SIDELINED asks what happens when sport stops producing winners and losers

how gabriel fontana redesigns sport through sidelined

‘Sport is a designed system,’ Gabriel Fontana told designboom when we met during last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. It is a deceptively simple observation, but it shifts the conversation entirely. Stadiums, playing fields, uniforms, scoreboards, even the rules themselves are all designed, yet they are rarely discussed with the same critical attention we give buildings, furniture, or public space. We inherit them, play by them, and rarely ask what values they reinforce or what might happen if they were designed differently.

That idea continues to evolve through SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness, Fontana’s collaboration with curator Amanda Pinatih, now on view at Rotterdam’s Nieuwe Instituut after earlier presentations at the Dutch Pavilion during the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and Spain’s Concéntrico Festival in Logroño. Like the games it presents, each SIDELINED iteration responds to its surroundings. In Venice, it transformed the Dutch Pavilion into an alternative sports bar that examined belonging through the rituals of sport. In Logroño, it moved outdoors to Parque Gallarza, where workshops invited local students to redesign sports fields and invent new rules for playing together. Now, the sports bar returns in Rotterdam, taking over the museum’s rooftop deck as a free public space where games, workshops, and events invite visitors to participate through January 2027.

three games that rethink competition

Fontana presents three alternative team sports: Multiform, Anonymous Allyship, and Fluid Field. Each one starts by changing something so familiar that it often goes unnoticed. Teams are no longer fixed, uniforms transform throughout the game, and playing fields continuously change shape. The games don’t remove competition altogether, but they redirect attention toward cooperation and negotiation. ‘Rather than positioning queerness solely as an identity, I treat it as a method,’ Fontana explained. ‘One that challenges norms and creates space for different ways of being, relating, and cooperating.’ Across the three games, uncertainty becomes part of the design itself. Players spend less time trying to win than learning how to navigate unfamiliar situations together.

During our conversation in Venice, Fontana repeatedly returned to architecture as a system that organizes everyday life. ‘Sport is a designed system that shapes both physical and social interactions,’ the artist said. ‘Stadiums, jerseys, equipment, and even the field of play operate within a designed framework that influences not only the game but also how individuals interact with one another.’

The sports bar extends that thinking beyond the games. A Fluid Foosball Table abandons fixed teams altogether, while a specially produced newspaper introduces Rotterdam initiatives, including Queer Gym Rotterdam and Sportcafé Costa del Sol, where sport already serves as a meeting point across different communities. Elsewhere, Luca Soudant contributes a sound work built from recordings made during Trans* Pride Berlin, while Alice Wong reflects on sport as a space for political resistance through film. Even the trophy cabinet rewards collaboration, care, and improvisation over victory.

from the playing field to the sports bar

For Pinatih, the sports bar was never chosen simply because it belongs to the sporting culture. ‘We see the sports bar as a place where people can feel welcome—or not,’ she told designboom. ‘As a site of both social production and identity formation, sports bars unite diverse communities around shared experiences, fostering a sense of belonging.’ At the same time, she pointed out that sports bars often mirror the divisions found beyond the game itself. Looking closely at how they foster both belonging and exclusion, she suggests, can help us rethink the kinds of public spaces we want to design.

That conversation feels different in Rotterdam than it did in Venice. At the Biennale, SIDELINED functioned as a proposition inside the Dutch Pavilion, inviting visitors to imagine another way of organizing sport. At Nieuwe Instituut, the project becomes part of everyday cultural life. Over the coming months, games, workshops, and public programs will invite visitors to return, play, and gradually reshape the installation.

SIDELINED asks us to look again at the sports we already know. Once you begin to see jerseys, playing fields, scoreboards, and rules as designed objects, they become open to the same questions we ask of architecture and design every day: who were they built for, who do they include, and how might they work differently?

project info:

name: SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness
curator: Amanda Pinatih | @amandapinatih
main exhibitor: Gabriel Fontana | @gabriel_fontana__
commissioner: Nieuwe Instituut | @nieuweinstituut

photographers: Temet.studio | @temet.studio, Cristiano Corte | @cricopix, Elizar Veerman | @elizarveerman, Giovanni Pellegrini, Giacomo Bianco | @g.i.a.c.o.m.o.b.i.a.n.c.o, Sara Cuerdo | @saracuerdo

This article is part of designboom’s PLAY chapter, exploring what would happen if form didn’t follow function, but pleasure. Discover more stories that celebrate joy, imagination and playfulness here.