Qatar will build a permanent pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Qatar Museums have announced. The new site will be constructed in the Giardini, next to the Bookshop Pavilion.
The Gulf state will join the 30 other nations with permanent pavilions in the Giardini. Only two new pavilions have opened in the last 50 years: Australia in 1988; and South Korea in 1995.
The announcement follows a series of closening ties between the Gulf state and the city municipality. In June 2024, Venice’s governance signed a Protocol of Cooperation between Qatar Museums and the Municipality of Venice, agreeing to ‘strengthen their existing relationships and enhance collaboration in the cultural and socio-economic fields among Qatar, Venice, and the Italian Republic’, a press release stated. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that commitments include the ‘implementation of structural interventions aimed at restoring some symbolic parts of the City of Venice’.
‘In the spirit of curiosity, exploration and sincere human exchange that characterises Venice and its Biennale, I welcome Qatar to the Giardini, as a powerful global source of creativity and cross-cultural understanding,’ La Biennale di Venezia president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said in a statement.
The pavilion will first go on display in May 2025 during the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, presenting ‘Community Centre’, an installation by the Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari.
8 April: Lina Ghotmeh will design the Qatar Pavilion, Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, has announced.
Following an invited call for submissions, Ghotmeh was chosen from a shortlist of nine competitors that presented initial design concepts developed over a twenty-week period.
Born in Lebanon, Lina Ghotmeh studied architecture at the American University of Beirut and the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris before founding her own studio in Paris in 2016. Some of her notable projects include the 22nd Serpentine Pavilion, London (2023); Ateliers Hermès, Normandy (2023); Stone Garden Housing tower, Beirut (2020) and the Estonian National Museum in Tartu (2016).
