Labics Central Pavilion Restoration: Architecture Read
Labics’s restoration of the Central Pavilion at the Giardini is the architectural news of the 2026 pavilions circuit — the first updated architectural backbone the Giardini has had since the 1948–1956 Carlo Scarpa interventions, and the building that sets the rhythm for a pavilion-by-pavilion reading that runs from Anish Kapoor’s Palazzo Manfrin in Cannaregio to Palladio’s Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore. This is the architecture-first read of the 2026 edition: pavilions, palazzi and restorations parsed as buildings before they are parsed as shows. Koyo Kouoh’s “In Minor Keys” — the framework she signed off before her unexpected death in May 2025, and which her appointed team has realised posthumously — opens to the public on 9 May 2026 as a constellation of restored architecture rather than a single building. Read the venues first and the works second, and the curatorial argument is already legible in stone, brick, fresco and steel before any painting goes on a wall. ...