Roi Salgueiro Barrio Will Co-Curate the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025

Architects Roi Salgueiro Barrio and Manuel Bouzas Barcala were selected as curators for Spain's Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Their project, ‘Internalities,’ will explore sustainable architectural practices by focusing on processes that minimize externalities and environmental waste. With an emphasis on materials, labor, energy, byproducts, and local resources, the exhibition will offer a forward-looking approach to architecture that responds to current and future challenges.

Oct 11, 2024

The Spanish Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda selects the curators of the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025.

The Spanish Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has selected the winners of the competition for the curatorship and exhibition design of the Spanish Pavilion at the 19th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale. The first prize corresponds to the project “Internalities,” presented by Roi Salgueiro Barrio and Manuel Bouzas Barcala. The curatorial project was selected among a total of 19 proposals.

Roi Salgueiro Barrio is an architect and urbanist whose work focuses on the interrelations between architecture, systems of territorial organization, and globalization. Curator-Director for MIT MAD, he is the founder of design practice RSAU and a lecturer at MIT Department of Architecture, where he teaches seminars, studios design workshops for the SMarchS and March groups.

Manuel Bouzas is a Spanish architect, researcher, and educator. He is currently based in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.

The competition entries were assessed by a prestigious jury, chaired by the Secretary General of Urban Agenda, Housing and Architecture, Iñaqui Carnicero Alonso-Colmenares, and other relevant architects, such as Sana Frini, Rocío Pina Isla, Clara Murado López and Jordi Garcés i Brusés.

The Jury has especially valued

the propositional nature of the project and its search for a new approach to architecture through the concept of ‘internalities:’ those actions that do not create externalities or waste and that seek a balance with the territory.

Selection jury, presided by the Secretary of the Spanish Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda.

The Jury has positively appreciated the use of five conceptual axes to articulate the exhibition’s content. These axes concern the relation of architecture to materials, labor, energetic processes, byproducts, and local resources.

The curatorial project offers tangible tools that may sustain a new architecture addressing current and future challenges. These tools can be extrapolated to other places, to reach the macro from the micro. The project proposes an enriching line of work for the theme of this biennial. From the organizational standpoint, the selection of works happens both through an “open call” for projects and direct invitations. The architectural works included in the show will be analyzed by a team formed by a research architect and a local photographer, who will be assisted by the project’s architects.

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition (from May 10 to November 23, 2025), will be curated by the architect and engineer Carlo Ratti — Professor of Practice of Urban Technologies and Planning at MIT. He commented: “To face a burning world, architecture must harness all the intelligence around us. I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to curate the Biennale Architettura 2025”.

An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti completed his PhD thesis as a Fulbright Scholar at MIT and now teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the Politecnico di Milano. He is the director of the Senseable City Lab and a founding partner of the architecture and innovation office CRA — Carlo Ratti Associati (Torino, New York City, and London).