American design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the Kingdom of Bahrain were awarded the Golden Lion for best participation in the International Architecture Exhibition and best national pavilion, respectively, at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with Natural Systems Utilities, Sodai, Aaron Betsky and Davide Oldani, won the award for their project Canal Café, which purifies water from the Venice canals to make coffee for visitors. The biennale’s jury recognised that the project ‘is a demonstration of how the city of Venice can be a laboratory to speculate how to live on the water, while offering a contribution to the public space of Venice.’
A Silver Lion for promising participation in the exhibition was awarded to Kate Craword and Vladan Joler for Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500; and special mentions were awarded to Tosin Oshinowo for Alternative Urbanism: The Self-Organized Markets of Lagos and to Elephant Chapel for their use of biomaterial to create durable brick structures.
Meanwhile, Bahrain won the award for best national participation for Heatwave. Curated by architect Andrea Faraguna, the pavilion was structurally designed by engineers Mario Monotti and Alexander Puzrin. It uses traditional methods of passive cooling to offer a viable proposal to resist extreme heat conditions. Its modular structure was conceived to adapt to diverse urban settings.
Special mentions were awarded to the Holy See for Opera aperta, an experimental space that promotes restoration and cultural exchange; and to Great Britain for GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair, a dialogue between the UK and Kenya about reparation and renewal that seeks to rebuild the concept of architecture as a non-extractive practice.
The jury of the 2025 Architecture Biennale was composed of Hans Ulrich Obrist (president), artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London; Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA, New York; and Mpho Matsipa, architect, lecturer and curator.
The prizes were awarded at a ceremony at the biennale’s headquarters Ca’Giustinian on Saturday, where Donna Haraway and the late Italo Rota were also awarded Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement.
