The Polish Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale presents a thought-provoking exhibition titled Lares and Penates: On Building a Sense of Security in Architecture. This exhibit explores how architecture serves as a form of protection in an increasingly uncertain world. It examines not just the functional aspects of building but also the emotional and cultural roles that architecture plays in providing security.
Curated by art historian Aleksandra Kędziorek, architect Maciej Siuda, and artists Krzysztof Maniak and Katarzyna Przezwańska, the exhibition shifts the focus from the designer's perspective to how individuals inhabit space and construct a sense of safety in their everyday lives. Rather than solely considering the architectural elements, the exhibition delves into the deep-rooted fears, desires, and needs that drive people to create secure environments.
Drawing on research conducted throughout Poland, the exhibit highlights age-old rituals and practices still observed today. For example, people place candles in windows to ward off storms, hang garlands at construction sites to prevent accidents, and use ancient thresholds to mark the boundary between the inside and outside. Even the process of selecting building sites often involves using rods to detect underground water veins, a practice believed to influence the safety and stability of the structure.
Alongside these traditional practices, the exhibition also explores contemporary safety features that are part of modern architecture—such as emergency exits, fire alarms, peepholes, alarm systems, and padlocks. These familiar elements, often overlooked in daily life, are presented as essential tools that help manage and maintain safety.
Unlike many modern exhibitions that rely on digital representation, this display emphasizes the physicality and tactility of objects. Full-scale pieces are presented in minimalistic scenography, allowing their materiality and cultural significance to come to the forefront. For instance, a fire extinguisher might be set into a niche resembling a fresco or framed in a mosaic, inviting visitors to reconsider its symbolic and emotional roles in protecting human lives.
Lares and Penates are Roman deities traditionally associated with safeguarding the home and hearth. In today’s language, they still evoke the notion of guardianship and domestic security. The exhibition ties these ancient symbols to contemporary concepts of safety, drawing on the overarching theme of the 2025 Biennale—Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective.—to explore how these universal codes, deeply embedded in our collective intelligence, continue to shape the architecture of protection.
The Polish Pavilion’s exhibition is part of a broader conversation at the Biennale, with national pavilions exploring how architecture responds to the complexities of the present. For example, the Croatian Pavilion rethinks architectural and policy errors as generative tools for design, while the Romanian Pavilion’s HUMAN SCALE reflects on architectural drawing as a medium that integrates multiple forms of intelligence. The Lebanese Pavilion addresses the theme of ecocide and environmental healing through its exhibition The Land Remembers.
Through this exhibition, the Polish Pavilion encourages us to reconsider how architecture has always functioned as more than just a physical shelter. It has long been a cultural and emotional space—one where the boundaries between the inside and outside, the safe and the dangerous, are not merely marked by walls but by deep, universal human needs. Whether in ancient traditions or modern-day design, architecture continues to play a crucial role in providing security in our ever-changing world.