Pressure Cooker

The Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates opens with Pressure Cooker, curated by Azza Aboualam. Reconsidering how food, architecture, and new conceptions of space can intersect, the exhibition poses a central research question: Using the UAE as a case study, how can architecture contribute to greater food security?

Through a threefold research methodology combining archival research, fieldwork, and design-build experimentation, Pressure Cooker examines how architecture can respond to agricultural and climate challenges by proposing a series of experimental adaptive greenhouse assemblies for arid landscapes. By breaking down the greenhouse’s architectural vocabulary into its basic components, the exhibition introduces a modular kit-of-parts which adapts to specific climatic conditions.

Led by Aboualam, and developed in collaboration with Holesum Studio and a local team based in the UAE, the installation situates the UAE’s agricultural landscape within a broader global context, exploring how architectural thinking can support versatile and resilient food production practices at both individual and community scales.

A growing experiment, Pressure Cooker collects, analyzes, and shares data, offering insights into each assembly’s performance. The exhibition concept re-imagines a future in which food production and architectural form can be integrated throughout our built and lived environments—affirming architecture’s role in shaping dynamic, adaptable food infrastructures across diverse climates.

A publication titled Pressure Cooker Recipes: An Architectural Cookbook, edited by Azza Aboualam, published by Kaph Books, accompanies the exhibition. Blending original research, essays, and creative contributions, it reflects on the intersection of architecture and food production over time. Using a cookbook format, the texts and illustrations highlight agrarian practices in arid environments and beyond, offering new perspectives on our relationship with food production, climate-adaptive design, and urban infrastructures.

Divided into five main chapters, and edited by curator and architect Azza Aboualam, the publication includes contributions by Rashed Almulla, Sarah Saad Alajmi, Dimitri Brand, Kit Elsworth, Huma Gupta, HOME-OFFICE (Daniel Jacobs and Brittany Utting), Elisa Iturbe, Kevin Mitchell, and Faysal Tabbarah.

The exhibition will be on view until November 23, 2025 at the Pavilion’s permanent space at the Arsenale—Sale d’Armi, with an accompanying virtual tour available here. The National Pavilion UAE is commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and supported by the UAE Ministry of Culture.

About Azza Aboualam
Azza Aboualam is an Emirati architect and curator of the National Pavilion UAE for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2025. She is an Assistant Professor at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University, Dubai, UAE, and a Co-founder and Director of Research at Holesum Studio, an interdisciplinary architecture and design practice based in New York, USA, and Sharjah, UAE. She co-founded the studio in 2021, a few years after graduating from Yale School of Architecture. 

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