Venice Biennale Golden Lion winners: Bahrain National Pavilion and DS+R's Canal Café headline second round of 2025 awards

The awards program for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale has been formally announced after this weekend’s commencement of the exhibition’s 19th overall edition.

Led by the Golden Lion for Best National Participation recipient, the group of awardees includes the previously announced winners of the Golden Lion for Best Participation and Silver Lion of Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (Donna Haraway and the late Italo Rota).

Their selection was made by a three-member jury that included Hans Ulrich Obrist (president), Paola Antonelli, and Mpho Matsipa. Curator Carlo Ratti was responsible for the selection of the Lifetime Achievement awards. Four other projects received special mentions as well in either category.

The Bahrain Pavilion, which features an installation from Andrea Faraguna titled Heatwave won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. The pavilion utilizes traditional methods of passive cooling typical of the region and is reminiscent of wind towers or shaded courtyards.

The Golden Lion for the best participation in the 19th Exhibition (titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.) went to the Canal Café installation by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Natural Systems Utilities, SODAI, Aaron Betsky, and Davide Oldani. It was joined by the Silver Lion for a promising participation winner, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler:

DS+R 's installation creates espresso using water from the Venice Canal in 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 [...] public space." The jury said it is "an example that Biennale can be a long duration project and go far beyond the event."

Additional special mentions for National Participations were given to The Holy See and Great Britain pavilions for their "Opera aperta" and GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair presentations, respectively. 

The Special mentions for participation were given to Tosin Oshinowo’s Alternative Urbanism: The Self-Organized Markets of Lagos and the temporary Elephant Chapel from Boonsem Premthada.