At the Architecture Biennale, the U.S. Says ‘Come Sit By Me'

New York Times

11-04-2025

If there's one thing Americans can probably agree on, it's that the nation is divided. So the creators of the United States Pavilion at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice, which opens to the public on May 10, are prompting visitors to think about the role that architecture and design could play in mending us back together.
To do this, they have chosen to draw lessons from the ultimate architectural connector: the American porch, a sheltering bridge between public and private areas, and a space that encourages talking and communal activity.
'As good a way of understanding liberty as any other,' as the writer William L. Hamilton once described the porch.
The idea is to 'really help people understand what the value of being together is,' said Susan Chin, founder of the independent arts consultancy Design Connects and one of three commissioners of the 2025 U.S. Pavilion, which is offering an exhibition called 'Porch: An Architecture of Generosity.'
Peter B. MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, and a commissioner of 'Porch,' calls it 'a platform for civic engagement and community building.'
The pavilion will feature 54 designs from around America that showcase the possibilities and often surprising permutations of the porch. All of them will be placed within a series of cabinet-like 'porch windows,' displaying models and other tangible artifacts meant to draw viewers in an emphatically experiential way.
To broaden the scope of the pavilion, the creators (the third is Rod Bigelow, executive director of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.) widened the definition of the porch — a lot. While most people think of it as a protected area extending from the front or back of a home, it can, the creators note, be infinitely more: a stoop in Brooklyn; a lanai in Hawaii; a plaza; a coffee shop; or a friendly library.
As part of the exhibition, Mark Cavagnero Associates of San Francisco will showcase its transformation of the Oakland Museum of California by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, from an iconic but off-putting midcentury landmark into one that opens to the community, pulls people in and encourages gathering. The most welcoming feature was cutting big holes in some of the museum's concrete walls to open it up to the street and to nearby Lake Merritt.
'These are places that scream enter, scream welcome, scream inviting,' said Mark Cavagnero, the firm's founder.
The Los Angeles-based nonprofit Friends of Residential Treasures: LA (known as FORT:LA) is exploring the fertile 'porchness' of affordable multifamily apartments in that city. Their eclectic model (created with Wyota Workshop) emphasizes gathering spots like bridges, walkways, courtyards, open staircases, terraces and roof decks.
The long covered patio of Ozark Natural Foods Co-Op in Fayetteville, Ark., designed by Modus Studio, is an addition to a beloved grocery store that has become a magnet for gatherings, thanks to steel planters, colorful seating, string lights and more.
The concept of a porch permeates a project by Duvall Decker, a firm in Jackson, Miss. It endowed the Bennie G. Thompson Academic and Civil Rights Research Center at Tougaloo College, a small historically Black college, also in Jackson, with a popular perimeter colonnade, a series of embracing nooks inside showcasing the school's remarkable civil rights history, and a sense of flowing openness throughout.
'It was about how could we push the architecture to make space for students and faculty to meet, talk and debate; to be centered on their own terms rather than by an outside authority,' said Roy Decker, the firm's co-founder.
The U.S. Pavilion itself at the Venice Biennale — a columned, Palladian-style structure, designed in 1930 by the architects Delano & Aldrich — will be outfitted with its own porch, designed by a team that includes Marlon Blackwell Architects, DIRT Studio, Ten x Ten Studio, Stephen Burks Man Made and Jonathan Boelkins.
The space, filling the pavilion's courtyard, will offer a layered, terrain-inspired platform of fir boards fronted by a folding timber canopy, beckoning visitors like 'a new front door,' as MacKeith put it. Providing shelter in the steamy Venice summer, it will be painted blue on its underside, like a traditional Southern porch. Seating will include stairs, benches and even a swinging chair.
This eye-catching merger of the vernacular and the global — winding its way into the pavilion with wooden flooring, shelving and displays — will host discussions, performances and, hopefully, more impromptu gatherings.
'I have this fantasy about having a group sing on the porch,' Chin said. 'It's about people trusting one another, and having that opportunity to get to know each other and be able to call on each other. In this time we need that more than ever.'
The U.S. State Department supports official American participation at both the international architecture and art exhibitions called biennales. Under the Biden administration, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs kicked off work last August with a $375,000 seed grant. The pavilion's total exhibition cost is $1.75 million. Additional funding has come from the University of Arkansas, the Alice L. Walton Foundation and other corporate foundations and individual contributors.
Much has changed since the election, with deep cuts by the Trump administration to programs like the National Endowment for the Humanities. (A much-discussed April Fools' Instagram post by the arts website Hyperallergic joked that the Trump administration had canceled the Architecture Biennale.) But the creators of the U.S. Pavilion confirmed that the State Department remains committed. Most employees who helped get the endeavor off the ground are still working there, they added.
Though the exhibition was designed for display in Italy, it has its roots in Northwest Arkansas, a fast-growing area that is perhaps surprisingly becoming one America's most fertile places for design. Crystal Bridges and the University of Arkansas have been steadily building world-class architecture, joined by a collection of visionary buildings and landscapes instigated by Walton Family Foundation's Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, in Bentonville.
'We're trying to have people take another look at the heartland of this country as a place where amazing things are happening,' said Bigelow, of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
The chief curator of the biennale, Carlo Ratti, sees 'Porch' as dovetailing with the event's overall goal of gathering a kaleidoscope of thinkers to reconsider the deep challenges of the built environment. 'It's about convening a conversation,' he said.
Ratti also sees the porch as an antidote to the polarization of the digital world. 'We can easily exclude voices and different people or profiles online, but that doesn't happen in physical space,' he said.
Cavagnero, the San Francisco architect, said, 'The more we can make ourselves and our buildings more open and expansive and can bring the community into our civic life, the better. We need to bring people together and share, not isolate and separate.'