A ZERO-WASTE, EPHEMEROUS PAVILION

The French Pavilion, which usually hosts French exhibitions at the Venice Biennials of Architecture and Art, was closed throughout 2025 for major renovation work, including energy upgrades, piloted by the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs in coordination with the French Embassy in Italy. Rather than moving away from the site, the curatorial team chose to invest the adjacent space by setting up an ephemeral pavilion in the immediate vicinity of the building site.
The ephemeral pavilion was set up temporarily in the wooded area adjacent to the pavilion and extending down to the canal. Its structure and scenography were designed to be dismantled with zero waste. The scaffolding and its components, rented for the duration of the exhibition, were recovered by the manufacturer, as was the duckboard floor loaned by supplier Caillebottis Diamond. Finally, the panels printed on recyclable wood are being transported to the next resonances to be exhibited again.

About THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition route was structured around six themes to explore the topic of climate adaptation, with projects proposing inventive responses to the environmental, social and political challenges of our time. These themes brought together 50 French and international projects, selected by a committee following a call for projects.
- living with the existing ;
- living with proximities ;
- living with the damaged ;
- living with vulnerabilities ;
- living with nature and the living ;
- living with combined intelligences ;
To further these reflections, a cycle of six conferences accompanied the exhibition throughout its duration. Initiated by each of the curators and moderated by Madeleine Houbart, General Secretary of AFEX, this program took place in partnership with the Palazzo
Zorzi (UNESCO), as well as with the Qatar Pavilion and the Art Mill Museum on the occasion of the October 9 conference entitled "Architecture in proximities". These meetings in Venice brought together architects, urban planners, researchers, philosophers, public players and sponsors to discuss the six themes of the exhibition.
The exhibition also included an atlas of hazards, developed with students from eight French and international architecture schools (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, USA, Ukraine, Togo). This device explored the issues specific to each of their territories: floods, fires, conflicts, submersion, extreme heat, salinization by means of a series of screens showing films made by the students.
→To find out more about the exhibition, the bilingual catalog "Living With / Vivre Avec", published by Flammarion and on sale in bookshops, includes texts by the curators, Gregory Quenet, Chris Younes, Isabelle Thomas, Michel Lussault, Marie-Ange Brayer, Matthieu Duperrex, Magali Reghezza-Zitt.

AU-DELÀ DE VENISE

The Institut français is rolling out a wide-ranging resonance program to extend and amplify the reach of the Vivre avec / Living with project, upstream, during and after the Biennale:

• In Brazil, as part of the Saison France-Brésil 2025, the project first traveled to São Paulo as part of the 14ᵉ International Architecture Biennial, from September 18 to October 19, 2025. It then continued its journey to Recife, from October 15 to 18, 2025, where the pavilion was installed in the heart of the historic city during the REC'N'PLAY festival.
• In the United States, the exhibition is presented from November 8, 2025 to January 31, 2026 at the Chicago Biennial of Architecture "Shift: ecologies", in partnership with the Villa Albertine and with the support of Saint-Gobain. A conference inviting architects and researchers participating in the exhibition was organized on November 9.
• In France, the project will continue its itinerancy with a presentation at the Frac Centre-Val de Loire in Orléans from April 2026, accompanied by a program of conferences and workshops. A conference to mark the end of the Biennial will also be held at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in April 2026, marking a time of transmission and review of this collective adventure.