10 May - 23 November 2025
Docks Cantiere Cucchini, Ramo del Zoccolo, Castello 40, Venice, Italy
Head of Architecture Studio II Eva Franch i Gilabert together with Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño will present the project "Catalonia in Venice-Water Parliaments: Projective Ecosocial Architectures" at the Venice Architecture Biennale. It deals with the critical role of water and addresses the global climate crisis through the lens of architecture, interdisciplinary research and speculative design and was created with the support of the Ramon Llull Institute.
Drawing from the United Nations’ assertion that “the climate crisis is primarily a water crisis” Water Parliaments reimagines architecture as a multispecies collaborative practice that reflects the interdependence of humans, non-humans, and water systems.
The exhibition explores how aquifers, rivers, streams, deltas, reservoirs, wetlands and water bodies shape and are being shaped by policies, cultural landscapes, traditions and architectures, creating complex ecosocial relationships with a focus on the Catalan, Valencian and Balearic contexts, while addressing global ecological challenges.
The Exhibition at Docks Cantieri Cucchini, transforms the historical venue into a “Water Parliament”, inviting visitors to reflect on the role of water in shaping our environment through seven projective architectures in the form of installations: the Aquifer Communities, Denomination of Destination, Hydric Doors, Data Fountains, Sediment Saloon, Pyrineucus-Eco-Hydrator and Waters of the World.
The installations will be accompanied by three core components: the film “Water Conflicts” that situates each one of the installations and presents the research process developed with six groups of 20 multidisciplinary local voices; the book “100 Words for Water: A Vocabulary” in conversation with more than one hundred philosophers, scientists, architects an artists from around the world published by Lars Müller; and “The Atlas: Water Architectures”, a growing online repository documenting architectural, cultural, and ecological interactions with water at local and planetary scales. If you would like to participate, you can submit your project to “The Atlas: Water Architectures” here.
Water Parliaments embodies the urgency of addressing water-related challenges through critical, imaginative, and actionable forms of architectural practice. By interviewing ecological narratives with spatial strategies, the project positions water as both subject and medium of a new projective ecosocial paradigm.
Catalonia in Venice—Water Parliaments is an initiative of Institut Ramon Llull and is curated, designed and produced by Eva Franch i Gilabert, Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño.
Eva Franch i Gilabert (Delta de l’Ebre, 1978) is an architect, curator, researcher, and professor at UMPRUM in Prague and co-founder of FAST based in Barcelona, Prague and New York.
Mireia Luzárraga (Madrid, 1981) and Alejandro Muiño (Barcelona, 1982) lead the architecture and research studio TAKK, based in Barcelona and New York. Luzárraga is Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP.
Institut Ramon Llull, as a public institution dedicated to the international promotion of the Catalan language and culture, produces and organises the participation of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands in the Collateral Events of La Biennale di Venezia, and has been present at the Biennale Architettura since 2012, and at the Biennale Arte since 2009. The project presented by the Institut Ramon Llull is chosen by an expert committee that changes every year. For more information on this year’s process and jury, visit here.
