Uruguay’s Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale Highlights Water Management as Essential to the Future of Architecture

Written by Antonia Piñeiro
Published on March 25, 2025

The national exhibition of Uruguay at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled "53.86% Uruguay, Land of Water," explores the intrinsic relationship between architecture, territory, and water. Curated by architects Katia Sei Fong and Ken Sei Fong, along with visual artist Luis Sei Fong, the exhibition proposes that we may be entering the age of water, the "Hydrocene", and that the way humanity manages and conserves this resource will shape its future. In this context, the project highlights that Uruguay's maritime territory (53.86%) is larger than its land territory. Water, therefore, is not only a natural resource but a fundamental element of the country's history and culture, essential to its development.

According to the curators, the total amount of water on Earth has remained unchanged since the planet's formation. Within this context of scarcity, they point to the exploitation of water as a key challenge in Latin American urban and political dynamics. They argue that while territorial conquests have historically sought minerals and natural resources, today's corporations and national governments engage in a "peaceful conquest" through agreements granting access to resources such as gold, oil, radioactive minerals, technological-use minerals, and, increasingly, water. This extractivist approach affects local economies, societal well-being, and the built environment.

For Katia, Ken, and Luis Sei Fong, architecture is a complex process involving living beings, materials, and resources, with water playing a crucial role at every stage. As a discipline, architecture has the potential to address water-related challenges through infrastructure that promotes conservation and efficiency while contributing to a stable water supply for human consumption, agriculture, industry, and energy production. While water management and preservation should be addressed through public policies that promote intelligent and collective use, the presence of water in a territory can serve as a unifying element, opening possibilities for innovative urban planning and design.

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These possibilities take shape in the Uruguay Pavilion through an immersive experience. The installation incorporates sound and visual devices, a walkable artistic pavement, and an estuary landscape where fresh and saltwater meet during a storm. Inside the pavilion, a "factory of drops" will act as an inverted spring, where amethysts, crystallized water from another time, float like suspended drops, generating volumetric tension in a textile ceiling from which real drops fall. The dripping was designed to make gravity perceptible both literally and metaphorically, as the falling water creates sound upon hitting metallic containers, resonating throughout the space.

Graphic projections on the walls complement the installation, presenting an open-ended narrative through interviews, photographs, videos, and artworks that shape the discourse, allowing water to guide the auditory experience. The exhibition seeks to explore water's intelligence as a natural force, a built system, and a common good in dispute. Uruguay will be presented as a space for experimentation, rethinking the architecture of the future at a time when water management and its symbolic value are critical to life. The curatorial invitation is to reimagine architecture and territory "from a liquid, flexible, and ever-evolving perspective."