Bahrain wins top prize at Venice Architecture Biennale with a pavilion tackling extreme heat
Taking place every two years, countries from around the globe are invited to showcase their most innovative and thought-provoking ideas about architecture in national pavilions - this time around the theme of 'Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective.'
This year, the Bahrain Pavilion, located in the historic Artiglierie of the Arsenale, has won the coveted Golden Lion award for Best National Participation with its installation titled "Heatwave".
Suspended above a relaxed public seating area, Heatwave features a hovering square-shaped ceiling supported by chains from a central column. More than just a visual spectacle, the structure offers climate-responsive cooling, designed to make public space more habitable in a period of intensifying heatwaves.
Engineered by Mario Monotti with thermomechanical input from Alexander Puzrin, the installation explores modular climate infrastructure. While a geothermal well and solar chimney were originally proposed to create a self-sustaining microclimate, excavation wasn't feasible at the Biennale site - so mechanical ventilation was used instead to simulate the architect's intended cooling effect.
Accepting the award, pavilion commissioner Shaikh Khalifa Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa noted, "The term heatwave is a very common term we hear in the media, in news and even amongst our conversations at home. It is a stress to our urban centres and local communities, and the pavilion aimed to address those issues through an innovative technique."
Two other standout pavilions were also acknowledged by the jury.
The Holy See's 'Opera aperta' showcase, housed in a deconsecrated Venetian church in the Castello district, received a special mention for transforming the space into an evolving site of collective care, restoration, and dialogue, inspired by Italian philospher Umberto Eco's 1962 book "Open Work (Opera aperta)".
Part construction site, part community centre - over seven months, it will host restoration workshops, shared meals, and music rehearsals, bringing together international architects, local artisans, students, and social collectives.
And rather than concealing damage, the team will carefully trace the building's cracks, mold, and weathering - viewing them not as flaws, but as evidence of life, history, and possibility.
The British Pavilion also earned a special mention for its powerful examination of architecture and its links to colonisation.
Titled 'GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair', the exhibition is a UK-Kenya collaboration led by curators Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi (Cave_bureau, Nairobi), Owen Hopkins, and Professor Kathryn Yusoff, and seeks to explore whether architecture can shift from being an extractive force to one of repair and restitution.
"With the Great Rift Valley as the exhibition's geological and conceptual focus, we have brought together a series of installations that propose 'other architectures' defined by their relationship to the ground, their resistance to conventional, extractive ways of working, and that are resilient in the face of climate breakdown and social and political upheaval" says the curatorial team.
The Venice Architecture Biennale runs until 23 November 2025.
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