From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities

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This curated selection of projects from the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale explores regeneration as a deliberate, intelligent process rooted in the specific conditions of a place. For decades, the Biennale has been a testing ground for architecture's most urgent ideas, allowing designers, researchers, and institutions to present visions that address evolving environmental, cultural, and social challenges. This year's projects reveal how regeneration, whether of an entire coastal city, a disused industrial site, or a neglected public space, requires more than replacing the old with the new. It calls for a precise reading of existing contexts, the preservation of embedded knowledge, and the careful integration of contemporary needs.

The eight selected works show that regeneration can emerge from multiple starting points: reactivating heritage through adaptive reuse, restoring ecological systems as part of urban planning, developing open and modular strategies for social housing renewal, or layering technological innovation onto historically rooted practices. While the scale of intervention varies, each project demonstrates a sensitivity to what is already there and existing, be it material resources, urban patterns, or cultural memory, and a willingness to work with these assets as catalysts for transformation. Together, they suggest that regeneration must start somewhere, and that its success lies in balancing innovation with the intelligence of what already exists.

From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities - Image 2 of 21From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities - Image 3 of 21From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities - Image 4 of 21From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities - Image 5 of 21From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities - More Images+ 16

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Cite: Nour Fakharany. "From Acapulco to Copenhagen: 8 Projects Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2025 Reclaiming Existing Architecture for Regenerative Cities" 08 Aug 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1032913/from-acapulco-to-copenhagen-8-projects-exhibited-at-the-venice-biennale-2025-reclaiming-existing-architecture-for-regenerative-cities> ISSN 0719-8884

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