Ten off-the-beaten-track Venice Architecture Biennale exhibitions you may have missed

With the Venice Architecture Biennale underway, we collect 10 exhibitions and pavilions outside the event's Giardini and Arsenale venues that you might have missed.

A live restoration site, a kinetic shading structure by MVRDV and a pavilion exploring building shelters in outer space are just some of the highlights from this year's biennale taking place across the city.

While the Giardini and Arsenale sites host most of the biennale's pavilions, elsewhere in Venice, gallery spaces, churches and gardens have been transformed into sites of architectural exploration.

Read on for 10 Venice Architecture Biennale exhibitions and pavilions that are off the beaten track:

Holy See Pavilion: Cartella Stampa

This year's Holy See Pavilion takes place in the 12th-century Santa Maria Ausiliatrice complex, which has been transformed into a live restoration site by Mexican studio Tatiana Bilbao Estudio and Spanish studio Maio Architects.

Throughout the duration of the biennale, the studios will be working with local architects and artisans to restore the historic building, inviting visitors to engage with the repair works by hosting workshops and musical rehearsals at the site.

Deserta Ecofolie: A Prototype for Minimum Dwelling in the Atacama Desert and Beyond

The Royal Danish Academy's Centre for Industrialised Architecture (CINARK) constructed the Deserta Ecofolie pavilion in the Giardino delle Vergini to test the performance of its biogenic facades.

It was designed as a small house that could withstand the extreme climatic conditions of Chile's Atacama Desert, with prefabricated thatched wall panels set in timber frames, fog catchers and photovoltaic cells.

Hong Kong Pavilion: Projecting Future Heritage

Hong Kong aims to look beyond its glitzy skyscrapers and celebrate "unsung" public infrastructures in the Projecting Future Heritage exhibition, which was curated by Fai Au, Ying Zhou and Sunnie SY Lau.

Located across the street from the main Arsenale entrance, the Hong Kong Pavilion features a bamboo structure in the courtyard entrance, and inside, drawers of drawings document community centres, market complexes and public housing by Hong Kong architects.

Fondation Cartier by Jean Nouvel exhibition

As the Fondation Cartier art gallery in Paris prepares to relocate from its 1990s building, it has created an exhibition in Venice's Fondazione Giorgio Cini showcasing the design for its new home.

The exhibition features drawings and screen displays of French architect Jean Nouvel's plans to overhaul a Haussmannian building for the gallery. The centrepiece is a sectional scale model that visitors can walk down the middle of.

The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology

Think tank Antikythera and MIT Architecture joined forces to put on an exhibition at Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts and Culture, aiming to explore philosophical and architectural responses to planetary crises.

Antikythera created a video installation on the ground floor of the venue, while upstairs, 37 work-in-progress projects by MIT faculty members are displayed.

Universe Pavilion: Sheltering in Space – A Guide

The biennale's first Universe Pavilion explores themes of scarcity and resilience by proposing sustainable ways to build shelters in the extreme conditions of outer space, led by German space company Astronautin GmbH and Venetian cultural organisation Fondazione Efesto.

Located in the Fàbrica 33 exhibition venue, the pavilion includes architectural models, speculative design works, art and augmented reality (AR) that aim to examine humanity's relationship with space and the possibility of its habitable future.

Togo Pavilion: Considering Togo's Architectural Heritage

Togo made its debut at the Venice Architecture Biennale with a showcase of the nation's modernist architecture, located in the Squero Castello gallery.

Interdisciplinary practice Studio Neida curated the pavilion to put Togo's architectural legacy on the world stage and make a case for the preservation of its unique buildings, which includes a curlicued brutalist hotel with a facade resembling two faces kissing.

Migrating Modernism: The Architecture of Harry Seidler

Coinciding with the Venice Architecture Biennale, the San Marco Art Centre (SMAC) opened a retrospective exhibition on the life and work of the 20th-century architect Harry Seidler, whose portfolio includes the Australia Square tower and the Australian Embassy in Paris.

Migrating Modernism: The Architecture of Harry Seidler is one of two exhibitions launched for the reopening of SMAC, which was recently renovated by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect David Chipperfield.

Sombra

Sombra is an arched structure made up of triangular perforated panels that move to improve solar shading, hinging open and shut in response to indirect and direct sunlight.

Designed by Dutch architecture studio MVRDV, the panels move without the need for motors by relying on canisters that release air pressure into airbags connected to the structure when heated by the sun.

It forms part of the Time Space Existence exhibition, which also includes Chinese studio Elemental's stripped-back housing prototype.

Lithuanian Pavilion: Archi/Tree/tecture

Lithuania installed an uprooted tree stump in the Santa Maria dei Derelitti church for its pavilion, which looks at the relationship between the built environment and nature.

Also in the pavilion is a cube of digital screens and a series of models of 20th and 21st-century buildings that were informed by local trees, aiming to showcase how architecture can be designed in harmony with the natural landscape.

The top photo is by Marco Cremascoli.

The Venice Architecture Biennale takes place from 10 May to 23 November 2025. See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to know to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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