanisms – economic, cultural, and visual – through which non-human lives have been rendered invisible, disposable, or instrumentalised. The book serves as the basis for the exhibition’s ethico-philosophical approach to non-human lives, and its plea for a consideration of animal rights. It is in this spirit that Why Look at Animals? becomes not only a question, but a provocation, one that urges viewers to reconsider how we see, relate to, and live with other species.

front to back: Maarten Vanden Eynde Homo stupidus stupidus, 2008. Private collection, Slovenia | Nabil Boutros, Celebrities / Ovine Condition, 2014. Courtesy of the artist

DB: What was the most challenging aspect of curating an exhibition that seeks to raise awareness and advocate for the moral and legal consideration of non-human life?

KG: One of the most challenging aspects was finding the right balance between raising awareness and fostering critical reflection – without falling into didacticism or moralising or the trappings of simplistic agit-prop art. Art is not activism in the traditional sense; its strength lies in its ability to open up space for nuanced thinking, emotional engagement, and deeper contemplation. But when dealing with such an urgent and ethically charged subject as the rights of non-human life, the line between aesthetics, advocacy, and information is a delicate one. Another challenge was how to sensitively represent the often invisible or marginalised suffering of animals, especially those not typically granted empathy – such as lab animals, factory-farmed creatures, or those displaced by environmental destruction. How do you visualise their realities without sensationalising or exploiting their pain? How do you speak for those who have no voice? These were questions I constantly grappled with. That is why there are no taxidermied animals in the exhibition, or scenes of graphic violence.

On a practical level, assembling a constellation of works that reflected a diversity of voices, geographies, and cultural understandings of human-animal relationships was vital. It was important to resist a Western-centric narrative and instead draw attention to plural worldviews – particularly Indigenous, postcolonial, or non-Western perspectives – that often hold a much more holistic understanding of interspecies coexistence. Ultimately, the challenge was to curate an exhibition that doesn’t offer easy answers, but rather provokes questions – about ethics, responsibility, and our place in the wider web of life. I hope that Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives can contribute to a broader shift in consciousness and policy, while also encouraging a personal reckoning about the assumptions we have.

front to back: Maarten Vanden Eynde Homo stupidus stupidus, 2008. Private collection, Slovenia | Nabil Boutros, Celebrities / Ovine Condition, 2014. Courtesy of the artist

DB: How does the exhibition address our uneven empathy toward animals, especially those typically overlooked or excluded?

KG: The exhibition aims to challenge the hierarchy of empathy that governs our relationships with non-human animals – where certain species are cherished, while others are ignored, commodified, or exploited without a second thought. At its core is the recognition that all forms of life are interconnected, and that our survival is deeply dependent on the well-being of the ecosystems and species with whom we share this planet. Despite having histories marked by colonialism, fascism, and struggles for independence – oppressions that should have sensitised us to injustice – we continue to uphold a deeply anthropocentric worldview. We presume human superiority over other species, often failing to acknowledge the moral and ecological consequences of that belief. This mindset not only leads to the suffering of non-human lives but positions us as one of the few species capable of destroying its own habitat.

Through Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives, I hope to provoke a deeper reflection on these contradictions, and encourage viewers to reconsider the ways in which empathy is selectively applied. By bringing to light the lives and perspectives of animals we rarely think about – from those used in testing or factory farming to those displaced by extractivist practices – the exhibition seeks to foster a more just and inclusive understanding of coexistence. Empathy must be extended beyond the familiar and the lovable, to include all those whose lives are intertwined with ours – often invisibly.

the museum-wide show advocates for animal rights, sentience, and voice | image © designboom

DB: With artists from over 30 countries, how did you make sure the exhibition reflects culturally diverse understandings of human-animal relationships rather than a Western-centric view?

KG: From its inception, Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives was conceived not as a Western-centric exhibition about animals in art, but as a critical, ethical, and culturally expansive exploration of human-animal relationships across different regions, histories, and worldviews. One of EMST’s core commitments is to challenge the dominant narratives that often shape large-scale exhibitions, particularly those rooted in a Western canon. In line with the museum’s mission to explore ‘creative memory practices’ and resist presentism and amnesia, the curatorial approach deliberately sought out artists whose practices are embedded in culturally specific, historically layered, and often marginalised understandings of non-human life.

The exhibition features over 200 works by 60 artists from more than 30 countries across four continents, many of whom engage with non-Western cosmologies, Indigenous perspectives, and postcolonial critiques of human exceptionalism. This diversity was not incidental – it reflects the museum’s broader aim to foreground multiple, often contradictory, ways of understanding the world, particularly those shaped by colonial histories, forced industrialisation, ecological degradation, and ongoing systems of exploitation. Moreover, EMST’s position in Athens – as a city at the intersection of Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa – offers a unique vantage point from which to question binary worldviews. Greece itself has a hybrid identity shaped by Eastern, Levantine, and Western influences, and the museum draws on this complexity to amplify voices and narratives that sit outside of dominant curatorial models. In this sense, Why Look at Animals? is not only about animals, but also about how different cultures relate to the living world – how they remember, mythologise, commodify, mourn, or coexist with it. It is about making space for those understandings that have been excluded or undervalued, and about using contemporary art to surface new ethical relationships with more-than-human life.

Oussama Tabti, Homo-Carduelis, 2022 (installation view), Sound installation, Bird cages, speakers, 33’ (loop), Dimensions variable, Collection of EMST

DB: Do you see this exhibition as the beginning of a larger movement within contemporary art to address the rights of non-human beings? What role should artists and institutions play going forward?

KG: Yes, I believe this exhibition is part of a growing and necessary shift in contemporary art – one that seeks to dismantle anthropocentric worldviews and take seriously the rights, experiences, and agency of non-human beings. While this conversation has existed in philosophy, science, and activism for some time, contemporary art is now increasingly engaging with it in ways that are visceral, imaginative, and politically urgent. Art has a unique capacity to visualise the invisible, to make felt what is often ignored, and to propose new modes of thinking and relating. Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives contributes to a wider re-evaluation of how humans coexist with the more-than-human world – by foregrounding the ethical, emotional, and ecological dimensions of that relationship. The exhibition does not claim to provide definitive answers, but rather opens up a space for questioning, witnessing, and empathising – urging us to reconsider our own fraught and conflicted relationship with animals.

Going forward, artists and institutions alike have a responsibility to foster this kind of critical dialogue. For institutions, that means programming that reflects ecological urgency, supporting transdisciplinary approaches, and ensuring that diverse cultural perspectives on non-human life are represented – not just those rooted in Western scientific or philosophical frameworks. For artists, it means continuing to challenge dominant narratives, creating work that highlights urgent issues and how we understand them and using their practices to imagine more equitable multispecies futures. If there is a movement underway, it must also be an ethical one – grounded in care, accountability, and an openness to learn from other ways of being. The museum can – and must – be a place where such reorientations can begin.

visitors are prompted to engage with animals as complex beings with emotional lives | image © designboom

DB: In working on this project, did your personal relationship with animals or views on speciesism evolve in ways you didn’t expect?

KG: Curating Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives has been both a professional and deeply personal journey. I’ve long been concerned with questions of injustice and inequality, particularly within the human sphere. But I’ve also grown up with many different animals, living side by side with them, and realised early on that they are sentient, intelligent beings who are disadvantaged in our world because they do not possess speech. I’ve always felt the subject of animal rights and well–being to be an urgent one, and was puzzled how the so-called ‘art world’ did not consider it worthy of attention until very recently. Working closely on this exhibition, immersing myself in the vast and often disturbing realities of human-animal relationships, made me confront more viscerally the structural violence and moral blind spots that underpin speciesism.

What surprised me was not so much a change of heart – I have always felt that the way humans treat animals is profoundly problematic – but rather a sharpening of perspective, an expanded sense of urgency given the ecological crisis, in which animals are the invisible victims. The research forced me to confront the sheer scale and normalisation of cruelty towards non-human lives, often hidden in plain sight. I realised just how embedded this hierarchy is in our culture and how difficult it is to disentangle ourselves from it, even when we try. The exhibition also made me reflect more consciously on the idea of co-existence – not as an abstract ideal, but as a necessary ethical imperative. It’s no longer enough to think of animals as beings we must protect out of compassion. We must start acknowledging them as subjects with agency, presence, and rights, as lives that matter in and of themselves, not just in relation to us. This shift, I believe, is one that artists and cultural institutions must support. We have to help recalibrate the ethical lens through which we look at the world, to open up space for imagining new forms of kinship and solidarity across species.

Lynn Hershman Leeson The Infinity Engine, 2014 (detail) Multimedia installation, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist, Altman Siegel, San Francisco and Bridget Donahue, New York

DB: What kind of emotional or intellectual response do you hope to evoke in viewers?

KG: The exhibition confronts a range of exploitative and often invisible forms of violence against animals – whether through scientific testing, space exploration, genetic engineering, hunting, or habitat destruction driven by extractivist and industrial agricultural practices. At its core, Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives is an attempt to shift our gaze from a purely anthropocentric worldview to one that recognises the rights, agency, and suffering of non-human beings. I hope the show elicits both an emotional and intellectual response: empathy, reflection, discomfort, perhaps even outrage – but also a deeper understanding of the structural and ethical failures that underpin our relationship with the non-human world.

The goal is not to provoke guilt, but to awaken awareness and a sense of shared responsibility, and an impetus to change our habits (to meat, for example). By inviting viewers to confront the systemic ways in which human actions harm animal lives and degrade shared ecosystems, Why Look at Animals? aims to build a compelling case for reimagining how we cohabit the planet. The destruction we inflict on non-human life is ultimately a form of self-harm – an expression of greed, moral failure, and a profound inability to coexist with what is simply other than ourselves. If this project can spark meaningful dialogue, raise awareness beyond the art world, and contribute even incrementally to changing attitudes or policy, that would already be a powerful outcome.

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Taxonomic Trophies, 2005 – ongoing (detail)
Branches, wood and metal name tags
Dimensions variable 
Courtesy of the artist

Gustafsson & Haapoja Embrace Your Empathy, 2016/2025 (installation view) Installation, 20 Flags Dimensions variable Co-commissioned by EMSΤ Courtesy of the artists

Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal, Comrades in Extinction, 2020 – 2021 (installation view, detail), installation with wood, hardened oil landscape and gouache paintings. Dimensions variable, Production by EMST. Courtesy of Studio Jonas Staal

the show boldly confronts the systems that exploit animal life | image © designboom

Paris Petridis Lagia, 2001; Imathia, 2006; Thessaloniki, 2021; Galilee, 2011; Dead Sea, 2012. Courtesy of the artist

(from left to right): Marcus Coates, Extinct Animals, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Kate MacGarry, London | Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost, hello, are we in the show?, 2012. Collection S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent | Anne Marie Maes, Glossa (bee tongue), 2024.

Marcus Coates Extinct Animals, 2018 (installation view, detail) Group of 19 casts, plaster Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Kate MacGarry, London| image © designboom

project info:

name: Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives

curator: Katerina Gregos | @katerina.gregos

venue: EMST – National Museum of Contemporary Art | @emstathens, Athens, Greece

exhibition design: Flux Office | @flux_office

dates: May 15th, 2025 – January 7th, 2026

The post ‘why look at animals?’ at EMST: katerina gregos on speaking for the voiceless appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

At Casacor São Paulo 2025, Atelier Marko Brajovic presents Ninho, a prototype of bio-urban equipment that invites humans to slow down, reconnect, and imagine cities as multispecies habitats. Part architecture, part installation, and part exhibition, Ninho nestles into Parque da Água Branca like a light ecological intervention, built from pinewood and recycled plastic. Soft, egg-shaped sofas encourage visitors to lie back, observe the sky, take in the trees, and listen to the ambient sounds of the park. Inspired by the clever ways birds and insects build their homes, this project combines design, nature, and city life to explore how our cities could change to better include and support non-human life. It invites us to think, feel, and imagine a future where people and wildlife can live side by side. 

all images courtesy of Atelier Marko Brajovic

Animal Architects Exhibition accompanies the Ninho installation

Conceived by the Brazilian team of Atelier Marko Brajovic, Ninho embodies a soft, hybrid typology. Inspired by the nests of the boldest birds, those that scavenge at the urban fringe to weave together nature and artifice, the structure challenges traditional ideas of technology, materiality, and authorship. Inside this playful, porous space, people can lie back and gaze at the sky, exchange stories, or learn how animal architects have always outsmarted us.

Surrounding the installation is the Animal Architects Exhibition, curated by the studio, which dives deep into the construction habits of non-human builders. The show is divided into three sections. The first focuses on birds and insects, presenting intricate architectures made from fibers, wax, mud, and even urban debris as instruments of seduction, protection, and survival. Illustrations and models unpack the logic of collective construction and cross-species cooperation. The second section turns the lens back onto humans, showcasing design projects that borrow from animal-made blueprints and exploring biomimetic structures and ecological adaptation. Finally, the Multispecity section asks the big question: what might cities look like if they were truly shared with other forms of life?

bird-eye view of the nest

animals as master architects

In the curatorial text, Atelier Marko Brajovic paints a vivid portrait of animals as master architects long before humans shaped the built environment. Termite mounds with natural ventilation, bee combs with embedded logic, or birds crafting nests from plastic trash — these examples are not just curiosities, but provocations. They remind us that construction doesn’t necessarily require technology, only intention and adaptation. Animals build with bodies and instincts, responding in real time to ecosystems in flux. They improvise, evolve, and even thrive in the heart of our cities.

Completing Ninho is a sensitive landscape intervention by Ana Kamitsuji, who rewilds the surrounding square with micro-habitats that support pollinators and seed-dispersing fauna.

360 pieces of reforested pine were used, along with the application of 40 extruded recycled plastic panels

the panels of recycled plastic are engraved in white with the names of bird species that inhabit the park

Ninho scales up bird architecture to human proportions

part architecture, part installation, and part exhibition, Ninho nestles into Parque da Água Branca

these examples remind us that construction doesn’t necessarily require technology

inspired by the clever ways birds and insects build their homes

project info:

name: Ninho—prototype of a bio-urban equipment

architect: Atelier Marko Brajovic | @markobrajovic

location: Casacor São Paulo, Parque da Água Branca, São Paulo, Brazil

creative director: Marko Brajovic

operations director: Bruno Bezerra

coordinator: Kelen Giordani Tomazelli

lead architects: Teresa Lima, Priscila Sati, Ailton Wenceslau

landscape design: Ana Kamitsuji

exhibition: Animal Architects Exhibition

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: thomai tsimpou | designboom

The post recycled plastic and pinewood shape atelier marko brajovic’s human nest in são paulo appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

The Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris transforms into a mesmerizing aquatic and musical landscape with the unveiling of clinamen, an immersive installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. On view until September 21st, 2025, and curated by Emma Lavigne, General Director of the Pinault Collection, the large-scale project envelops visitors in a multisensory experience where porcelain bowls, water, and invisible currents form a delicate choreography of sound and movement. At the heart of the Rotunda lies an expansive basin, eighteen meters in diameter, filled with water. This vast, tranquil surface acts as a mirror, reflecting the Parisian sky visible through the museum’s iconic dome. White ceramic bowls drift across its surface, propelled by gentle currents, producing unpredictable melodic chimes as they serendipitously collide. 

While this is not the first iteration of clinamen – earlier versions have been staged at institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the Centre Pompidou-Metz – it is the most ambitious to date. ‘This exceptional version of clinamen at the Bourse de Commerce doubles the size of the basin of the largest installations built to date,’ Céleste Boursier-Mougenot tells designboom. The museum’s architecture played a pivotal role. ‘My approach is largely based on taking into account the places and spaces where I am invited to present my work,’ the artist notes,‘I see the architecture of each new exhibition venue as a matrix into which the technical and aesthetic principles of the installation are cast, as if into a mould, resulting in a new version in situ.’ Encased by Tadao Ando’s concrete ring and capped by the monumental glass dome, the Rotunda offers a rare resonance.‘The immense rotunda, encircled by Tadao Ando’s cement casket, under the high glass roof, offers clinamen the opportunity to fully express its planispheric dimension,’ Boursier-Mougenot says.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, clinamen v.10, 2012-2025, courtesy of the artist, Paula Cooper Gallery (New York), Galerie Xippas (Paris), Galerie Mario Mazzoli (Berlin) | photo by Nicolas Brasseur | all images courtesy of Bourse de Commerce—Pinault Collection, unless stated otherwise

embracing unpredictability within the clinamen installation

Like many of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s works, the Bourse de Commerce installation exists at the intersection of sound, sculpture, and performance. It also marks the culmination of decades of experimentation with sonic systems that operate independently of human control. A musician by origin, Boursier-Mougenot approaches sound as a ‘living material’ – as seen in clinamen, where the traditional constraints of music are shed, replaced by a self-regulating system that breathes and changes with each passing moment. ‘My systems of sound or musical production are modeled or inspired by living, self-regulating forms like organisms,’ the artist explains. 

The title clinamen comes from Epicurean physics and refers to the random, unpredictable motion of atoms. For Boursier-Mougenot, this idea mirrors the elemental operations at play in the installation. ‘The analogy between my work entitled clinamen and the phenomenon of clinamen described by Lucretius in De rerum natura also concerned the notion of declination in the combinatorial sense and the question of exhausting the possibilities of encounter, occurrence and permutation,’ the artist says. He sees the installation as ‘a kind of model, a fairly schematic example, in which all these interactions take place before our eyes and for our ears.’ The inherent unpredictability is central to the experience: ‘if in the moment before two porcelain bowls collide you try to anticipate the resulting note or timbre, most of the time your expectation will be foiled by the sound of the collision.’

clinamen takes over the iconic Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce

enveloping visitors in a multisensory experience

Boursier-Mougenot deliberately embraces unpredictability in his creative process, a practice he discovered when allowing external sounds to enrich his compositions. This openness led him to ‘think about the production of music based on self-regulating systems. These systems generate musical forms over which I have no control over the order of inputs, but the result is very important to me.’ This philosophy informs the entire structure of clinamen, which runs on a self-regulating system akin to a living organism. The materials, too, are deliberately fragile and mutable. Porcelain, water, sound. ‘It was while playing in my studio with everything needed to produce a catastrophe […] that this work took shape, almost thirty years ago,’ he recalls. Clinamen beautifully embodies a tension between apparent opposites: order and chaos, stillness and movement, silence and sound. The artist’s previous work, harmonichaos, which involved vacuum cleaners playing harmonicas, explored similar themes of unpredictable, self-regulating systems. ‘With harmonichaos, it’s impossible to predict when each of the thirteen vacuum cleaners will work or stop, nor the duration of silences or chords played and held by one vacuum cleaner/harmonica module or another,’ he shares, highlighting the interplay of chance and inherent system logic.

In a world defined by acceleration and distraction, clinamen invites a radical slowing down. Visitors become part of the installation simply by being present. ‘With my installations, I make it clear to everyone who visits that they can find a place within the work and become an integral part of it momentarily by their mere presence,’ he says. ‘The simple fact of inviting people to sit down and rest induces attitudes conducive to listening and daydreaming.’ Ultimately, clinamen is not only a meditation on matter, motion, and sound, but a quietly profound call to attention. ‘I don’t believe my art can change anything in the madness of today’s world,’ Boursier-Mougenot admits, ‘but since I’m invited to present my work, I bring the best I have.’ Read our conversation with the artist in full below, and watch clinamen in action here.

porcelain bowls, water, and invisible currents form a delicate choreography of sound and movement | photo by Florent Michel / 11H45

INTERVIEW WITH Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

designboom (DB): How did the architecture of the Rotunda in the Bourse de Commerce shape this version of the clinamen?

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot (CBM): My approach is largely based on taking into account the places and spaces where I am invited to present my work. I see the architecture of each new exhibition venue as a matrix into which the technical and aesthetic principles of the installation are cast, as if into a mould, resulting in a new version in situ. In this way, many of the installation’s parameters can be redefined by the characteristics and particularities of the venue. At the Bourse de Commerce, the immense rotunda, encircled by Tadao Ando’s cement casket, under the high glass roof, offers clinamen the opportunity to fully express its planispheric dimension.

DB: The immersive installation has been shown before, but never at this scale. What new possibilities—or challenges—did this larger format bring?

CBM: You’re right, this exceptional version of clinamen at the Bourse de Commerce doubles the size of the basin of the largest installations built to date. At this stage, no one can say for sure whether everything will work as usual on this scale. It’s a challenge, with a multitude of technical issues to resolve in order to remain faithful to the work and its simplicity. To achieve this, I’m working with a team of excellent technicians, and it’s only at the time of the tests that we’ll know if everything is working. So it’s quite experimental, as I think any attempt at art should be.

at the heart of the Rotunda lies an expansive basin, eighteen meters in diameter, filled with water

DB: The title clinamen refers to the random motion of atoms in Epicurean physics. How does this idea connect to the movement and behavior of the installation?

CBM: Clinamen, this word and its definition came to me in the summer of 1997, as I was leafing through the pages of a dictionary. I was looking for a title for my new installation that would describe the principle of the work. I had the word declination in mind and was looking for a synonym here and there. The cosmic connotations of clinamen immediately captivated me and I found many analogies between the phenomenon it describes and my work in progress. So I adopted the title. Shortly afterwards, in view of the installation’s appearance, the title clinamen seemed a little pretentious, and for the work’s first exhibition I called it untitled. In the years that followed, untitled enjoyed great success in France and abroad in many different versions. Around 2003, production of the inflatable swimming pool model I had been using came to an abrupt halt. I had to design my installations with floating porcelain by having raised floors made into which one or more round pools could be integrated. Later, for exhibitions in vast spaces without walls, the raised floor took the form of a platform with access ramps and surrounded by circular benches, virtually acting as walls. As versions of the installation became larger and more planispheric, I decided in 2012 to rename the largest of them clinamen.

The analogy between my work entitled clinamen and the phenomenon of clinamen described by Lucretius in De rerum natura also concerned the notion of declination in the combinatorial sense and the question of exhausting the possibilities of encounter, occurrence and permutation. For materialists, the clinamen is the minimum angle that leads atoms, those inseparable and eternal particles, to collide and assemble to produce, by aggregation, all the perishable matter of our world, which constantly disintegrates and reformates : atoms are to matter what the letters of the alphabet are to language and writing, and it is from the variety of their combination that everything exists. In my work, there is also a curved movement that leads the cells represented by the porcelain bowls to collide, producing a world of sounds and potentially all the occurrences of the elements present. We can contemplate clinamen installation as a kind of model, a fairly schematic example, in which all these interactions take place before our eyes and for our ears. But if you try to trace the causal thread of a sequence, it’s impossible to do it live. In other words, if in the moment before two porcelain bowls collide you try to anticipate the resulting note or timbre, most of the time your expectation will be foiled by the sound of the collision.

unpredictable melodic chimes emerge as the bowls serendipitously collide

DB: The piece is guided by invisible currents, where ceramic bowls create sound through chance encounters. How do you work with unpredictability as part of your creative process?

CBM: I discovered the virtues of unpredictability for my music the day I accepted that outside sounds, totally unrelated to my own, such as those of the urban environment of the unspoilt place where I was producing my music, could mix with it and enrich it. Later, during a play by the company whose music I was composing, which was being staged on the roof of a campus building, the sounds of cars in the distance or the sound of the wind could be heard. The sounds of cars in the distance or voices, wind, planes passing in the sky and crows flying overhead mixed with my music for a noisy string quartet and reanimated it. It was all a question of sound levels and permanence of course, but it gave a “here and now” quality to my recorded and broadcast music. Later, I often used microphones to pick up sounds live outside theatres, reinjecting them and mixing them with my music. These experiences opened my ears and gradually led me to think about the production of music based on self-regulating systems. These systems generate musical forms over which I have no control over the order of inputs, but the result is very important to me.

ceramic bowls drift across the water surface, propelled by gentle currents

DB: Your choice of materials—porcelain bowls, water, currents—feels deliberately elemental. What draws you to these fragile, mutable mediums?

CBM: One day, Jack, a friend of mine who’s a piano maker, said to me: the piano is a collection of different materials – metal, wood, felt, glue, etc. – which can be dangerous to each other, and which are also subject to phenomenal mechanical tensions capable of destroying them. Fortunately, the ingenious arrangement of these materials results in an almost living object that only awaits the tension of the pianist’s nervous system to become the alter ego of the player.
For my part, it was while playing in my studio with everything needed to produce a catastrophe (inflatable pool, soft plastic, glass, porcelain, water, pump, electricity, heating element, etc.) that this work took shape, almost thirty years ago. In the field of art and installation, any object can be considered according to criteria that no longer have anything to do with its functionality.

as the bowls serendipitously collide they produce unpredictable melodic chimes | photo by Nicolas Brasseur

DB: You’ve described sound as a ‘living material.’ How do you approach sound, not just as music, but as something sculptural, spatial, and physical ?

CBM: Rather, my systems of sound or musical production are modeled or inspired by living, self-regulating forms like organisms. As I relate with the harmonicaos work and the use of tuners immersed in a form of hesitation or doubt that I notice and exploit to thwart forms of off-putting repetition.

DB: There’s a tension in clinamen—between order and chaos, stillness and movement, silence and sound. How do you see these opposites coexisting in your work ?

It’s funny, towards the end of the nineties, I called an installation harmonichaos. It consists of thirteen silent vacuum cleaners, each of which plays a small diatonic harmonica, whose tonality, or tuning of the vacuumed notes, is different from the twelve other harmonicas. The operation and shutdown of each vacuum/harmonica module depends on a frequency analyzer built into the module. This is a chromatic tuner used by musicians to tune their instruments. It accurately identifies the sound frequency of a single note at a time, but its analysis becomes more than uncertain as soon as the device detects several notes or a chord simultaneously. The device reacts to surrounding sounds, hesitates, contradicts itself …
Observing this, I thought that a logic other than the one for which the device had been designed was at work, because the time division seemed “alive” to me. It was only a short step from there to imagining a specific form of life. I used the device because of its unreliability. With harmonichaos, it’s impossible to predict when each of the thirteen vacuum cleaners will work or stop, nor the duration of silences or chords played and held by one vacuum cleaner/harmonica module or another. Each module interacts with the twelve others in the ensemble ad libitum. What’s more, this low-tech system is disrupted by variations in the voltage of the electrical network feeding it, making any attempt at prediction even more highly improbable.

clinamen is encased by Tadao Ando’s concrete ring and capped by the monumental glass dome | photo by Nicolas Brasseur

DB: Your installations often invite the audience into a sensory, open-ended experience. What role does the visitor play in activating or completing the work?

CBM: When you visit an exhibition, aren’t you yourself sensitive to the presence of other visitors? If they give you the impression of not knowing why they’re there? It can be funny, but it can also be pathetic. If they only look at the works through their cameras or smartphones, and step back without paying attention to the other visitors to frame a masterpiece, I think that’s awful. With my installations, I make it clear to everyone who visits that they can find a place within the work and become an integral part of it momentarily by their mere presence. When I succeed in doing this, I find it makes people more beautiful… I’ve also noticed that when I compose the spaces of my installations using circles or curves, it makes visitors’ trajectories more harmonious and their wandering more fluid than in orthogonal spaces. The simple fact of inviting people to sit down and rest induces attitudes conducive to listening and daydreaming.

DB: In an age of speed and distraction, how do you see your work offering space for slowness, attention, and contemplation?

CBM: I don’t believe my art can change anything in the madness of today’s world, I don’t presume to know what anyone needs, but since I’m invited to present my work, I bring the best I have.

the water surface acts as a mirror, reflecting the Parisian sky through the museum’s dome | photo by Nicolas Brasseur

the installation invites visitors to sit down and slow down | image © designboom

project info:

name: clinamen

artist: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot | @celesteboursiermougenot

curator: Emma Lavigne, Chief Curator and General Director of the Pinault Collection

location: Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection, 2 rue de Viarmes, 75001, Paris, France | @boursedecommerce

dates: June 5th – September 21st, 2025

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The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, in collaboration with SHVO, launches its first major public exhibition, Past as Prologue: The Last Decade of Furniture Design by Charles and Ray Eames, at the Transamerica Pyramid Center in San Francisco. Opening during San Francisco Design Week 2025, the exhibition brings rarely seen furniture and archival materials into public view, highlighting a lesser-known but deeply significant chapter in the Eameses’ legacy. Spanning the years 1968 to 1978, Past as Prologue explores how the iconic duo refined and adapted their designs in response to rapid social and technological shifts. Rather than reinventing their work, Charles and Ray Eames focused on thoughtful iteration—embracing new materials like polyurethane and injection-molded plastics, and addressing the rising demand for modularity and workplace ergonomics in a changing office culture.

all images courtesy of the Eames Institute

‘Past as Prologue’ Reconnects Design Legacy with Place

Curated by Llisa Demetrios, Chief Curator of the Eames Institute and granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames, Past as Prologue features original furniture prototypes, design documents, and ephemera from the Eames Archives. ‘This era is often overlooked,’ says Demetrios. ‘It was exciting to bring forward work that was created within my lifetime and give it new visibility.’ Many of the featured pieces reflect the needs of a growing white-collar workforce, as companies like Herman Miller and Vitra transitioned into the contract office market.

The exhibition is staged at the newly renovated Transamerica Pyramid—an architectural icon that, fittingly, debuted in 1972 with original Eames furniture in its interiors. A companion Time Capsule Exhibition runs alongside Past as Prologue, featuring archival footage and original video that connect the Eameses’ work directly to the building’s history. Together, the exhibitions underscore how Bay Area design heritage continues to shape its creative present.

In addition to the gallery, the Institute is opening two retail footprints within the Transamerica Pyramid. One features curated items from William Stout Architectural Books and Eames merchandise in the main lobby, while the other, inside the exhibition, serves as a gift shop for catalogs and design-related products. An online companion exhibition ensures broader access, aligning with the Institute’s mission to share the Eames legacy with a global audience.

Past as Prologue brings rarely seen furniture and archival materials into public view

installation view of Past as Prologue: The Last Decade of Furniture Design

the exhibition is staged at the newly renovated Transamerica Pyramid

spanning the years 1968 to 1978, the show explores how the duo adapted their designs to social and technological shifts

the show highlights a lesser-known chapter in the Eameses’ legacy

the exhibition features original furniture prototypes, design documents, and ephemera

promotional photograph from 1971 shows an Eames Chaise, EC176 Loose Cushion Armchairs, and Walnut Stools in an office composed of freestanding AO2 panels

photograph of EC127 Pull-Up Chairs taken at the Eames Office in June 1970.

the EA219 Tilt-Swivel High Back Desk Armchair on set of the film Soft Pad at the Eames Office, May 1970

early version of the ES108 Eames Sofa featuring soft pads suspended from a Compact Sofa frame, as opposed to the final version which utilizes teak panels

EC178 Loose Cushion Office Seating Prototype

Loose Cushion Armchair cushion prototypes

EC176 Loose Cushion Armchair (Casters)

ES106 Eames Chaise

ES101 Intermediate Chair  

A 1969 view into the Eames Office at 901 Washington shows the many projects in development including the Eames Chaise, Soft Pad group, and Loose Cushion armchairs and settee

the prototyping process of the Family Seating shell involved slicing and bending the shell form and then filling in the gaps

project info: 

name: Past as Prologue: The Last Decade of Furniture Design by Charles and Ray Eames
organized by: The Eames Institute | @eamesinstitute in partnership with SHVO | @shvo
location: Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery, 535 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94111
dates: from June 6th, 2025

The post charles and ray eames’s final works get closer look at major san francisco exhibition appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

At LUMA Arles, a pivotal chapter in the history of postwar art and innovation takes center stage in Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). This landmark exhibition, the first in France to explore the legacy of E.A.T. in depth, is presented in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute and traces the history of a movement that brought together hundreds of key avant-garde artists and the engineers who ushered in the information age. Founded in 1966 by artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman alongside Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories – then the world’s leading center for electronic innovation and telecommunications research – E.A.T. emerged as a radical platform that reimagined the possibilities of creative practice through direct collaboration between artists and technologists.

On view through January 11, 2026, the exhibition surveys a transformative period in which the barriers between disciplines – between art and science, experimentation and activism – were actively dismantled. Through a wealth of archival documents, film footage, case studies, and rarely exhibited works by figures such as John Cage, Fujiko Nakaya, Andy Warhol, and Rauschenberg himself, Sensing the Future traces the movement’s arc from the heady optimism of the late 1960s through its more decentralized but no less ambitious projects of the 1970s.‘The mid-60s to mid-70s period were by all accounts the most fervent years of E.A.T.,’ Simon Castets, Director of Strategic Initiatives at LUMA, tells designboom. ‘The stars were truly aligned, not only in terms of funding, but also of mutual fascination between the then impermeable realms of art and science.’ The 1973 oil crisis signaled a shift: public funding dried up, and technology itself became more accessible, prompting many participants to pursue independent trajectories. Even so, Billy Klüver –together with his partner Julie Martin – remained devoted to stewarding E.A.T.’s legacy, preserving an archive that would later prove indispensable to understanding the entwined histories of art and technology. By revisiting the trajectory of the movement, Sensing the Future offers more than historical reflection. It reveals how the questions posed by E.A.T. – about interdisciplinary exchange, innovation, and the future as a shared project – remain not only relevant, but urgent.

Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), LUMA Arles | artwork: Facsimiles refabricated by The Andy Warhol Museum – mylar filled with helium (front) | Larry Keating, The Artist and the computer, 1976 – video (back) | all images © Victor&Simon – Victor Picon, © ADAGP, Paris, 2025, unless stated otherwise | header image: E.A.T.’s Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70, Osaka, Japan, 1970, March 18 | photograph by Shunk-Kender | Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in Memory of Harry Shunk and Janos Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust

LUMA ARLES UNPACKS THE HISTORY OF E.A.T. IN LANDMARK EXHIBITION

Sensing the Future takes over the Living Archives Gallery of the LUMA Arles Tower, unpacking the landmark moments that defined E.A.T.’s short but influential lifespan. The exhibition begins with a deep dive into the group’s beginnings in the mid-1960s, tracing how a visionary alliance between artists and engineers gave rise to one of the most ambitious interdisciplinary initiatives of the 20th century. Artworks and documentation outline E.A.T.’s establishment in 1966 through the 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering event in New York, where ten artists, among them John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, teamed up with dozens of Bell Labs engineers to stage multimedia performances that employed infrared cameras, wireless sound transmission, and video projection – technologies then still foreign to the art world.

From that unlikely synergy grew an ethos of experimentation, grounded in collaboration, access, and action. Among E.A.T.’s most ambitious undertakings was the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Artists Robert Whitman, Robert Breer, David Tudor, and Forrest (Frosty) Myers made early contributions to the design of the pavilion, while eventually the design team grew to twenty artists and fifty engineers and scientists. Conceived as a gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork, the pavilion featured a geodesic dome clad in a mirror-finished surface, an internal sound-responsive light system, and a water-vapor cloud sculpture by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya. Her contribution, an enveloping cloud of artificial mist that obscured and transformed the pavilion’s form, ushered a new vocabulary of ephemeral, site-specific art that blurred perception and challenged the dominance of the visual in technological environments. More than half a century later, Nakaya’s legacy continues to reverberate across contemporary practice. Alongside Sensing the Future, another of her works, Fog Sculpture #07563, is on view as part of LUMA’s concurrent exhibition, Streaming from Our Eyes (evolving title, formerly Dance with Daemons).

view of the section dedicated to the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka with materials by Harris Shunk, Janós Kender, Fujiko Nakaya

THE RADICAL MOVEMENT’S ENDURING LEGACY

Whether through the immersive fog-drenched environments of the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka or civic initiatives addressing environmental design and urban communication, E.A.T. continually pushed the boundaries of what art could do, and whom it could serve. A pivotal section of the exhibition is dedicated to Projects Outside Art, a bold strand of E.A.T.’s activities that extended the group’s collaborative ethos beyond the traditional confines of the art world. First presented as an exhibition in New York in 1971, Projects Outside Art marked a shift toward socially engaged, systems-oriented experimentation. ‘Projects Outside Art ushered in a series of exploratory initiatives across the world in partnership with governmental agencies and universities, aimed at broadening the scope and impact of E.A.T.’s mission, as well as its international reach,’ notes Simon Castets. ‘With, for example, research into the educational potential of television in India, El Salvador and Guatemala, E.A.T.’s ambition reflected a deep belief in advanced technologies as a means to advance social aims. While more often than not the projects remained unrealized, their methodology and ethos of cross-disciplinary collaboration have had an undeniable impact on our way of thinking today’s infrastructures of innovation.’

In an age increasingly defined by technological acceleration and its discontents, the utopian idealism at the heart of E.A.T. feels at once remote and urgently necessary. As Simon Castets observes, ‘today, innovation is much more frequently framed as a threat, often rightfully so. Yet, the legacy of E.A.T.’s collaborative spirit could help bring out technology’s positive potential across fields.’  Much like the early 20th-century Futurists envisioned the artist as a vital force within industrial society, E.A.T. imagined new roles for artists across domains as varied as education, public policy, and environmental research. Reengaging with that vision today invites us to reconsider the artist’s capacity not only to reflect society, but to reshape it, through dialogue, through experimentation, and through the conviction that creativity and criticality belong at the core of every system we build.

performance inside the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, 1970 | photograph by Shunk-Kender | archival inkjet print from negative, Getty Research Institute, 2014.R.20. | gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Harry Shunk and János Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust

LUMA’S LONG-TERM INTEREST IN artist-led use of technologies

Sensing the Future originated as part of the 2024 edition of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a region-wide initiative presented by the J. Paul Getty Trust across Southern California, comprising over 60 exhibitions and public programs exploring the intersections of artistic and scientific inquiry. Organized by the Getty Research Institute (GRI) – a global leader in visual culture research and home to one of the world’s most extensive art libraries – the exhibition brought renewed scholarly and curatorial focus to E.A.T.’s interdisciplinary legacy. In adapting the show for its European debut at LUMA Arles, the curatorial team embraced both continuity and expansion. ‘E.A.T. is much better known in the U.S. than in France,’ notes Simon Castets. ‘Therefore, in the additional time we had, it behooved us to build upon the extraordinary research done by the Getty Research Institute and include additional works and archival elements. The core structure of the exhibition remains the same, yet, together with Getty, the work continued and we were able to also feature key artworks by other essential figures of that history, including Marta Minujín, Wen-Ying Tsai, Andy Warhol, Lilian Schwartz, and Hans Haacke, alongside dozens of archival documents.’

As the first exhibition in France devoted exclusively to E.A.T., Sensing the Future reflects LUMA Arles’ long-term research interest in the artist-led use of technologies. ‘LUMA’s longstanding commitment to artist-led, innovation-driven initiatives resonates with E.A.T.’s pioneering collaborations between artists and engineers,’ Castets explains. ‘Both share a belief in the generative power of process over product, valuing experimentation as a catalyst for new ways of thinking.’ This alignment lends the exhibition not only historical significance but also a pressing contemporary urgency. At a time when the role of the artist is increasingly intertwined with disciplines ranging from environmental research to artificial intelligence, Sensing the Future underscores how fertile such crossovers can be, particularly when grounded in mutual respect, curiosity, and the open-ended nature of experimentation itself.

interior of the Mirror Dome at the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, 1970, Photograph by Fujiko Nakaya |  Gelatin-silver print Getty Research Institute, 940003 | Art © Fujiko Nakaya, courtesy Experiments in Art and Technology. © J. Paul Getty Trust

Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, 1970, photograph by Shunk-Kender | archival inkjet print from negative, Getty Research Institute, 2014.R.20 | gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Harry Shunk and Janos Kender | Floats © Robert Breer/Kate Flax/gb agency, Paris | Fog © Fujiko Nakaya, courtesy Experiments in Art and Technology | light Towers © Forrest Myers.© J. Paul Getty Trust

Floats, 1970, Robert Breer, photograph by Shunk-Kender | archival inkjet print from negative, Getty Research Institute, 2014.R.20. | gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Harry Shunk and János Kender | Floats © Robert Breer/Kate Flax/gb agency, Paris. © J. Paul Getty Trust

Fog Sculpture, Pepsi Pavillion, Japan World Exposition 1970, Fujiko Nakaya, Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust

performance inside the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, 1970 | photograph by Shunk-Kender | archival inkjet print from negative, Getty Research Institute, 2014.R.20. | gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Harry Shunk and János Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust

Fujiko Nakaya at the construction of the Pepsi-Cola Pavillon, photographed by Billy Klüver, © Julie Martin

Marta Minujín, Minuphone, 1967 | Marta Minujín, Greetings from Marta Minujín, 1967 – Postcard from 1969 with the Minuphone | Marta Minujín, Marta Minujín’s Art Works, 1966-1969 – Video | © Victor&Simon – Grégoire D’Ablon

Greetings from Marta Minujín, Postcard from 1969 with the Minuphone (1967), © Marta Minujín

Marta Minujín, Minuphone, 1967 © Victor&Simon – Grégoire D’Ablon

Variations VII, 1966, John Cage | photograph by Peter Moore |. Gelatin-silver print. Getty Research Institute, 940003 © Northwestern University. © J. Paul Getty Trust

Fakir in 3⁄4 Time, 1968, Lucy Jackson Young and Niels O. Young | photograph by Shunk-Kender | Gelatin-silver print, Getty Research Institute, 2014.R.20. | Gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Harry Shunk and Janos Kender | Art courtesy Thomas Young © J. Paul Getty Trust

section dedicated to the movement’s beginning’s | Harris Shunk, Janós Kender, Tom Gormley,Anders Österlin, Robert Whitman, E.A.T.

Harris Shunk, Janós Kender, E.A.T, Robert Rauschenberg, Harold Hodges

Robert Rauschenberg, Harold Hodges, Dry Cell, 1963 | Silkscreen ink and oil on Plexiglas, metal coat hanger, wire, string, sound transmitter, circuit board, and battery-powered motor on metal folding camp stool

project info:

exhibition name: Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)
participating artists: Robert Breer, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Ivan Dryer, Jean Dupuy, Öyvind Fahlström, Hans Haacke, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Marta Minujín, Peter Moore, Forrest Myers, Fujiko Nakaya, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Lillian Schwartz, Harry Shunk & János Kender, Wen-Ying Tsai, David Tudor, Andy Warhol, Robert Whitman, and others
location: LUMA Arles, France | The Tower, Living Archives Gallery, Level -2 | @luma_arles
dates: May 1st, 2025 to January 11th, 2026

organizer: LUMA Arles in partnership with the Getty Research Institute | @gettymuseum
LUMA Arles team: Simon Castets, Director of Strategic Initiatives; Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Artistic Director; Fabian Gröning, Project Manager for Strategic Initiatives; Martin Guinard, Curator

Getty Research Institute team: Nancy Perloff, Curator, Megan Mastroianni and Andrew Park, Research Assistants, Alex Jones, Curatorial Assistant, Daniela Ruano Orantes, Curatorial Project Assistance

The post LUMA arles revisits E.A.T., the radical 1960s movement that fused art and technology appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Lagos-based architecture practice Oshinowo Studio brings ‘Alternative Urbanism: self-organising markets of Lagos‘ to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, spotlighting three of the city’s most dynamic informal markets—Ladipo, Computer Village, and Katangua. Invited by curator Carlo Ratti to respond to his circular economy manifesto, the studio explores how these systems repurpose waste from the global north into valuable goods, offering a powerful model of embedded circularity. ‘These markets don’t work just as places of commerce and exchange,’ notes founder Tosin Oshinowo in an exclusive interview with designboom. ‘What is fascinating is the factory-like process that occurs when a source material is re-appropriated and adapted through different sectors in these markets,’ she tells us. Through immersive film, photography, data visualisations, and recycled denim maps crafted in Katangua, the exhibition reframes Lagos’s markets as complex infrastructures of ingenuity, shaped by scarcity and sustained by collective intelligence.

Rejecting voyeuristic representations of African spaces, the installation at the Arsenale avoids still images of deprivation and instead offers a technical view into the working mechanics of these markets. ‘It was important that the narrative be optimistic; after all, I live and work in Lagos,’ Oshinowo says. ‘I do not see what happens here as backwards or deprived; I see this as fascinating, innovative, and the other extreme of global capitalism,’ she adds. With her team’s mapping, video documentation, and textile production done within Katangua, the pavilion elevates local material knowledge to an international stage. In doing so, it delivers a clear message to Biennale visitors.‘The biggest lesson and shift in perspective I hope to share and inspire with this global audience is that we all can do more with less,’ Tosin Oshinowo suggests.

Alternative Urbanism: self-organising markets of Lagos at the Arsenale | image by Paul Raftery

Oshinowo Studio offers a blueprint for adaptive urban futures

Ladipo Market deals in second-hand car parts; Computer Village in used electronics; and Katangua in recycled fashion. While their contents differ, their shared value lies in how they extend the life of consumer goods through a communal network of reuse, repair, and resale. ‘These specialist markets emerge across the city in white and brown-fill sites, residential zones, and defunct industrial parks,’ Tosin Oshinowo shares with designboom. ‘Through a collective intelligence, the city operates at a sophisticated level outside of orthodox methodologies and functions at scale without the expected industrialized infrastructure.’ Her exhibition doesn’t romanticize the struggle but rather reframes Lagos’s informal urban systems as prototypes for sustainable cities—systems built from adaptation, making them increasingly relevant in a time of global resource scarcity.

As Oshinowo explains, these spaces represent ‘a glimpse into an urban condition without imperialism, colonialism, and modernism imposed on the continent.’ Far from being symbols of deprivation, the markets are framed as energetic ecosystems shaped by ‘bottom-up structures and soft-power systems.’ Located in areas ranging from residential zones to defunct industrial parks, each market illustrates the kind of grassroots adaptability often excluded from conventional urban planning. With Nigeria’s currency devalued by 700% since 2005 and most of the population living on under $2 a day, these markets respond with a resilience that blends necessity with aspiration. ‘The majority of Africa is urbanized but not industrialized,’ the Lagos-based architect explains. ‘This situation creates an urban condition that is alternative to conventional expectations of progress and development.’ Read on for our full interview with Tosin Oshinowo.

the studio explores how these systems repurpose waste | image by Paul Raftery

interview with Tosin Oshinowo

designboom (DB): Alternative Urbanism is a powerful title—how does it reflect your view of Lagos’s informal markets, and in what ways do they challenge conventional models of urban planning and sustainability?

Tosin Oshinowo (TO): The title is impactful; however, it simply states a reality that occurs as parallel development with the rest of the world. The majority of Africa is urbanized but not industrialized, and this situation creates an urban condition that is alternative to conventional expectations of progress and development. This research project uses the informal market as an entry point to understand this condition. Lagos is a heightened example of this condition because of its critical mass—the city has 0.3% of Nigeria’s surface area and 10% of its population, 26.4 million. With insufficient industrialized infrastructure, it is challenging to manage the city structurally. This density allows us to observe this condition in concentration. These markets happen when bottom-up structures and soft-power systems come to the foreground.

Rem Koolhaas’ research in the late 1990s and early 2000s observed that the urban condition in Lagos defied orthodox planning methodologies. Here, I suggest that instead of defying these methodologies, what we observe in the city condition reverts to an evolution from tradition. It could be considered a glimpse into an urban condition without imperialism, colonialism, and modernism imposed on the continent. The informal African market is the most unadulterated urban artifact of our city’s developmental framework. It is the fabric of the commons, a shared space everyone contributes to and shares in its benefits. The markets operate in a capitalist model and outside of it. The markets have evolved from pre-colonial times to their present state in the post-colonial African city. Holding more than just places of commerce and exchange, but also of divine importance. In Yorùbá culture from southwest Nigeria, the market holds divine significance in mythology as it is seen as the point of final departure for the soul from the earth (ilé) as it rightfully returns to the heavens (òrun).

recycled denim maps crafted in Katangua | image by Paul Raftery

DB: Carlo Ratti’s circular economy manifesto set the tone for this year’s Biennale. How did it resonate with your existing observations of Lagos, and what discoveries emerged from your research into these self-organizing markets?

TO: When I first read Carlo Ratti’s manifesto, I was excited that this research resonated with the theme and perfect timing. There is nothing more euphoric than realizing that you are part of a change movement. Circularity has been a long-standing practice in regions that deal with austerity. It is encouraging that there is a growing understanding globally that we all need to embody this methodology. When I started the research on the markets, it was initially out of an interest to understand how global south cities function at scale with inadequate infrastructure.

As I developed this narrative, I observed how sophisticated the system of markets and circularity is embedded into commerce and city life. I observed that due to Nigeria’s challenged economic condition and the reality of desires to live in modernity, capital-intensive consumer products are outside of the immediate reach of the average Nigerian consumer, with the Nigerian Naira devalued by 700% since 2005. These markets don’t work just as places of commerce and exchange. Several specialist markets sell second-hand products considered redundant from the global north. What is fascinating is the factory-like process that occurs when a source material is re-appropriated and adapted through different sectors in these markets. These markets effectively take waste from the global north and extend product life while producing less carbon.

the exhibition reframes Lagos’s markets as complex infrastructures of ingenuity | image by Andrea Avezzù

DB: Ladipo, Computer Village, and Katangua each represent a different kind of circular ingenuity. Why these three, and what do they collectively reveal about resilience and resourcefulness in urban Nigeria?

TO: So far, the research has documented 80+ specialist markets, as the convergence of like-for-like across the city’s urban fabric has been fascinating. I selected these three markets for the exhibition because their content deals with circularity. Like all markets, they deal with consumer goods, but these three represent staples of modernity. And the opportunity for people in these regions to afford capital-intensive consumer goods like cars, electronics, and clothes. Where does the hyperconsumerist global north dispose of its waste? Today, two-thirds of Nigerians live on less than $2 a day. These conditions create the fertile ground to harbor this kind of circularity not seen before structural adjustment programs imposed on the global south from the mid-1980s and early 1990s.

the installation offers a technical view into the working mechanics of these markets | image by Andrea Avezzù

DB: Your pavilion merges data, video, and recycled textiles to evoke the atmosphere of the markets. How did you navigate the challenge of capturing their energy and complexity within the formal setting of the Arsenale?

TO: It was challenging, particularly because I was mindful not to share this as a narrative of deprivation, which can easily come across by using still images from Africa. It was important that the narrative be optimistic; after all, I live and work in Lagos. I do not see what happens here as backwards or deprived; I see this as fascinating, innovative, and the other extreme of global capitalism.

The essence of the immersive film of the market captured a narrative of intense activity and optimism. It was a great privilege for the team to have access to film and photograph these spaces, and we do not take for granted the immense trust we have been given. It was also important that this did not become just an immersive film; we wanted to ensure that we showed a technical prowess to document the urban condition of these markets, which we showed through a series of mappings taken of each market and its surrounding urban fabric. The medium we used to show these was heat-transfer graphics placed in recycled denim patchwork, all produced in the Katangua market. Coupled with pause moments captured through photography, it created a visual language that was intriguing and enigmatic in its context.

immersive film, photography and data visualisations shape the exhibition | image by Paul Raftery

DB: The notion of ‘communal intelligence’ underpins your curatorial narrative. How do these markets embody that idea, and what lessons might formal design systems draw from it?

TO: The specialist markets in Lagos are informal; the state does not plan them, and they have emerged due to specific conducive political, social, and economic conditions. These markets as individual nodes have clear governing and management structures. Still, observing from the macro level, it’s fascinating to see that through a collective intelligence, the city operates at a sophisticated level outside of orthodox methodologies and functions at scale without the expected industrialized infrastructure. It is outside of conventional ways of thinking about the modern city, which tends to be the top-down result of the collective few. These specialist markets emerge across the city in white and brown-fill sites, residential zones, and defunct industrial parks. These markets resonate with the theme of communal intelligence, highlighting the system that speaks to an alternative urbanism, which contributes sparingly to our global carbon challenge in their operation and an optimistic conversation on circularity.

Katangua Market overview | image by Andrew Esiebo

DB: With a global audience in Venice, what shifts in perception about African cities—especially Lagos—do you hope this exhibition might provoke or inspire?

TO: The world can learn a lot from African cities. This region, which is the least industrialized yet urbanized, contributes the least to global carbon emissions while suffering some of the most severe damage. The biggest lesson and shift in perspective I hope to share and inspire with this global audience is that we all can do more with less.

market stall at Computer Village | image by Nengi Nelson

project info:

name: Alternative Urbanism: self-organising markets of Lagos

architect – curator: Lagos-based | @oshinowo.studio

founder & lead curator: Tosin Oshinowo | @tosin.oshinowo

location: Arsenale, Venice, Italy

program: Venice Architecture Biennale | @labiennale

dates: May 10th — November 23rd, 2025

photographers: Paul Raftery | @paulrafterystudio, Andrea Avezzù | @ave_zz, Andrew Esiebo | @andrewesiebo, Nengi Nelson | @nenginelson1, Taran Wilkhu | @taranwilkhu, Amanda Iheme | @amandaiheme, Olarenwaju Ali | @olanrewaju_v

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Qatar’s national participation at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale maps a cultural and architectural history of traditions of welcome, gathering, and collective care across the MENASA region, split across two sites across the city. Titled Beyti Beytak. My Home is Your Home. La mia casa è la tua casa, its first expression is a temporary pavilion in the Giardini by Yasmeen Lari (read our interview with the Pakistani architect here), while the other is a major archival exhibition inside the Palazzo Franchetti. In the latter, curators Aurélien Lemonier and Sean Anderson treat the metaphor of hospitality as a design principle that has shaped the built environment across geographies and generations — from homes, mosques, and schools to museums, gardens, and even entire cities. Doing so, they delve into some of the greatest, and emerging, profiles that have illustrated this across countries such as Palestine, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, and beyond. The show presents drawings, models, photos, and more from more than 30 architects and collectives, spanning from Hassan Fathy and Balkrishna Doshi to younger voices like Sumaya Dabbagh, Abeer Seikaly, and Rizvi Hassan.

Throughout the rooms of the historic Palazzo, the show is loosely organized into seven sections — each one pointing to a different typology of collective life, sketching a constellation of projects shaped by climate, community, and care. Here, the oasis is imagined as a generative metaphor for exchange and encounter, while social housing projects from Lahore, Mumbai, and New Gourna offer intimate insights into how the home can be shared, extended, and adapted in various socio-political climates. Mosques and museums, too, are included as civic anchors that embed public life with rituals of togetherness and reflection. The exhibition is produced by Qatar Museums and organized by the forthcoming Art Mill Museum.

on view at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale | image by by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

qatar museums at venice architecture biennale

The exhibition opens with Reimagining the Oasis, illustrating it as a simple water source in a landscape, a large farm, or even a city, and looking at projects from Iran, Iraq, and North Africa, and more. The space explores the role of the oasis in transmitting cultures over time, examining how water and vegetation have historically generated life, and as an extension, public space.

Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, for instance, in the 1900s continued to examine rural typologies along the waters, and how they could be alleviated for sustainable, collective living. More recently, Jordanian architect Abeer Sekaily has taken inspiration from the craftsmanship behind the tents of nomadic Bedouin communities to create her domed Weaving a Home tent which further questions the social implications of creating shelters for displaced communities.

Beyti Beytak. My Home is Your Home. La mia casa è la tua casa | image by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

CIVIC LIFE AS A CONTINUUM across community centers and mosques

Community centers are positioned in the exhibition as sites where architecture directly responds to the needs and practices of the people who use it. Whether improvised on woven mats or embedded in the civic fabric of informal settlements, these projects position design as an extension of shared life rather than a formal imposition. In Iran, DAAZ Office’s Jadgal Elementary School was developed through participatory processes to reflect indigenous spatial customs while supporting education as a tool for economic and cultural resilience. In Cairo, Ahmed Hossam Saafan’s Dawar El Ezba Cultural Center provides a kitchen, workshop, and gathering space within one of the city’s largest informal neighborhoods, designed with and for a marginalized community.

Ahead, the exhibition looks closer into the role of the mosque in particular as both a sacred space and an architectural form crucial to welcoming a wide spectrum of human activity. From Marina Tabassum’s contemporary Bait ur Rouf Mosque in Bangladesh to Sumaya Dabbagh’s Mosque of Mohamed Abdulkhaliq Gargash in the UAE, this part of Beyti Beytak looks at the work of three leading women architects and explores how mosques often act as cooling centres, learning hubs, and places of shelter. Their openness, in plan and in social role, is central to the exhibition’s reading of architecture as hospitable infrastructure.

Hassan Fathy, in the 1900s, continued to examine rural typologies along oases | image by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

the making of domestic architecture

In City Houses and Social Housing, we encounter a shifting idea of domestic space, turning toward a more porous environment shaped by rituals and collective gathering. For communities in the MENASA region, the architecture of the home has been organized around cultural and spatial features such as courtyards and terraces that have allowed a degree of both connectivity and privacy. Works on view also consider how domestic spaces might have seeped into the street in the context of the bustling contemporary metropolis, becoming a part of the fabric of the city itself. In this section, drawings of plans outline Hassan Fathy’s New Gourna Village in Egypt, while contemporary examples from Iraq and India show how homes are often co-produced and adapted over time.

celebrating mosque architecture by three women architects | image by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

the art of gardens in islamic and secular traditions

Building on this, the Art of Gardens section moves inward to explore verdant landscapes as crucial sites of memory and care in today’s cultural spaces, while celebrating their role in visual practices. Projects from India to Qatar trace how gardens operate as sensory and spatial interfaces between built form and natural systems, in both religious and secular contexts. In Islamic traditions, the garden is a metaphor for paradise, symbolically tied to the water resources they hold. But they also work as a cooling device, a place of retreat, and a tool for ecological thinking.

Through carefully selected drawings and fieldwork, the section shows how landscape design carries emotional, spiritual, and architectural weight across institutions in public spaces across the world. One such example is the Chihilsitoon Garden, Kabul’s largest historic public garden which was revitalized after destruction in the war of 1979-80, becoming a crucial shared space for the public and a sustainer of life and livelihoods.

the exhibition is produced by Qatar Museums | image by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

image by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

Sameep Padora, ‘Memories of Landscape’, Hampi Art Lab | image by Giuseppe Miotto — Marco Cappelletti Studio

Ajmal Maiwandi, Chihilston Garden and Palace Rehabilitation, Kabul, 2015–2018 | image by Simon Norfolk

Ahmed Hossam Saafan, Dawar El Ezba Cultural Center, Cairo, 2019 | image © Ahmed Hossam Saafan

DAAZ Office, Jadgal Elementary School, 2017–2020 | image courtesy DAAZ, by Deed Studio

Sumaya Dabbagh, Mleiha Archaeological Center, 2016 | image courtesy Dabbagh Architects, by Gerry O’Leary, Rami Mansour

project info:

name: Beyti Beytak. My Home is Your Home. La mia casa è la tua casa

curator: Aurélien Lemonier, Sean Anderson

organizer: Qatar Museums | @qatar_museums, Art Mill Museum

location: Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, Italy

program: Venice Architecture Biennale | @labiennale

dates: May 10th — November 23rd, 2025

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At Berlin’s Aedes Architecture Forum, the exhibition ‘Five Working Spaces’ invites visitors to glimpse into Ai Weiwei’s studios across continents. On the occasion of the opening on May 23, 2025, designboom spoke exclusively with the artist, uncovering how each workspace embodies his political convictions, personal history, and creative vision. A central focus of the exhibition is Ai Weiwei’s most recent studio in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, built using traditional Chinese woodworking methods. 

‘My studio is an extension of my body and mental state,’ Ai Weiwei tells designboom. ‘Of course it’s political. Anyone who sees the exhibition can understand — it’s not that I want it to be political. It just is political.’

all images courtesy of Aedes Architecture Forum and Ai Weiwei Studio, unless stated otherwise

ARTIST, ARCHITECT AND ADVOCAT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Rather than illustrating architectural typologies or design processes, ‘Five Working Spaces’ explores Ai Weiwei’s studios as existential conditions, rooted in the artist’s early experiences of political exile. Born in Beijing, Ai Weiwei spent his formative years in remote regions of China, where his father, the poet Ai Qing, had been banished during the Anti-Rightist Movement. Known for his outspoken critique of authoritarian systems and his advocacy for human rights, Ai Weiwei ranks among the most influential figures in contemporary art and activism. His wide-ranging practice — spanning art, architecture, film, and social engagement — merges traditional Chinese craftsmanship with global aesthetics and personal narrative.

Five Working Spaces on view at Aedes Architecture Forum until July 02, 2025 | image © Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk

FIVE WORKING SPACES AT AEDES ARCHITECTURE FORUM IN BERLIN

The exhibition ‘Five Working Spaces’ at Aedes Architecture Forum traces key chapters of the artist’s life through the lens of architecture, presenting five studios located in Beijing, Shanghai, Berlin, and Montemor-o-Novo. Designed, commissioned, and inhabited by Ai Weiwei himself, each workspace mirrors shifting personal and political realities, documented through architectural models, photographs, drawings, and personal texts.

‘What’s similar is that all of them are tied to one individual – me – trying to fit myself into a working condition. But that condition is always changing. It’s more about connecting to my life, to the conditions I was given, the environments I lived in, how I grew up, how I became an architect, how I acted during moments of social and political change,’ he reflects in our conversation.

Ai Weiwei working on still life in his studio, Caochangdi, Beijing, 2000

His first studio in Longzhuashu, Beijing, redefined an austere concrete courtyard with a quiet gesture: planting Danish grass. The transformation was subtle, yet symbolically powerful — an act of reclaiming space through care. In the early 2000s, he designed his compound in the Caochangdi district, also in Beijing, which soon became a hub for artistic collaboration and large-scale installations. Both spaces would later be demolished by authorities, along with others: the Malu Studio near Shanghai in 2011, dismantled shortly after completion, and the Zuoyou Studio in 2018, destroying works still stored inside.

‘I’m used to irrational violence and no explanation. You cannot figure out the logic. You just take it and survive in it,’ the artist recounts, reflecting on these losses. ‘I grew up in that kind of environment. I was born into it. My father was exiled the year I was born. As demonstrated in the exhibition, I lived underground with my father — in a black hole.’

demolition of the Shanghai studio in Malu

In Berlin, Ai Weiwei established a studio in the cellar of a former brewery — an underground, introspective space that resonates with the years he spent in forced exile alongside his father in remote Xinjiang. Tucked away beneath the surface, for the artist, working underground is not only a physical experience, but also an emotional excavation, shaped by reflection and a return to memory.

Speaking to designboom, Ai Weiwei elaborates on this temporal shift: ‘I’m considered a contemporary artist, but my deepest emotions are connected to the past. I’m not familiar with German culture, because I don’t speak the language. I always relate my practice to the past. I appreciate human memory. Without memory, we don’t know who we are or where we come from. Then we can’t appreciate our current condition.’

inside Ai Weiwei’s studio in Berlin, 2018

The most recent of Ai Weiwei’s five working spaces lies in Montemor-o-Novo, a rural town in southern Portugal. The expansive wooden structure draws on traditional Chinese joinery, assembled without nails or screws. Designed with 100 regular columns and a rotated roof that echoes his demolished Malu Studio near Shanghai, the building stands as a monument to craftsmanship and cultural memory. This fifth studio, completed in 2023, resists categorization. Officially registered as a warehouse, it contains no defined program. 

‘Architecture is part of our body — our state of mind and physical condition,’ reviewing the decision to settle in Portugal, Ai Weiwei notes a change in pace and outlook. ‘I want a location that’s peaceful and quiet. A place where you can look at the sky and realize there are stars. In the morning, you can see the sun rays. In the evening, the moon comes up. That fits my psychological condition today.’

timberwork of the Portugal studio in Montemor-o-Novo | image © Yanan Li

Ai Weiwei’s Portugal studio in bird perspective

his fifth studio, completed in 2023

Montemor-o-Novo Studio, nine-part representation model | image © Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk

exhibition view | image © Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk

project info: 

name: Five Working Spaces

artist: Ai Weiwei | @aiww
location: Aedes Architecture Forum, Berlin, Germany | @aedesberlin

dates: May 24 – July 02, 2025

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