Architecture Biennale 2025: Agency for Better Living will design Austria’s pavilion
"Agency for Better Living" was selected to be Austria’s contribution to the Architecture Biennale 2025.
Together with jury member Claudia Cavallar, State Secretary for Art and Culture, Andrea Mayer, announced at a press conference on 28 February that the curatorial team made up of Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak and Lorenzo Romito would design the show at the Austrian Pavilion for the 19th Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2025.
Their proposal "Agency for Better Living" won the project competition organised by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.
Project on burning global housing issues
The project focuses on burning global housing issues that are going to be addressed in a synthesis of top-down schemes (successful model of social housing in Vienna) and bottom-up approaches (self-organisation models of civil society) based on specific architectures and explorations of different systems.
An overall budget of up to 600,000 euro is provided by the federal government for implementing the project. Any further funds required for implementing the concept are to be covered by sponsors.
Andrea Mayer, State Secretary for Art and Culture:
"The Biennale is one of the most significant art exhibitions worldwide. In 2025, it is again the turn of architecture and the Biennale raises awareness for a subject that influences and shapes our living environment. It provides space for reflecting on architecture and, aside of aesthetic issues, also increasingly on the social and political responsibility of architecture. Thus, Austria’s commitment to the Biennale, to this unique international cultural exchange, is unwavering.
The contribution selected for 2025 is a project with strong references to Vienna since it deals, on the one hand, with ‘social housing’ and, hence, affordable housing and, on the other hand, with the re-use of abandoned or unfinished buildings and former infrastructures illustrated by examples found in the host country Italy, specifically in Rome."