Objects of Repair exhibition by Palestine Regeneration Team at the British Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale - Image by Chris Lane, courtesy of The British Council.

Middle Eastern Conflict at the Venice Biennale 2025. Above: Palestine Regeneration Team at the British Pavilion – Photo by Chris Lane.

Architecture. This year’s Venice Architecture Biennale swaps blueprints for battle lines, asking how design can build a fairer, more sustainable world. But amid talk of ecology, repair, and resilience, one subject hovers like a ghost—the Middle Eastern conflict. Present yet underexplored, it lingers in the margins, testing how far architecture can really go when faced with human tragedy.

Israel

Cloud-toGround, Israel Pavilion's exhibition at Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 - Courtesy of the Israel Pavilion.

At the Venice Biennale 2023, the Israeli Pavilion explored the ominous architecture of its data storage buildings – Courtesy of the Pavilion.

Israel itself is absent this year. Officially, the pavilion is closed for renovation. Unofficially, it’s the latest chapter in a story where architecture, politics, and protest collide. Last year, the Israeli team refused to open their show until there was a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages—an act that turned the pavilion into a political statement. Those demands were finally met only days ago.

In statu quo: structures of negotiation: Israel Pavilion @ Venice Biennale 2018 - Photo by Italo Rondinella courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

The Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2018 explored the geopolitics of holy spaces – Photo by Italo Rondinella; courtesy of La Biennale.

Looking ahead, Israel’s participation in the 2026 Venice Art Biennale has been confirmed in a new Arsenale venue, yet uncertainty reigns. The ANGA—Art Not Genocide Alliance—has called for the exclusion of the Jewish state, threatening boycotts and walkouts. Add a tense peace deal and a race against time, and everything still hangs in the air.

Gaza, Palestine

Objects of Repair exhibition by Palestine Regeneration Team at the British Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale - Image by Chris Lane, courtesy of The British Council.

Objects of Repair exhibition by Palestine Regeneration Team at the British Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale – Image by Chris Lane, courtesy of The British Council.

Palestine never had its own official pavilion, yet voices rose through other means. The British Pavilion’s Geology of Britannic Repair confronts colonial legacies and the built environment, with the Palestine Regeneration Team presenting Objects of Repair, salvaging materials to imagine reconstruction after the Israel-Gaza war.

Objects of Repair exhibition by Palestine Regeneration Team at the British Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale - Image by Chris Lane, courtesy of The British Council.

Image by Chris Lane, courtesy of The British Council.

“As far as I could see, the British Pavilion is the only one to address directly what is the most serious current humanitarian disaster,” Murray Fraser of the Palestine Regeneration Team told Dezeen. “Sadly, the architectural profession is letting Gaza down with its ongoing silence. If the biennale is not the place to confront these issues, then when?”

Lebanon

The Land Remembers, Lebanon Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 - Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

The Land Remembers, Lebanon Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 – Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

The Lebanese Pavilion’s The Land Remembers examines ‘ecocide’ and environmental healing amid renewed conflict in Gaza and Lebanon since October 2023. Curated by the Collective for Architecture Lebanon (CAL), the exhibition documents what it frames as deliberate environmental destruction by Israel, while proposing paths to restoration, including bioremediation using plants and bacteria to neutralise toxins.

The curators faced the tragic loss of a collaborator, a civil defence paramedic and environmental NGO coordinator, killed in a drone strike, amid concerns Israel was targeting healthcare workers and journalists.

The Land Remembers, Lebanon Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 - Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

“We are not going to be silenced,” said co-curator Elias Tamer. “As architects, it’s our role to talk about the land and talk about the tragedy that is unfolding in Lebanon, but also to talk about the healing process that needs to happen.” Beyond documentation, CAL calls for architects to adopt activist roles during crises, emphasising their responsibility in shaping resilient, sustainable reconstruction for future generations. Through The Land Remembers, the pavilion merges architecture, environmental science, and social consciousness to confront devastation while imagining strategies for ecological and societal recovery.

The Land Remembers, Lebanon Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 - Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Across the Biennale, beauty and brutality coexist. The Israel-Gaza war looms like an unfinished sketch—its outlines faint but impossible to erase. Some pavilions confront it; others skirt around it. Yet together, they reveal the limits and possibilities of architecture as a political act.

The Land Remembers, Lebanon Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 - Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.