Fundação Bienal de São Paulo announces Brazil’s participation in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, opening on May 10, 2025. The curatorial and exhibition design project for the Brazilian Pavilion will be led by architect Luciana Saboia and architects Eder Alencar and Matheus Seco from the Plano Coletivo group. The project for the Venice Architecture Biennale is a curation of ongoing practices and research that will involve collaboration with researchers, professors, architects, and artists from various regions of the country.
Coming from different backgrounds, the curators and collaborators share a path marked by their commitment to reflecting on urban space, infrastructure, and the relationship between architecture and society.
“We want to discuss architecture from an understanding and appreciation of natural phenomena and social appropriations. It’s about mapping actions that build our cultural legacy and create forms of recycling and reuse. To narrate possible ingenious relationships between human and non-human infrastructures,” affirms Luciana Saboia.
The project seeks to reflect on the complex interactions between nature, infrastructure, and architectural practices in the context of Brazil, in direct dialog with the general theme of this edition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., proposed by general curator Carlo Ratti.
“In looking at the ancestral occupation of the Central Amazon and the application of certain contemporary strategies that reconcile society, the city, and nature, we are trying to reflect on a more comprehensive conception of the project, which involves rethinking the way we inhabit the planet collectively in the face of socio-environmental crises. In this context, the project seeks to mediate between culture and nature, reflecting on the physical and intersubjective conditions for harmonious existence,” analyzes Eder Alencar.
For the selection of the winning project, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo set up a committee formed of representatives from the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil (IAB), and the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, who selected prominent names in the field to present exhibition proposals and then chose the winner. Andrea Pinheiro, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, explains that “the choice of Plano Coletivo, made in a collegiate manner with our partners and specialists, reinforces the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo’s commitment to dialoguing with issues that respond to our time, in this case from an architectural perspective that dialogues deeply with social and environmental issues. This team brings a committed perspective that is capable of representing Brazil’s diversity and complexity on the global stage.”
Brazil’s participation aims to encourage a new approach to urban infrastructure, seen not only as a set of elements that shape physical space, but which can also promote significant social and environmental change. For Matheus Seco: “The recent socio-environmental disasters and their impacts on the country prompt reflection on the role of our collective intelligence – both contemporary and ancestral – in the learning of strategies capable of balancing the often unequal relationship between natural and built heritage.”
Building on the complex nature of the problems, the Brazilian proposal thus presents a vision of the future in which contemporary architectural practices become vehicles for collective transformation and a means of tackling global climatic and urban challenges.
Meet the Plano Coletivo curators
Luciana Saboia
A graduate in architecture from the University of Brasilia, Unb (1997), she holds a PhD in the theory and history of architecture and the city from the Université Catholique de Louvain, UC Louvain (2009), and did a post-doctoral internship at the Landscape Architecture Department of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, GSD (2017). She is a professor at Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, FAU Unb, and a researcher with extensive experience in landscape and social appropriation. Saboia’s research focuses on the environmental and social transformations of metropolitan peripheries. With international experience, she proposes new strategies for landscape design, which reflect her critical and engaged vision of architecture and urban planning.
Eder Alencar
An architecture graduate from the University of Brasilia, UnB (2010), he is a founding partner of ARQBR Arquitetos, where he develops work that combines the relationship between architecture and local context with a deep commitment to architectural criticism, always seeking to respond to the scale of the human and the landscape of each project. Together with ARQBR, he has a history of prizes from major public competitions.
Matheus Seco
Graduated in architecture from the University of Brasilia, UnB (1999), and completed a master’s degree in architectural design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (2004). Matheus is a founding partner of BLOCO Arquitetos, where he develops work that reflects his interest in the direct relationship of the project with specific constraints and respect for local context. Together with BLOCO, he has won awards in national and international competitions for built works.
About Plano Coletivo
Plano Coletivo is a group of architects, teachers, and researchers with diverse interests and backgrounds who collaborate freely around two common goals: to discuss urban territory as a critical narrative and to reflect on architecture as socio-environmental action.
About Brazil’s participation in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo’s prerogative to officially represent Brazil at the Venice Biennale of Art and Architecture is the result of a decades-long partnership with the Federal Government, which grants the Fundação Bienal the responsibility for appointing the curators and designing and producing the exhibitions in recognition of the excellence of its work in the artistic-cultural field. With the aim of promoting Brazil’s artistic production at the world’s most traditional art event, the exhibitions are staged at the Brazil Pavilion, designed by Henrique Mindlin and built in 1964.
About the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Founded in 1962, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo is a private, nonprofit institution with no party political or religious ties, whose actions aim to democratize access to culture and foster interest in artistic creation. Every two years, the Foundation holds the Bienal de São Paulo, the largest exhibition of the Southern Hemisphere, and its itinerant exhibitions in several cities in Brazil and abroad. The institution is also the custodian of two items of Latin American artistic and cultural heritage: a historical archive of modern and contemporary art that is a standard reference in Latin America (the Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo), and the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, the head office of the Foundation, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and listed as historical heritage. The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo is also responsible for conceiving and producing Brazil’s representations at the Venice Biennales of art and architecture, a prerogative bestowed upon it decades ago by the Federal Government in recognition of the excellence of its contributions to Brazilian culture.
Service
Brazilian Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Commissioner: Andrea Pinheiro, President of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Curators: Plano Coletivo [Eder Alencar, Luciana Saboia and Matheus Seco]
Venue: Brazilian Pavilion
Address: Giardini Napoleonici di Castello, Padiglione Brasile, 30122, Venice, Italy
Date: May 10 – November 23, 2025
Pre-opening: May 8 and 9