"Architecture is the adaptation of forms to opposing forces."
— John Ruskin
Heatwaves and Embodied Intelligences: Notes for a Sensitive Survival
In the blazing womb of the world to come, the Kingdom of Bahrain rises as a burning and visionary voice at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. Heatwave — the name given to this architectural gesture — is not merely an exhibition proposal, but an act born of necessity, a form of resistance inscribed in the language of architecture, in its mutable body, in its scorched skin.
The resonance of the chosen theme already pulses in the air at the Arsenale: a thermal shock that is not only meteorological, but spiritual, perceptual, political. In a land where summer temperatures approach 50°C, construction is no longer ornament — it becomes a device for salvation. Curated by Andrea Faraguna, the pavilion emerges as a breathing organism, a modular structure that listens to the ground, learns from ancestral knowledge, and reimagines it through solar chimneys, geothermal wells, and sandbags arranged like a landscape of thought.
Here, architecture does not represent — it acts. It does not embellish — it resists. It becomes an intermediary body between the human and the climate, between catastrophe and utopia.
Heatwave presents itself as an existential lab: a place where design becomes an ethical gesture, a communal act, a collective inquiry into how we might inhabit a world that is retreating, overheating, transforming.
It is not a denunciation, but an open-ended question. Not a dystopian vision, but a search for another grammar — one able to read the scorched present and compose syllables for a livable tomorrow.
Bahrain does not observe the climate crisis from a distance: it traverses it, endures it, metabolizes it. Desertification, water scarcity, thermal vulnerability — these are the daily realities of a life suspended between tradition and the threshold of the unknown. That is why the pavilion is not ornament nor celebration, but a testing ground, a construction site of embodied ideas.
Among the strategies deployed echo the memories of ancient ingenuity: wind towers that read the currents, reflective surfaces that converse with light, vegetation that becomes infrastructure, shade that becomes knowledge. Vernacular techniques, born from the slow awareness of those who have lived the desert, are woven together with algorithms, climate simulations, and digital data. The past returns not as nostalgia, but as vision.
"Looking back in order to survive forward," suggests curator Eman Ali. The architectures of another time — shaped in coral, earth, and gypsum — regain their ability to speak, protect, and regenerate.
Within the broader reflection of the Biennale — “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.” — Bahrain asks a radical question: what does it mean to be intelligent in the face of the world’s thermal leap?
Here, intelligence is not merely algorithmic, but an alliance of dispersed sensitivities: it is the intelligence of wind, of the artisan, the coder, the elder who reads the shadows. It is thought made flesh — in hands, in gestures, in materials.
The pavilion thus becomes a threshold, a passage: between nature and artifice, between the self and the collective, between what survives and what reinvents itself.
"We don’t just build structures," states Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, "we build relationships, possibilities, interdependencies."
In an era where architecture can no longer afford the luxury of autonomy, Heatwave is both an indictment and a proposal for care. It is a whispered cry, a silent call: to transform climate urgency into an opportunity for listening, for designing, for encountering.
Bahrain does not simply display: it unsettles. It does not offer ready-made solutions, but invites us to think of heat not only as a threat, but as an epiphany.
At the heart of this heat, perhaps, new architectures of hope are forged — and in that pavilion, cool air is generated without electricity...
A full-scale mock-up of the architectural concept: a minimal, modular structure composed of a raised platform, a suspended ceiling, and a central column that simultaneously acts as a spatial frame and climatic device. Conceived as a system that can be multiplied and adapted across various contexts, the pavilion allows visitors to directly experience how architecture can shape microclimates through form, materiality, and passive environmental strategies. More than a symbolic installation, it becomes a habitable space where thermal, atmospheric, and social dimensions converge.
Heatwave envisions public space as a "thermal common good" — a shared resource where climate comfort becomes an expression of social equity. The design research explores diverse types of public space — from school courtyards to urban intersections, from agricultural markets to construction sites — suggesting how modular and adaptable structures can enhance collective wellbeing in a variety of urban settings.
Through the fusion of structural innovation, environmental intelligence, and material research, Heatwave opens a broader reflection on adaptive architecture: responsive, porous, and resilient — reclaiming the meaning of the common not through enclosure, but through generosity and environmental care. The pavilion does not pose as a definitive solution, but as an open experiment: a platform for rethinking how we design, build, and inhabit.
"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."
— Robert Swan
Golden Lion for Best National Participation to the Kingdom of Bahrain: the Pavilion offers a concrete proposal to address conditions of extreme heat. As the designers explain, “Architecture must tackle the dual challenge of environmental resilience and sustainability. The ingenious solution can be employed in public spaces and in places where people need to live and work outdoors under extreme heat conditions. The pavilion uses traditional passive cooling methods typical of the region, evoking wind towers and shaded courtyards.”
