The jury of the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale today awarded the Golden Lion to the national pavilion of Brazil, with honorable mention to the pavilion of Great Britain

The international jury of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale awarded the Golden Lion for the best national participation in Brazil for Terra (Earth).

See also: The National Pavilion of Brazil at the 2023 Biennale

The Honorable Mention was assigned to the Great Britain Pavilion for Dancing Before the Moon, the Golden Lion for Best Participation at the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future went to Daar, by Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal (in the Dangerous Liasisons section at the Corderie dell'Arsenale and the Silver Lion for a promising young participant was  assigned to Olalekan Jeyifous in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini.

The Jury also decided to award three special mentions to the following participants:

Twenty Nine Studio / Sammy Baloji, Dangerous Liaisons section at the Corderie dell'Arsenale; Wolff Architects, Dangerous Liaisons section at the Corderie dell'Arsenale; Thandi Loewenson, Force Majeure section, Central Pavilion, Giardini,

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition was also awarded to Demas Nwoko, Nigerian artist, designer and architect. The recognition was proposed by the curator of the Biennale Architettura 2023, Lesley Lokko, and accepted by the Board of Directors of the Venice Biennale.

The awards ceremony of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition was held today, Saturday 20 May 2023 at Ca' Giustinian, headquarters of the Venice Biennale.

The reasons for the awards

Golden Lion for the best National Participation in Brazil for a research exhibition and an architectural intervention that focuses the philosophies and imaginaries of the indigenous and black population towards ways of reparation.

Special mention as National Participation to Great Britain for the curatorial strategy and project proposals that celebrate the power of daily rituals as forms of resistance and as spatial practices in diaspora communities.

Golden Lion for the best participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future at DAAR - Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal for their long-standing commitment to deep political involvement with architectural and design practices learning about decolonization in Palestine and Europe.

Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the 18th The Laboratory of the Future exhibition to Olalekan Jeyifous for a multimedia installation that explores a world-building practice capable of broadening the perspectives and imagination of the public, offering visions of a decolonized and decarbonised future.

Three special mentions as a participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future to:

Twenty Nine Studio / Sammy Baloji for a three-part installation that interrogates the past, present and future of the Democratic Republic of Congo, through an excavation of colonial architectural archives.

Wolff Architects for an installation that reflects a collaborative and multimodal design practice as well as an articulated and imaginative approach to resources, research and representation.

Thandi Loewenson for an militant research practice that materializes spatial stories of land struggles, extraction and liberation through the medium of graphite and speculative writing as design tools.