Labics restored Central Pavilion at the Giardini and Palazzo Manfrin in Cannaregio across the 61st Venice Biennale geography

Venice Biennale 2026: Architecture of the Pavilions

Labics’s restoration of the Central Pavilion at the Giardini gives the 61st Venice Biennale its first updated architectural backbone since the 1948–1956 Carlo Scarpa interventions, and it sets the rhythm for the Venice Biennale 2026 architecture circuit that runs from Anish Kapoor’s Palazzo Manfrin in Cannaregio to Palladio’s Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore. 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 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. ...

May 6, 2026 · 18 min · 3804 words · FORMA Editorial

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