atelier alter crafts glowing nebula of civilizational stardust for the venice biennale 2025

Atelier Alter installs galaxy of cultural memory in china pavilion

Atelier Alter Architects transforms the Chinese Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale into a galaxy of cultural memory with Dunhuang Con-stella-tion, a luminous sculptural installation. Architects Yingfan Zhang and Xiaojun Bu materialize a 12×8×6.5-meter 3D star field using metal rods, spherical forms, mesh, and multicolored acrylics. This construct acts as a spatial telescope linking two ancient ports of knowledge exchange, Dunhuang and Venice, through a radiant cloud of artistic and philosophical symbolism drawn from Indian, Persian, Greek, and Chinese traditions.

At the global stage of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, Dunhuang Con-stella-tion is one of the twelve featured works in the China Pavilion, selected under the curatorship of Ma Yansong (MAD) (read designboom’s interview with MAD’s Ma Yansong here). Interpreting the exhibition’s theme, CO-EXIST, the installation reimagines Cave 285 from Dunhuang’s Mogao Grottoes as a celestial archive of civilizational fusion.

Cave 285 as a celestial archive of ancient knowledge

The Mogao Caves, carved into China’s Mingsha Mountain beginning in 366 CE, are a Silk Road palimpsest where spiritual belief intertwines with global exchange. Cave 285, a focal point of the installation, contains the earliest known star chart of the Northern Hemisphere, painted across a four-sloped dome in the Western Wei period. This celestial ceiling combines deities and iconography from a rich cross-section of cultures: Indian Brahma and Ganesha, Sogdian sun and moon gods, Chinese phoenixes and Fuxi, and Persian motifs, all rendered in polychromatic harmony. The duo of Atelier Alter abstracts this cosmic fusion into an artificial nebula, where each material element represents a stroke of ancient craftsmanship, a brush of stardust floating in architectural orbit.

By reframing the cave’s sacred geometry through contemporary topological language, Dunhuang Con-stella-tion reveals a nonlinear constellation of meaning. The installation positions the original cave as a ‘civilizational energy diagram,’ mapping out four cultural nebulae, Indian Buddhism, Central Asian commerce, Persian artistry, and Greek sculpture, into a shared cosmological grammar. Ancient astrological systems become dynamic fields of data, visually and conceptually resonating with modern geometric thought. This echoes the Tang Dynasty’s Dunhuang Star Atlas, whose constellations mirrored imperial Chang’an’s night sky and aligned with three schools of astronomy, a precedent for this contemporary act of cultural coding.

Dunhuang Con-stella-tion, a model of cultural rebirth

Curated by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, Dunhuang Con-stella-tion responds to the Biennale’s global constellation of architectural thought by aligning the ancient inclusivity of Dunhuang with the fluid hybridity of Venice. The installation aims to be a speculative model of cultural rebirth. Every metal sphere, every dust particle becomes a mnemonic device, a poetic echo of how civilizations have long intertwined through migration, translation, and artistic syncretism. As Atelier Alter suggests, cultural convergence is not about layering styles, but about generative collision, where flying apsaras dance with Greek Bodhisattvas, and Sogdian phonemes echo through Chinese sutras.

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project info:

name: Con-stella-stion:Dunhuang
artist: Atelier Alter Architects | @atelier_alter_architects

location: Chinese Pavilion, Venice, Italy

lead designers: Yingfan Zhang & Xiaojun Bu 

curator: Ma Yansong (MAD)

program: Venice Architecture Biennale | @labiennale

dates: May 10th — November 23rd, 2025

dimensions: 12 × 8 × 6.5 meters

photographers: Demone, Mint, Atelier Alter, Li Chunchao

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.