Building Biospheres by Bas Smets. Belgian Pavilion

"Building Biospheres" project by curator and landscape architect Bas Smets in collaboration with neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, will be presented at the Belgian pavilion, commissioned by the Flemish Institute of Architecture, exploring the symbiosis between nature, architecture, and humans. The exhibition showcases ongoing research into the potential impact of plant intelligence on architecture, and especially on the indoor climate.

The climate crisis questions the relationship between architecture and nature. Building Biospheres envisions a future where buildings evolve into dynamic biospheres through the natural intelligence of plants. By installing subtropical trees indoors, their behaviours are monitored and the harvested data is used to activate irrigation, lighting and ventilation to produce a self-regulating indoor microclimate.

During six months, the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale will serve as a prototype for this innovative research.

Bas Smets is a globally recognised landscape architect, most famous for his realisation of the Parc des Ateliers in Arles and Les Abords de Notre-Dame in Paris.

Building Biospheres 2025 by Bureau Bas Smets.

"The prototype in Venice allows us to test the possibility for plants to actively produce and control a building’s indoor climate. This makes us hope for an architecture as a microclimate where plants and humans can live together."

Bas Smets, curator Building Biospheres.

Building Biospheres
Throughout time, we have built shelters to protect ourselves from the weather’s unpredictability: temperature swings, wind, rain and snow. What began as rudimentary protection evolved into highly controlled microclimates, separating the indoor from the outdoor conditions. Today, most buildings have a completely artificial climate that responds to the needs of their users.

In nature, the desired climate for humans is most closely approximated in the subtropics, characterized by warm summers, mild winters and an almost constant temperature. Based on plants from this climate zone, Building Biospheres envisions a future where buildings evolve into dynamic biospheres. Plant behaviour is monitored with precision and the harvested data is used to activate irrigation, lighting and ventilation. This produces a new symbiosis between what the plants need, what the building can handle and what people desire.

Building Biospheres 2025 by Bureau Bas Smets.

Prototype
In the run-up to the Biennale Architettura 2025 in Venice, the team of Bas Smets, together with plant ecophysiologist Kathy Steppe of Ghent University and software developer Dirk De Pauw of Plant AnalytiX, worked from October 2024 to March 2025 on a prototype of the installation for the Belgian pavilion. Working in a greenhouse on Campus Coupure, they experimented with innovative climate control for buildings.

The Belgian Pavilion as a Laboratory
Being the oldest national pavilion in the Giardini (1907), the Belgian pavilion consists of a large central hall with side rooms. The installation consists of more than 200 plants and occupies the central area beneath the skylight. The pavilion’s front rooms provide the project with historical context. The room at the back of the pavilion visualizes real-time data on the prototype’s performance. In the two side rooms, a new generation of Belgian architects explore what this natural intelligence can mean for architecture.

Section. Building Biospheres 2025 by Bureau Bas Smets.

Invited Architects on Building Biospheres
Four young teams are developing new architecture in which natural intelligence plays the leading role. The architects will investigate the spatial impact of the prototype that curators Bas Smets and Stefano Mancuso are presenting in the Belgian pavilion. The designers will work intensively with the curators, coordinated by Lisa De Visscher (freelance architectural consultant) and Petrus Kemme (Flanders Architecture Institute). The design teams are:

•    Elmēs
•    Maud Gerard Goossens and Henri Uijtterhaegen
•    Panta
•    Lisa Mandelartz Schenk and Steven Schenk.

Building Biospheres by Bas Smets. Photograph by Michiel De Cleene.

Floor plan. Building Biospheres 2025 by Bureau Bas Smets.

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More information

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Curator

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Bas Smets in collaboration with Stefano Mancuso.

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Exhibitors

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Bureau Bas Smets.- Bas Smets, Eva De Meersman, Luka Cockx.
Ghent University.- Kathy Steppe.
Plant AnalytiX.- Dirk De Pauw.
Elmès.
Maud Gerard Goossens and Henri Uijtterhaegen.
Panta.
Lisa Mandelartz Schenk and Steven Schenk.
Lisa De Visscher.
Petrus Kemme.

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Commissioner

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Dennis Pohl, director of Flanders Architecture Institute.

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Producer

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Flanders Architecture Institute.

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Additional support of

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Ghent University.

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Partners

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Main partner.- Reynaers Aluminium.
Partners.- Luma Foundation, Arbor, JCX, the Merode, SETP, Leiedal, Vande Moortel, Van Den Weghe, Meter, Rayn Growing Systems, Vaisala, Catec.

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Dates

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10.05 > 23.11.2025.

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Venue / Location

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Belgian pavilion, in the Giardini. Venice, Italy.

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Photography

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Michiel De Cleene, Bureau Bas Smets, Flanders Architecture Institute, Dieter Daniels, Jade Quintin, Stefano Mancuso.

Bas Smets

Bas Smets born in 1975 in Hasselt, Belgium, is a landscape architect with a multidisciplinary background that has shaped his unique approach to creating innovative and sustainable urban spaces. He founded his firm in Brussels in 2007 and has since completed more than 50 projects in more than 12 countries with his team of 20 architects and landscape architects. These projects vary in scale from territorial visions to infrastructural landscapes, from large parks to private gardens, and from city centres to film sets.

His realised projects include the park of Thurn & Taxis and the Saint- Gilles Plaza in Brussels; the public space around the Trinity Tower in Paris La Défense, the Sunken Garden and Mandrake Hotel in London, the Himara Waterfront in Albania, and recently the Parc des Ateliers in Arles. France.

Several of his large projects are under construction, such as the urban forest surrounding the Part Dieu station in Lyon, the Nieuw Zuid project in Antwerp and a sculpture park in Amagansett, New York. Each of these projects is part of interrelated research into the possible role and ambition of landscape projects. The aim is to invent 'Augmented Landscapes' by using the logic of nature. These augmented landscapes produce a new microclimate while creating new atmospheres. The collaboration with artists and scientists takes a central role in this research.

Bas Smets received his master's degree in Architecture and Civil Engineering from the University of Leuven and his master's in Landscape from the University of Geneva. He has taught in various schools such as the Ecole d'Architecture la Cambre in Brussels, the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris and the Technische Universität in Graz.

In 2008 he was awarded the biennial French prize for young landscape architects 'Les Nouveaux Albums des lunes Architectes et des Paysagistes'. A first monographic exhibition was presented in 2013 by deSingel International Arts Centre and Arc-en-Reve centre for architecture in Bordeaux.

In 2017 he was appointed General Commissioner for the Biennial of Architecture of Bordeaux and in 2018 he received the Award for Urbanism and Public Space from the French Academy of Architecture.

Stefano Mancuso

Stefano Mancuso, born in Catanzaro, Italy in 1965, is the founder of plant neurobiology and one of the world's leading authorities in this field, which explores signalling and communication at all levels of biological organization. He is a professor at the University of Florence and has published more than 300 scientific papers in international journals. His latest books (translated into twenty-seven different languages) include Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence; The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior (Galileo Award); The Nation of Plants; The Incredible journey of Plants; and Tree Stories. Recent exhibitions include: The Florence Experiment (with Carsten Holler) at Palazzo Strozzi (2018, Italy); The Nation of Plants during the XXII Triennale di Milano (2019, Italy); The Botany of Leonardo (with Fritjiof Capra) at Santa Maria Novella (2019, Italy); Symbiosia (with Thijs Biersteker) at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (2019, France); Econtinuum (with Thijs Biersteker) at NXT Museum (2021, the Netherlands); Mutual Aid at the Biennale Architettura 2021 (Venice, Italy); Talking God at the Thailand Biennale (2022); and Prana at the Museum of Oriental Art (MAO) (2022, Italy).

Dennis Pohl

Dennis Pohl has been the director of the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi) since 2024. As a postdoctoral researcher, he was a member of the Design, Data and Society group at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and worked as a research coordinator at The New Open. He frequently publishes on the relationship between energy, politics and architecture in the post-war era. In his latest book, Building Carbon Europe (Sternberg Press, 2023), he analyses how architectural design influenced political planning in post-war Europe. Dennis was a research associate at the DFG research group ‘Knowledge in the Arts’ at the University of the Arts in Berlin (2015–18) and DAAD Fellow at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York (2018). He is the recipient of a fellowship for the LOEWE project ‘Architectures of Order’ at Goethe University Frankfurt (2022).

Published on: April 14, 2025

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