‘Water Parliaments’ exhibition by Catalonia in Venice at the Biennale

Water Parliaments, Catalonia in Venice at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale - Photo by Jose Hevia, courtesy of the Institut Ramon Llull copia.

Water Parliaments, Catalonia at the 2025 Venice Biennale – Photo by Jose Hevia. All photos are courtesy of the Institut Ramon Llull copia.

Architecture. According to the United Nations, “the climate crisis is primarily a water crisis.” From here, the Catalonia in Venice, a collateral exhibition at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, presents the exhibition Water Parliaments: Projective Ecosocial Architectures at the historic shipbuilding warehouses, Cantieri Cucchini, on the San Pietro in Castello island. The showcase explores how streams, deltas, reservoirs, and wetlands shape cultural landscapes, traditions, and ecosystems through the lens of architecture, science and activism.

Photo by Flavio Coddou.

Commissioned by the Institut Ramon Llull and curated by Eva Franch i Gilabert, Mireia Luzárraga, and Alejandro Muiño, the exhibition merges research, design, activism, and global participation. Water is not just a resource, but a co-architect shaping the environment. What if water had a parliament? The showcase gives voice to architects, scientists, artists, farmers, and activists addressing global ecological challenges in the Catalan, Valencian and Balearic contexts.

Photo by Jose Hevia.

The initial space greets guests with a cinematic montage of interviews from multidisciplinary workshops discussing floods, water tables, global supply chains, and collective wisdom.

Photo by Flavio Coddou.

Visitors are then plunged into an underwater-like environment. Under a tensioned -yet fluid- fabric structure, full-scale models, interactive prototypes, and evocative sculptures embody a critical response to pressing ecological and social challenges related to water management. Fog cycles and audiovisual displays enhance the sensory experience, creating a poetic space for dialogue and action.

Photo by Flavio Coddou.

The Data Fountains installation maps Barcelona’s water quality through DNA sequencing stations. Hydric Doors examines Valencian urban development by etching building regulations and flood maps onto glass. Sediment Saloon presents a contemplative protest for the Ebro Delta through the use of suspended tanks and hydrosuction tools.

Photo by Jose Hevia.

Water Parliaments’ key concepts, challenges and new ideas have been collected and explained in 100 Words for Water, a vocabulary, a manifesto and a tool for shifting consciousness on the water crisis. Published by Lars Müller and the Architects’ Association of Catalonia, it includes terms like Liquid Urbanism, Hydrocertainty, and Archipelagraphies.

Photo by Jose Hevia.

Curators also created a free-to-consult online ATLAS for Water Architectures, a growing repository of architectures, organisations, individuals, collectives, and events that put the governance of water at the centre of their discussion. The Atlas aims to become a network of water parliaments worldwide—distributed, participatory, and transformative.