The Bursting Bubbles Conversations links architects with protagonists from outside its disciplinary boundaries to talk about ways in which they escape their own bubble. The conversations will be published individually during the Biennale Architettura 2025 and as part of VOLUME 68. The publications are edited and designed by María Mazzanti, Managing Editor of VOLUME.

How can architecture break out of insular modes?

Architecture and design have a long legacy of operating inside their own bubbles: reinforcing their own logics, aesthetics, vocabulary, and networks with the effect of becoming self-referential and exclusive. These bubbles shape who architects collaborate with, how projects take form, and ultimately, who benefits from spatial production. In Bursting Bubbles, the central thematic arc of VOLUME’s intervention at the Venice Biennale, we ask: How can architecture break out of its insular modes and engage more productively with other disciplines and publics? How can we develop ways of working that produce exchange rather than reinforcing hierarchies and silos? What is there to learn from others outside of our bubbles who have challenged and burst out of their own bubble?

Conversations with ‘bubble bursters’

To explore these questions, we are bringing together architects and designers to start conversations with bubble bursters – these bubble bursters are people who challenge disciplinary boundaries, dismantle exclusivity, and introduce alternative ways of thinking, working, and making together. These dialogues will trace encounters that disrupt, expand, and reimagine the role of architecture and design in a world that demands more collective, interdependent, and transformative practices.

Conversation # 1: Zuloark / Roger Bernat

For Bursting Bubbles #1, a conversation between architect Andrea González (Zuloark) and theater director Roger Bernat explores fiction, participation, and collective memory as tools for bursting the bubbles of spectatorship. Together, they reflect how cooperative theater might offer new ideas for practicing collectivity in design practices.

Conversation # 2: Rem Koolhaas / Sjeng Scheijen

For Bursting Bubbles #2, a conversation between Rem Koolhaas and scholar Sjeng Scheijen, explores the tension between historical truth and political narrative, examining how ideological bubbles shape our understanding of Russia, war, and the West.

Conversations to come

Conversation # 3: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli / Rimini Protokoll
Conversation # 4: Ethel Baraona Pohl / Monica Bello
Conversation # 5: Ludwig Engel / David Zilber