Venice Design Biennial 2025: Design Between Collapse and Hope
The VDB’s fifth edition explores extinction, salvation
and the enduring power of design in times of crisis
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This autumn, the Venice Design Biennial 2025 returns from September 5th to November 2nd, unfolding across the city with its most thought-provoking edition yet. Centred on the dual theme Extinction / Salvation, visitors are invited to navigate the tensions between collapse and hope, exploring how design reflects and reshapes the challenges of our time.
Curated by Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei, the fifth edition moves beyond a showcase of objects to become a survival manual rewritten through design, irony and imagination. What does it mean to create in the age of vanishing resources? Can design offer salvation or are we writing our own doomsday agenda?
Coinciding with the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Venice Film Festival, and a season dedicated to glass art, Venice becomes a living archive. Two months, two exhibitions, and a city-wide dialogue on design, survival, and reinvention.
A Tale of Two Spaces: SPARC* and SPUMA
The Venice Design Biennial 2025 is split in two contrasting venues. At SPARC - Spazio Arte Contemporanea, the exhibition Extinction / Salvation | Glass highlights fragility and transparency as methaphors for survival, with works from Anna Jožová, Lucia Massari, and Maria Koshenkova.
Across the lagoon, SPUMA – Space for the Arts in Giudecca presents Extinction / Salvation | Collectible, where designers such as Maja Stamenković, Marco Guazzini, and Sofia Artemeva reimagine collectible design as narrative, ritual, and resistance.
Adding to this year's agenda, Venice Design Biennial 2025 offers a rare cultural experience: guided tours inside 20th-century Venetian houses, revealing a more intimate side of Venice's modern architectural heritage.
Exhibition Photography by: Veronika Motulko
Campaign Photography by: Clelia Cadamuro
If you enjoyed this article, you should check out Lisbon’s Design Week 2025: A Citywide Celebration of Creativity and Craft
