Venice
Italy
The Canada Council for the Arts is delighted to announce that the Living Room Collective will represent Canada at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, from May 10 to November 23, 2025.
Selected by a Council-designated selection committee from among the group of five shortlisted candidates, the Living Room Collective will curate the next architecture exhibition at the Canada Pavilion. The creative team is led by bio-designer Andrea Shin Ling, alongside core team members Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui and Clayton Lee. Together this group of architects, scientists, artists and educators will work at the intersection of architecture, biology and digital fabrication to situate architecture as an integral and supportive component of our ecosystem.
The Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious exhibitions and international platforms for architects, artists, designers, critics, politicians, students, and cultural leaders from around the world to engage in critical conversations.
Michelle Chawla, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Council for the Arts, said: “The Canada Council is proud to support the Living Room Collective, who have been selected to represent Canada at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. My sincere congratulations to our national and international selection committee in choosing such a timely proposal from this unique group, where design and biology will converge to imagine a better future for our living spaces.”
The selection committee consists of Aziza Chaouni, principal, Aziza Chaouni Projects; David Garneau, professor, Visual Arts Department, University of Regina; Daniel Pearl, principal, L’OEUF Architectes; Siamak Hariri, founding partner, Hariri Pontarini Architects; and Sepake Angiama, artistic director, Institute for International Visual Art.
The Living Room Collective said: “It is an incredible honour to have been selected to represent Canada at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. In demonstrating the possibilities of a collaborative relationship with nature, we look forward to leveraging this global platform alongside national and international partners to engage in a critical dialogue around alternative design practices that can sit alongside contemporary carbon neutral building strategies.”
Living Room Collective
Andrea Shin Ling is an architect and biodesigner who works at the intersection of design, digital fabrication and biology. Her work focuses on how the critical application of biologically and computationally mediated design processes can move society away from exploitative systems of production to regenerative ones. She was previously the 2019 creative resident at Ginkgo Bioworks and a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in the Mediated Matter group. Andrea is currently a doctoral fellow at the Chair of Digital Building Technologies at ETH Zurich.
Nicholas Hoban is a computational designer, fabricator, and educator. He is the director, Applied Technologies, at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design and a lecturer within the Daniels technology specialist program. Nicholas was a lead fabricator and computational designer for two previous Venice Biennales: for the 2014 Canadian Pavilion and for the 2016 Swiss Pavilion.
Vincent Hui is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Science, with knowledge across diverse domains from design studios to digital tools. He delves into the intersections of architecture, fabrication and allied disciplines. Collaborating with esteemed organizations such as the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the Ontario Association of Architects and the Canadian Architecture Students’ Association, Vincent endeavours to empower the next generation of designers, navigating emergent shifts in praxis.
Clayton Lee is a curator, producer and performance artist. He is currently the director (artistic) of the Fierce Festival, in Birmingham, UK. He was previously the director of the Rhubarb Festival, Canada’s longest-running festival of new and experimental performance, at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Clayton’s performance projects have been presented in venues across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s 2023 artists-in-residence.
Learn more about Canada’s representation at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
