Distinct Voices, Familiar Songs. A review of the Baltic pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale

The 19th Venice Architecture Biennale opened in early May, featuring a strong focus this year on themes of renovation and maintenance, geological excavations, and technological optimism. Amid the abundance of themes and pavilions, this review invites you to listen more closely to the stories from the Baltic region, stories that, despite their differing voices, share a certain familiarity.

How deep do the roots of Lithuania’s Tree Architecture Pavilion reach?

This year, Lithuania is presenting the project ‘Archi/Tree/tecture’ (‘Medžių architektūra: iš vietos šaknų virsta’ in Lithuanian translates roughly as ‘Tree Architecture: Transformed from Local Roots’) at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The pavilion’s commissioner is Dr Julija Tutlytė, and the curator is the architect Gintaras Balčytis. As usual, the Lithuanian pavilion is nomadic: instead of being in the Biennale’s main venue, it is located at the Church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, the same site where ‘Lithuanian Space Agency’ was presented in 2021. But this time, visitors are invited to come down to earth and dig deeper into the current issues shaping contemporary Lithuanian architecture.

This is also the second time that the Lithuanian pavilion has explored the theme of trees. In 2023, the ‘Children’s Forest Pavilion’, curated by Jonas Žukauskas, Jurga Daubaraitė and Egija Inzulė, presented a wooden installation that viewed the forest not only as a resource for the future but also as a cultural space and a habitat for the coexistence of diverse life forms. The pavilion became a site for play, where diversity was discovered through action. Visitors could experience the grammar of lichens (by Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė), create spatial texts using the alphabet of mountain pines (by Mantas Peteraitis), hunt for eco-monsters (by Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas), or engage with a forest shadow theatre (by the Mustarinda organisation). Two years ago, Gintaras Balčytis criticised Lithuania’s representation at the Architecture Biennale for lacking architectural substance, arguing that buildings and architectural projects were almost absent. In part, that critique appears to have inspired this year’s dialectical pavilion, which continues the theme of trees, while offering its own variation on it.

At the heart of ‘Archi/Tree/tecture’, trees are presented as green elements, which, when integrated into architectural projects, could contribute to the uniqueness of the built environment. The exhibition presents six architectural projects. Three of them are late modernist buildings from the 20th century located in Palanga: a summer reading room and the Kupeta (Lithuanian for ‘mound’ or ‘clump’) exhibition pavilion designed by the architect Albinas Čepys, and the Žilvinas Hotel by the architect Algimantas Lėckas. Three of them are contemporary projects: two bus stations designed by Gintaras Balčytis’ architectural studio in Vilkaviškis (completed) and Druskininkai (still under construction), and the State Forest Enterprise headquarters of the Vievis district, designed by the architectural studios After Party (Gabrielė Ubarevičiūtė, Giedrius Mamavičius) and Išora x Lozuraitytė.

The curatorial narrative of the pavilion unfolds symbolically, through a tree stump, a video projection, architectural models of the featured projects, and a publication reminiscent of a binder containing working drawings.

As the curator emphasises, the exhibition focuses on buildings that exist or are currently under construction in Lithuania. A significant source of inspiration for the pavilion was also the growing wave of urban protests in response to the destruction of green spaces driven by city development plans, symbolised, perhaps, by the tree stump that greets visitors at the pavilion’s entrance. However, it stands out that the projects presented in the pavilion are not located in densely urbanised areas, but rather in forests, resorts or smaller towns, where natural greenery is already considered a value in itself. In contrast, in major cities, where the protests over tree-cutting are most common, existing greenery is too often treated by developers and even architects not as an opportunity, but as an obstacle preventing the planned programme from fitting into the designated plot. Perhaps this pavilion could be read as a wish by architects to themselves: to reconsider the importance of green spaces in urban contexts with greater care?

Although the pavilion touches on a timely and relevant issue, and presents visually appealing architectural projects, it unfortunately fails to put down deeper curatorial roots into the theme. As we move through the exhibition, it remains unclear if the juxtaposition of Soviet modernist and contemporary projects is meant to suggest a continuity of tradition. Or is the integration of trees into architecture truly the defining threshold beyond which we have nothing more to say about ecologically aware architectural practices in Lithuania?

Nevertheless, observing the pavilion’s development process in Lithuania, it is worth acknowledging that the creators have managed to avoid the initially communicated, and rather pretentious, direction of simply criticising ‘greenwashing’. After all, the bus station projects themselves exhibit tendencies towards declarative greenness: while the Vilkaviškis bus station raises questions about the choice of materials, the new bus station in Druskininkai, despite being a timber structure, will replace an older bus station that no one thought of renovating or repurposing.

Meanwhile, the ambitious State Forest Enterprise complex, aiming to set a national precedent with over 50% of its structure composed of organically sourced materials, is left underexplored in the pavilion. Also overlooked is the fact that the contemporary architecture on display not only integrates trees as landscaping elements but also uses them as a raw building material. But the question remains: what is the relationship between this newly created architecture and the forests where those materials originate?

At this point, it is worth mentioning Spain’s pavilion ‘Internalities’, which centres on the trajectories of resources, from the places where they are extracted to the buildings where these materials are used. The exhibition is grounded in a fundamental contradiction: while we create spaces and infrastructure for living in one place, we leave scars elsewhere, often in invisible landscapes. That is why the pavilion’s curators, the architect Manuel Bouzas and the architect-urbanist Roi Salgado, pose the question: how might we build architecture using local resources in a way that fosters conscious consumption and encourages a move towards more regenerative choices?

The pavilion presents a curatorial research project exploring local resources on the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, alongside 16 contemporary architectural projects that incorporate these materials. Despite the complexity of the topic, the overall narrative of the pavilion is easily readable, and articulates architecture clearly as a continuous act of balancing across different scales. It is encouraging to see that the Spanish curators appear to have captured the core of ecological thinking in architecture. We can only hope that this pavilion draws more attention from across the field of architecture, as the often-declared ‘eco-friendliness’ still tends to be illustrated by idyllic portrayals of harmony with nature in urban settings, while the real environmental impacts remain externalised to unseen areas.

The ability to work with local resources is not foreign to Lithuanian architecture either. However, in today’s practice, where materials from the furthest corners of the world are readily accessible, the mindful selection of local materials demands a heightened awareness from architects. This is precisely why Albinas Čepys’ projects in Palanga can still be considered unmatched, standing among the finest examples of sustainable architecture in Lithuania. Often built without state funding, and initiated by the city’s chief architect himself, these projects were constructed using whatever was at hand; for instance, repurposing coastal pines uprooted by storms.

Baltic realities: the European Union’s border and the banality of renovation

The Latvian pavilion ‘30 km: Landscape of Defence’ explores the politically sensitive topic of the eastern border, an issue that has become especially relevant to all Baltic countries in recent years. Located in the Arsenale, the pavilion is curated by Liene Jākobsone and Ilka Ruby, with architectural contributions by Sampling and Nomad architects. They present this narrative through bold colours and playful design elements, from soft furnishings to specially designed costumes. On entering the space, we might feel as though we have stepped into a playroom.

The pavilion presents the militarisation of the border and the resulting transformation of the landscape, as well as the stories of people living in border regions. However, it remains completely silent on another equally pressing issue: the politically instrumentalised migrant crisis and the infrastructure chosen to manage it.

Latvia is portrayed here as a bastion on the frontier of the European Union, protecting against the rising threat from Russia. Yet in reality, concertina wire and surveillance cameras first appeared along the border not in response to the military threat, but as a reaction to the migrant crisis orchestrated by Lukashenko’s regime. The fates of individuals who encounter this brutal infrastructure is left unaddressed in the pavilion.

Given that the pavilion’s production involved not only the Ministry of Culture but also the Ministry of Defence, the soft, greenish ‘brat summer’ coloured anti-tank hedgehogs begin to resemble less a gesture of creative irony and more an illustrative image of ‘soft power’. In recent years, as the Baltic States confront the realities of the borderland, the creative community has been rethinking its role in the public sphere, with the increasingly widespread recognition that culture is a form of soft power. However, when the concept of ‘softness’ is approached lightly or naively, there is a risk of slipping into the instrumentalisation of culture itself, where an artwork tends to reflect only a one-sided narrative. Balancing on this edge, the pavilion may have resulted from the creators’ limited experience and the lack of time to engage deeply with a politically sensitive and unfamiliar topic. Due to the national selection process in Latvia, the pavilion team only had six months, from developing the concept to realising the exhibition.

Meanwhile, the Estonians seem to have hit the mark most precisely this year, both in content and in form. Without excessive commentary, they chose a painfully familiar theme: the renovation of Soviet-era apartment blocks, a subject that is still too often ignored in the architectural discourse of our region. The pavilion ‘Let Me Warm You’ brings a slice of Estonia’s suburban reality straight to Venice’s main thoroughfare, where part of a residential building is cloaked in insulation wool and standard plastic cladding panels. The visually jarring installation by three young curators, the architects Keiti Lige, Elina Liiva and Helena Männa, leaves no one indifferent. Outwardly simple, even somewhat primitive, the pavilion invites visitors to explore the deeper dramaturgy of the renovation process, and to imagine the future of these homes. It is encouraging to see that this project has been noticed not only by architecture critics but also by tourists and even locals, making it one of the most widely discussed national pavilions this year.

Unlike in Lithuania, where the production of the pavilion was entrusted to the Lithuanian Union of Architects through an open call, in Estonia and Latvia the pavilions were commissioned directly by the respective ministries of culture. However, these two cases highlight how differently such an approach can affect cultural production. In Estonia’s case, ministerial involvement allowed for a budget twice the usual size, which undoubtedly contributed to the higher overall quality. In contrast, Latvia’s dual ministerial involvement appears to have contributed more to shaping a message that serves the state’s public relations, prioritising the more convenient narrative.

Still, when assessing the pavilions, we get the impression that the themes explored by Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia could easily have been addressed collectively. Strategies for integrating trees are fairly universal; after all, a love of trees does not suddenly stop somewhere near Pape (by the border between Latvia and Lithuania). Meanwhile, it is clear that eastern border-related issues, whether it is migration or the military threat, are shared as regional concerns. Not to mention the legacy of Soviet-era apartment blocks and the urgent need for their renovation, which remains relevant across all three Baltic States.

Thus, looking at Norway, Sweden and Finland, which have shared a single pavilion since 1968, it leaves me asking: do the Baltic States, which is each less than a third of the size of the Nordic countries, really need to strive to present their individual voices separately? Perhaps, as we approach the tenth anniversary of the 2016 Baltic Pavilion, it is worth recalling the power of polyphonic chants and considering the revival of a joint regional pavilion, this time not as a one-off exhibition, but as a long-term cultural infrastructure. Such a shared platform could enable the presentation of Baltic architectural issues in a way that is not only more comprehensive and of higher quality, but also more sustainable, with sufficient time and pooled resources for proper preparation.