What interests us is to offer a space free from prejudices, where ideas can circulate freely, engaging in fruitful exchanges and contaminations.

For over a decade, the European Cultural Centre has been one of the most dynamic players in contemporary art and architecture in Venice. This year, it furthers its commitment to architecture during the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale by offering expanded visions of our present and the possible futures that we look forward to. ECC’s exhibition Time Space Existence brings together an international group of over two hundred participants from fifty-two different countries. This edition focuses on highly relevant themes such as Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse. The exhibition path spreads across three venues – Palazzo Mora, Palazzo Bembo, and Giardini della Marinaressa – and showcases a selection of innovative and stimulating projects that shape new ways of living and renew our approach to architecture, attempting to outline new perspectives for intervention. Architects, designers, academics, and researchers are invited to unleash their creativity and sensitivity with the goal of promoting significant change to foster the development of a sustainable and regenerative built environment. Each edition presents the enormous challenge of constructing an exhibition that features such broad participation and offerings, reflecting how a well-established, predominantly female international team expresses its professionalism to achieve increasingly convincing results, establishing itself as a significant off-Biennale event. We had the opportunity to meet Rachele De Stefano, the project leader in the field of architecture, to discuss the new edition of Time Space Existence and the new challenges facing the world of architecture.

The cornerstones of Time Space Existence.
The concepts of time, space, and existence are universal principles that underpin every artistic and architectural project. Our project’s goal is to stimulate careful, deep reflection on these themes to bring to light crucial issues that we all face daily – not just architects, designers, and researchers, but also ordinary citizens – ranging from the climate crisis to the complex social and cultural challenges of our time. Each edition thus becomes a small window onto the world, a collection of visions and projects selected by ECC after extensive research, dialogue, and direct engagement with participants, often developed over years. The previous edition focused on sustainability, but through discussions with participants, it became clear that focusing solely on this theme is no longer sufficient to understand and address the complexities of our existence on this planet. It is necessary to repair, regenerate, and rediscover a local dimension as a sustainable alternative to a hyper-standardized global model. In this context, the themes of repair, regenerate, and reuse emerged naturally and collectively, giving rise to a set of projects that propose potential solutions and concrete applications through their respective research, offering intriguing visions of what tomorrow’s world could be.

Evolution and experimentation in architecture.
Artificial intelligence is radically transforming not only architectural practice but also our daily lives. It is a powerful tool that can process vast amounts of data and rapidly imagining future scenarios, offering new design and analytical possibilities. Also, the connection between architecture and science is more essential than ever. In a constantly and rapidly changing world, it is crucial for designers and decision-makers to maintain a rigorous approach based on reliable and verified data. We need to ask ourselves why things are the way they are, to go beyond opinions, and to base our work on truths, evidence, and concrete analysis. Artificial intelligence can certainly support this process, but science and architecture must remain steadfast tools of knowledge, responsibility, and proposal. With Time Space Existence, we foster this dialogue between disciplines, cultures, and approaches, giving voice to a plurality of perspectives and languages. The exhibition is configured as an open, inclusive, and multidisciplinary platform, where established studies, university research teams, and young architects from around the world coexist, collectively presenting a vision of architecture as a collective, experimental practice deeply connected to contemporary reality.

Other disciplines, further perspectives, new routes.
Our working group at ECC comprises individuals with diverse educational backgrounds and professional experiences. I believe this plurality represents the true strength of our team, an expressive variety that inevitably flows into the exhibition we are building. What interests us is to offer a space free from prejudices, where ideas can circulate freely, engaging in fruitful exchanges and contaminations. Our goal is to showcase a dialoguing Europe, culturally vibrant, in open and constant relation with the rest of the world. This year, many of our designs focus on context: social, natural and cultural environments are given new and growing importance. In many cases, participants addressed local knowledge and indigenous science, precious ancient legacies that are deeply rooted in territories and communities. Architects and designers worked to discover and preserve this knowledge, thus contributing to a shared reflection on what being a responsible designer really means today. Now more than ever, it is apparent that the only possible architecture is one that can embrace the themes of repair, recycle, and regeneration fully, and actively involve the communities that have been living forever in the same places that are the object of such architecture.

Originality, vision, and depth.
One of the most interesting designs comes from a collaboration between Elemental and Holcim: dwelling solutions made with Biochar enriched concrete, a material that is, in fact, very old and is able to regenerate soil and make it more fertile by capturing and storing carbon dioxide for centuries. Many participants chose analogue, sensorial installations, like A-Interiors, who turned a hall at Palazzo Mora into an oasis for our senses. Another incredible design is one by Semillas, and is the story of the silenced voices of a community in the Peruvian Amazon. Their knowledge will be integrated in Peruvian educational curriculum at par with science. Nature is always an incredible source of inspiration, one example is PolliNation by Virginia Tech College of Honors and Cloud 9, an exhibit that rethinks biodiversity in the Venetian Lagoon by celebrating the essential role of pollinators.

Featured image: Rachele De Stefano, Responsabile Architettura di ECC European Cultural Centre – Photo Matteo Losurdo