UNRAVELING: New Spaces / 18th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
The Republic of Serbia presented itself at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale with the project UNRAVELING: NEW SPACES by Davor Ereš, Jelena Mitrović, Igor Pantić, Ivana Najdanović, Sonja Krstić, Sonja Krstić and Petar Laušević. The curator of the exhibition is Slobodan Jović.
Unraveling is an ever-changing and immersive pavilion made of wool, a ubiquitous material rarely associated with architecture. It is designed as a truly circular installation. From day one, the pavilion begins to be gradually shaped by time in a slow, guided choreography of algorithmic precision, becoming completely unknitted by the end of the exhibition. Unraveling does not produce any waste, as all the wool used in the installation is returned to its original configuration—a yarn—at the end of the exhibition. In this way, the pavilion fosters a special care for materials and calls for rethinking architecture as impermanent and adaptable.
Unraveling weaves common threads between the delicate Serbian knitting tradition and the discipline of architecture in a contemporary expression. Hanging from the roof in catenary curves, the knitted segments—1.2 x 5 meters each—are suspended in a textile landscape without a fixed shape or state. Serbia’s proposal is a moving structure that becomes undone over time as a series of small motors powered by solar panels pull threads slowly, yet consistently. The pavilion moves, relaxes, or subtly deforms, inviting visitors to engage with it from multiple perspectives. Light from the central skylight filters through the wool, drawing attention to its layered gradients of transparency and density.
Ephemeral and unexpected, visitors will encounter a di erent configuration in every visit. After 6 months, and in its final, raw state, the installation becomes unweaved—a cyclical transformation of a ball of yarn, to a pavilion, to a ball of yarn again. And while its shape has been dissolved, the meaning lingers: a powerful metaphor for a circular understanding of architectural materials.
Unraveling is the result of a multidisciplinary eort that challenges how we build and what we value. In a poetic gesture, it converges Serbian craft traditions with pioneering research. The deforming and unravelling of its shape across time is a meditation on temporality and material scarcity. By exploring how the wool behaves under controlled unravelling, the pavilion reminds us that architecture is a tactile practice with the potential to evolve, deform, and begin again.
More about project here.
