For its participation in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Romania presents Human Scale, a dual-site exhibition and research project that draws on the shared languages of architecture and visual art. Developed by artist Vlad Nancă and Bucharest-based architecture studio Muromuro, and curated by Cosmina Goagea, the project explores how people appear in architectural drawings and what these representations reveal about public space, collective identity, and the cultural weight of the built environment.
Human Scale unfolds across two venues: the Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini and the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research (RICHR) in Venice. The exhibition brings together original drawings by 20th-century Romanian architects and recent sculptural work by Nancă, establishing a conversation between historical documents and contemporary interpretation.
The project responds to the Biennale’s broader theme of The Laboratory of the Future by framing architectural drawing as a site of collective intelligence. “By looking at the people depicted in these drawings,” says curator Cosmina Goagea, “we gain insight into how architects once imagined the role of the public and how their intentions might inform the future use of existing buildings. Revisiting these documents critically allows us to imagine new possibilities for adaptation.”
Since 2017, Vlad Nancă has been developing a body of work at the intersection of drawing and sculpture, inspired by the tiny silhouettes often found in architectural renderings. These figures, used to indicate scale, proportion, and atmosphere,are usually secondary to the buildings they accompany. In Human Scale, Nancă enlarges these elements to life size, shifting attention toward the human presence in architectural contexts. He sees this act as a kind of liberation: a way of reasserting the role of people in how we understand and experience space.
The exhibition’s core is a chronological selection of architectural drawings from across the 20th century, mapping out a condensed social history of Romanian architecture. The drawings reflect a range of ideological, stylistic, and institutional currents, tracing how architecture has responded to shifting political and cultural forces. These are accompanied by historical maps from the 15th to 19th centuries, where human figures often appear in symbolic or allegorical form, pointing to the long-standing use of drawing as a tool for shaping power, identity, and memory.
“Humans are the unifying element in architectural drawings,” says Nancă. “They transcend time. By looking at how people were drawn throughout the 20th century, we hope to underline their ongoing relevance, and to re-center the conversation around their role in shaping and inhabiting the built world.”
At the Romanian Pavilion, Muromuro’s architectural intervention takes the form of a translucent spatial installation. Large, semi-transparent sheets divide the pavilion into zones of shifting visibility, blurring boundaries between inside and out. The installation is designed to reverse the usual emphasis: here, the architecture recedes, and human interaction becomes the main subject. Figures from historical drawings are layered with the moving silhouettes of visitors, creating a visual dialogue across time and scale.
As Muromuro’s Ioana Chifu and Onar Stănescu describe it, “The installation is a space of quiet ambiguity. Through subtle shifts in perception, it invites a different kind of engagement with architecture—not as something fixed or monumental, but as something alive, emotional, and open to reinterpretation.”
Meanwhile, the New Gallery of the RICHR functions as a research platform, housing an extensive archive of original architectural drawings. The exhibition design is purposefully understated, with a central desk placed between two pillars: one anchoring a curated display, the other organizing archival material by decade. This structure supports both close viewing and open-ended investigation, encouraging visitors to explore the historical and cultural layers behind Romania’s architectural legacy.
Together, the two sites of Human Scale form a reflective and expansive presentation, bridging past and present, and calling attention to the role of people, not just as users of architecture, but as its implicit measure.
