Biennale Architettura 2025
Image: Italian Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai © Michele Nastasi
ARCHITECTURE
Italo Rota
Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam
Italian
architect and designer Italo Rota (1953 – 2024) has been awarded the
Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia - Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
For over thirty years Italo Rota's work was centred on constant and
advanced cross-disciplinary research, from contemporary art to robotics,
to develop innovative projects in which humanistic beauty and
sustainability became integral and disruptive elements.
The Golden
Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to the American
philosopher Donna Haraway. On the decision, Carlo Ratti stated: "Donna
Haraway is one of the most influential voices in contemporary thought,
straddling the social sciences, anthropology, feminist criticism, and
the philosophy of technology."
Image: Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy of 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
ARCHITECTURE
Kingdom of Bahrain
Heatwave
Golden Lion for Best National Participation
The Kingdom of Bahrain's pavilion curated by architect Andrea Faraguna won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Biennale Architettura 2025. Named Heatwave, the pavilion stands out for addressing the pressing issue of extreme heat by showcasing passive cooling strategies using geothermal wells and solar chimneys connected via a thermo-hygrometric axis, which links underground conditions to outdoor air. The modular structure features a floor and cantilevered ceiling supported by a central column, adaptable for various urban environments.
Image: Canal Café. Photo by Marco Zorzanello. Courtesy of 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
ARCHITECTURE
Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Canal Café
Golden Lion for Best Participation in the 19th Exhibition
Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
The Golden Lion for Best Participation in the 19th Exhibition Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. was awarded to Canal Café, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Natural Systems Utilities, SODAI, Aaron Betsky and Davide Oldani. The installation is set up to use natural filtration systems to purify water from the city's canals and make it info coffee that visitors of the Arsenale can enjoy.
About the Biennale Architettura
Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024
Image: Detail of the installation by Gaëlle Choisne for the exhibition of nominees for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024, Centre Pompidou, Paris. © Centre Pompidou, Bertrand Prévost.
ART
Gaëlle Choisne
Prix Marcel Duchamp
French-Haitian artist Gaëlle Choisne has won the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024. Choisne was born in 1985 in Cherbourg and now works in Paris. She is represented by Air de Paris, Romainville (Grand Paris). She was nominated for the prize alongside Abdelkader Benchamma, artist duo Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, and Noémie Goudal. In the nominees' exhibition, Choisne presented her installation L'Ère du Verseau [The Age of Aquarius] (2024), which includes structures made of cork, large painted panels and video projections. She describes the work as "an island, an archipelago, a place where different realities accumulate to be reinvented and repaired".
Deutsche Börse Photography
Foundation Prize 2025
Image: Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Family group photo on a Christmas day, South Africa, Johannesburg, Thokoza, 2017. © Lindokuhle Sobekwa
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize
Johannesburg-based artist Lindokuhle Sobekwa is the 29th recipient of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for his book I carry Her photo with Me. Deeply personal, the project began when Sobekwa found a family portrait with his older sister Ziyanda’s face cut out. When the siblings were seven and thirteen, she chased him and he was hit by a car and badly injured. She disappeared hours later, only returning a decade later, ill. By this time Sobekwa had become a photographer. He tried to take her portrait, but stopped when she reacted angrily. Ziyanda died soon after. Through this scrapbook-like publication, Sobekwa explores the memory of his sister and the wider implications of such disappearances – a troubling part of South Africa’s history.
About the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize
2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize
Image: Liu Jiakun, West Village, 2015, Chengdu, People's Republic of China. Photo courtesy of Arch-Exist.
ARCHITECTURE
Liu Jiakun
Pritzker Architecture Prize
Liu Jiakun, of Chengdu, People’s Republic of China, is the 2025 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Intertwining seeming antipodes such as utopia versus everyday existence, history versus modernity, and collectivism versus individuality, Liu offers affirming architecture that celebrates the lives of ordinary citizens. "Architecture should reveal something—it should abstract, distill and make visible the inherent qualities of local people. It has the power to shape human behavior and create atmospheres, offering a sense of serenity and poetry, evoking compassion and mercy, and cultivating a sense of shared community," expresses Liu.
About the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Turner Prize 2024
Image: Installation view of Jasleen Kaur, Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow 2023. Courtesy of Tramway and Glasgow Life. Photo: Keith Hunter.
ART
Jasleen Kaur
Turner Prize
Jasleen Kaur received the Turner Prize 2024 for Alter Altar, her exhibition at Tramway in Glasgow. Kaur's work celebrates the Scottish Sikh community by transforming everyday objects into symbols of cultural memory and collective identity. Highlights include a red Ford Escort draped in a giant doily, automated worship bells, the quintessential Scottish soda, Irn-Bru and a self-playing accordion. The jury noted the considered way in which Kaur weaves together the personal, political and spiritual in her exhibition, choreographing a visual and aural experience that suggests both solidarity and joy.
Hasselblad Award 2025
Image: Sophie Ristelhueber, Fait #20, 1992. © Sophie Ristelhueber/Adagp, Paris 2025
PHOTOGRAPHY
Sophie Ristelhueber
Hasselblad Award
Sophie Ristelhueber is the winner of the Hasselblad Award 2025. Sophie Ristelhueber was born in 1949 in Paris, where she still lives and works. Places marked by conflict often make up the core of her work. Avoiding the sensational, she instead captures an emotional intensity in the silent, enduring traces of human presence and activity. A recurring theme in her artistic practice is humanity’s perpetual cycle of creation and destruction, followed by renewal. The photographs in Sophie Ristelhueber’s series are meticulously selected fragments of a larger narrative, where the viewer is invited to create the story.
ANDAM Fashion Awards 2025
Image: Meryll Rogge, Fall 2025 Fashion Show.
FASHION
Meryll Rogge
Grand Prize
Meryll Rogge received the Grand Prize at the 2025 ANDAM Fashion Awards. A Belgian-born designer and ANDAM finalist last year, Meryll Rogge was the first woman to be named Designer of the Year at the 2024 Belgian Fashion Awards and was a finalist in the 2025 Woolmark Prize. Having shown her collections in Paris since 2021, she held her first fashion show in March, presenting a collection she deemed her "most developed pieces". These were among the designs she showed to the ANDAM jury, who was impressed by her compelling artistic vision, her bold experimentation with shapes and patterns, and her remarkable talent for creating pieces that are both statement-making and wearable.
About the ANDAM Fashion Awards
LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2025
Image: Kunimasa Aoki, Japan, Realm of Living Things 19, terracotta.
CRAFT
Kunimasa Aoki
LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize
The LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2025 was awarded to Kunimasa Aoki for the piece Realm of Living Things 19. The jury chose the work for its honest expression of the ancestral coil process and how the material is expressed in its raw, unfinished form. The anamorphic clay work explores the ways in which the material distorts and cracks when force is applied. Gravity, time and pressure were used to take clay to the limits of its material possibilities. Thin coils of clay were repeatedly stacked, moulded and compressed into layers, then the work was fired in an electric kiln until it began to burn and smoke. The piece was then coated with a decorative finish made of soil, glue and pencil marks.
About the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize
Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour
l'Intelligence de la Main 2024
Image: Console Pseudosphères by Nadège Mouyssinat.
© Julie Limont for the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller
CRAFT
Nadège Mouyssinat
Talents d'exception
Nadège Mouyssinat is the winner of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main 2024 in the section Talents d'exception for her piece Console Pseudosphères, an almost hypnotic work composed of a forest of porcelain cones reflected in a mirror, giving the impression of floating in space. After four years of creation, from conception to completion, the work was designed to evoke emotion. The visual disturbance gives the viewer a feeling of almost spiritual lightness, with the curves of the cones mirroring the curves of the hyperbolas, which tend towards infinity.
Image: Tresser l'ombre by Catherine Romand, basket maker and Clémence Althabegoïty, designer.
© Julie Limont for the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller
CRAFT | DESIGN
Catherine Romand and Clémence Althabegoïty
Dialogues
Catherine Romand, basket maker and Clémence Althabegoïty, designer, are the winners of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main 2024 in the section Dialogues, for their piece Tresser l'ombre [Weaving the shadow], a woven wicker shade, as futuristic as it is poetic. The shade is designed to provide protection from the sun, but also to track the position of its rays in order to identify the seasons, like an immersive sundial. For Tresser l'ombre, the duo first called on Pascal Descamp, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, who defined the sun's trajectories in the Touraine region using a series of algorithms.
Image: © Julie Limont for the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller
CRAFT
Acta Vista
Parcours
The Acta Vista association is the winner of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main 2024 in the section Parcours. Founded in 2002 in Marseille, the Acta Vista association is focused on the singular objective of making cultural heritage restoration a means of creating jobs and passing on know-how. Since its creation, Acta Vista has trained over 8,500 people and restored some 40 heritage sites in the three regions where the association operates.
About the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main
LVMH Prize 2024
Image: Hodakova, Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection.
FASHION
Hodakova
LVMH Prize for Young Designers
Hodakova won the 2024 edition of the LVMH Prize for Young Designers, receiving the award from Natalie Portman, Dior ambassador and special jury member, at a ceremony at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Sweden-based Ellen Hodakova Larsson is dedicated to building the first fully sustainable fashion house in the world and changing people's mindset. Establishing her namesake brand in 2021, she champions craftsmanship by choosing existing products and transforming them into luxury pieces. Working with discarded pieces compels her to focus on quality, potential and craftsmanship.
