Nieuwe Instituut, the national museum and institute for architecture, design, and digital culture in the Netherlands, has opened the Dutch Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. This year, the Giardini pavilion, designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1953, is transformed into a sports bar. Titled "SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness", the exhibition is curated by Amanda Pinatih, Design & Contemporary Art Curator at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in collaboration with social designer Gabriel Fontana. Through a queer lens, the project examines sport as an architectural system that regulates spaces, bodies, and behavior, offering an alternative perspective on societal norms related to gender, identity, and group dynamics.
The 2025 Dutch Pavilion exhibition explores the idea that sport, in all its forms, both reflects and shapes societal conventions. While sports are often seen as fostering unity, they can also reinforce division, polarization, and exclusion. "SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness" questions how architecture can resist normativity and create environments that encourage new forms of inclusivity and social cohesion.
Curator Amanda Pinatih and designer Gabriel Fontana transform the Rietveld Pavilion into an alternative sports bar, continuing Fontana's investigation of social dynamics through the lens of sport. His work challenges established structures and assumptions by examining sport as an architectural system that dictates spatial organization, bodily movement, and behavioral norms. In the pavilion, Fontana's Multiform and Fluid Field projects, alternative team sports that redefine the rules and spaces of conventional games, reimagine sports as a vehicle for inclusivity, empathy, and solidarity, envisioning a more pluralistic and imaginative future.
Expanding his exploration from the playing field to architecture, the exhibition examines how built environments can be either hostile or welcoming. By applying queer theories and methodologies to reimagine the traditional sports bar, the pavilion invites new ways of thinking about the relationships between bodies, spaces, and identities. The scenography, designed by Koos Breen and Jeannette Slütter, encourages visitors to engage by playing a game or observing others, to experience how their perception of familiar spaces might shift. In response to the Biennale's curatorial theme, "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective", the pavilion proposes a vision of architecture that is inclusive, diverse, and imaginative, fostering new modes of togetherness.
Queer spaces represent a world of possibilities. New perspectives are emerging in architecture, introducing spaces that challenge cis-heteronormative norms. One example is the growing prevalence of gender-neutral washrooms, promoting gender inclusivity in public spaces. Beyond these private-public spaces, queer spaces for entertainment and celebration, such as nightclubs, bars, and dance floors, continue to thrive. However, this is only the beginning. Access to adequate housing and integrated living spaces for queer individuals remains a pressing issue across all age groups. The theme of the Dutch Pavilion aligns seamlessly with the Biennale's overarching invitation, which will bring together over 750 participants to explore the future of architecture at the exhibition running from 10 24 to November 23, 2025.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on February 25, 2025, and updated on May 19, 2025, after the official opening to include photographs of the exhibit.
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