Turkey's 2027 Venice pavilion turns to spolia
IKSV received 43 submissions for the 20th Venice Architecture Biennale; the selected project is Devşirme Gelecekler by the ba-be commons team.
The project for Turkey's pavilion at the 20th Venice Architecture Biennale has been selected. The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts received 43 submissions and shortlisted three; the winner is Devşirme Gelecekler by ba-be commons — Başak Eren, Asya Ece Uzmay, Beril Sarısakal Erkent and Ece Yetim. The jury comprised Hülya Ertaş, Bilge Kalfa, Cem Sorguç, Melis Varkal and Şebnem Yücel.
The proposal takes the devşirme, or spolia, tradition of stripping material and technique from one building for reuse in another, and reads it across five themes: coexistence, archiving, slowing, repair and future speculation. The jury cited its conceptual grounding and its potential to carry region-specific techniques into wider architectural debate. Curated by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, the biennale runs from 8 May to 21 November 2027, with previews on 6 and 7 May. The test will be whether reuse is presented as a working technical repertoire rather than a nostalgic reference.
Credits and sources
Source
- Arkitera · 20 July 2026
This piece was written by 2C Magazine from the facts in the source above. No sentences were taken or translated from the source; the commentary is our own.
Image
Illustrative image · Photo: Radu Bradu / Pexels — free licence
The image is not the subject’s own photograph; it was chosen from a free-licence archive to represent the topic. No image from the source publication was copied.
Copyright
Text © 2C Magazine, 2026. You may quote with attribution and a link; republishing in full requires permission.
hello@2cstd.com — notices are actioned within 48 hours.
Comments
Loading comments...