ephemeral canopies of wool drape over serbian pavilion at venice architecture biennale

motors powered by solar panels pull the threads gradually over the exhibition's six-month run, until the installation entirely dissolves.

ravail khan May 23, 2025 4 min

unraveling: new spaces is designed to unknit itself over time

The Serbian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale adopts wool as its primary, unexpected medium, to weave an ephemeral canopy. Titled Unraveling: New Spaces, the exhibition explores the idea of transformation in contrast to ideas of architecture as a fixed entity, knitted entirely from wool into large, light, catenary drapes. The structure, a textile environment that interacts with light and time, changes with each visit, calling for rethinking architecture as impermanent and adaptable. It was designed by Davor Ereš, Jelena Mitrović, Igor Pantić, Ivana Najdanović, Sonja Krstić, and Petar Laušević, and curated by Slobodan Jovic.

Motors powered by solar panels drive the unravelling process, pulling threads gradually over the exhibition’s six-month run, until the installation eventually dissolves into the raw material from which it began, ready for reuse. Between these points, the threads hang like a suspended landscape, catching rays of the sun and shifting in shape, density, and transparency as visitors walk underneath.

serbian pavilion at venice biennale considers resource life cycles

The Serbian Pavilion’s choice of wool — a ubiquitous domestic material though one rarely associated with architecture — foregrounds tactility and slowness, recontextualizing Serbia’s knitting traditions through algorithmic precision and renewable energy. Its movement over the months of the Biennale is systematic as it makes visible the passage of time and the quiet undoing of form, revealing a meditation on impermanence and material circularity.

Presented under the Biennale’s curatorial theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., Unraveling aligns closely with the call for expanded definitions of intelligence and authorship in architectural practice, utilizing technology only for its subtle nuances in production. The installation makes a subtle statement, remaining low-energy and reversible to foster a special care for materials amid challenges such as resource scarcity through an architecture of relationships. Its immersive effect, too, lies in the accumulation and unraveling of threads that create a suspended architecture above visitors.

The project is developed by a collaborative multidisciplinary team that moves fluidly between architecture, fashion, energy research, and digital technology. Architects Davor Ereš, Jelena Mitrović, and Igor Pantić contribute expertise in computational design and fabrication, while designers Ivana Najdanović and Sonja Krstić bring deep knowledge of textile structures and knitwear construction. Researcher Petar Laušević, working in renewable energy has developed the system that powers the installation.