What does it mean to speak of paradise today?
It’s a question that feels more at home in literature or philosophy than in architecture. Yet it’s precisely from this tension that Paraíso, hoje. emerges, the project presented at Portugal Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Far from a celestial, mythical, or timeless vision, the pavilion offers a cultural, collective framework for reflecting on how architecture can help imagine and build the landscapes we inhabit. The aim is not to chase utopia, but to engage with the present through a lens that can uncover traces of a possible paradise within the everyday.
The curatorial team brings together a multidisciplinary group with distinct perspectives and areas of expertise: architects Paula Melâneo, Pedro Bandeira, and Luca Martinucci, landscape architect Catarina Raposo, and video artist Nuno Cera.
Their proposal takes a quiet but firm stance within the contemporary debate, responding to the overarching theme set by curator Carlo Ratti. Rather than embracing reduction or technophilia, it favors complexity, dialogue, and layered meaning.
At its core, Paraíso, hoje. invites reflection on the idea of paradise as a cultural construction of landscape. The project begins with a single question, Where is Paradise?, which was launched as an open call in January 2025.
Since then, artists, architects, designers, and observers have been invited to contribute images, stories, and visual fragments of real places within the Portuguese territory that evoke a personal or collective idea of paradise. This diverse and participatory material will form the basis of Atlas of Images, the conceptual and visual core of the exhibition.
But the atlas is not intended as a static or contemplative archive. Its ambition is to create a dynamic framework for reading the landscape and imagining its possible futures. Edited by Circo de Ideias, it will be organized thematically (experience, regeneration, cultivation, fiction, return, network, simulacrum) offering a series of lenses through which to revisit the Portuguese landscape, not for what it is, but for what it might become. In this way, Paraíso, hoje. marks a shift: from representation to potential, from nostalgia to intent.
The installation in Venice is conceived as a physical extension of this process. At Fondaco Marcello, the space will be transformed into an immersive environment designed to draw visitors into a visual and sensory journey.
Through video, imagery, sound, and text, visitors are invited not just to observe, but to take part in a shared reflection on how architecture can foster connections between people, nature, and constructed space. This is not an exhibition in the conventional sense, but a narrative environment that stages the relationship between space and imagination, between desire and design.
Collective engagement is central to the project. From its conception, selected through a public call and shaped by a participatory process, to the program of parallel events that will accompany the exhibition. In addition to the installation in Venice, Paraíso, hoje. includes a series of talks and discussions hosted between Lisbon’s Triennale headquarters at Palácio Sinel de Cordes and online platforms, expanding the reach of the project and opening it to a broader, more diverse dialogue.
Where: Portugal Pavillion, Fondaco Marcello, Venezia (accanto al Canal Grande)
When: 10th May – 23rd November 2025
Curatorship: Paula Melâneo, Pedro Bandeira, Luca Martinucci, Catarina Raposo, Nuno Cera
Website: paraisohoje.pt
