The Spanish Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will present "Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium," a project curated by architects Roi Salgueiro and Manuel Bouzas that explores how architecture can reduce the environmental externalities associated with production processes to advance the decarbonization of architecture in Spain through an approach structured around five main axes: Materials, Energy, Trades, Waste, and Emissions, each approached from the perspective of architecture, photography, and research.
In this sense, the Spanish Pavilion explores possible solutions by analyzing how architecture can overcome the externalization model and contribute to the country's decarbonization through the use of local and regenerative materials and their reconnection to the landscapes from which they originate. It also highlights the work of a new generation of Spanish architects who rigorously and radically examine how architecture can mediate the balance between ecologies and economies.
"Internalities analyzes how, to what extent, at what costs, and through which buildings, cities, and territories, Spanish architecture is leaving behind the economies of externalization."
Roi Salgueiro and Manuel Bouzas, curators of Internalities at the Spanish Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2025.
Emissions hall. Photograph by Milena Villalba.
Internalities is the project selected through an open call to represent Spain, responding to the proposal of this year's Biennale curator, Carlo Ratti. Under the motto "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective," Ratti's proposal seeks to highlight the different intelligences being developed to combat the climate crisis.
The exhibition is promoted by the Government of Spain, through the General Secretariat for the Urban Agenda, Housing, and Architecture of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda (MIVAU), in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). The project also has the official sponsorship of FINSA.
Internalities, a new concept
The Spanish pavilion proposed by Roi Salgueiro and Manuel Bouzas is built around a word that doesn't exist: Internalities. The simplest way to define the idea of Internality is in contrast to Externality, which is a well-established concept in disciplines such as economics and ecology.
The term Externality was coined by British economist Arthur Pigou in 1920 to describe the "indirect costs affecting people and territories that are unrelated to the production of a product." According to this definition, externalities are the set of unquantified repercussions, byproducts, residues, emissions, and waste that underlie routine production processes. One of these processes is construction, which is responsible for 37% of global CO2 emissions.
"Construction generates externalities when we extract materials, burn energy, displace local trades, produce waste, and generate emissions. Externalities thus cause a serious imbalance between the buildings we construct and the territories they affect."
Roi Salgueiro and Manuel Bouzas, curators of "Internalities."
Labor hall. Photograph by Caterina Barjau.
In this sense, Internalities proposes an architecture that responds to environmental externalities with the aim of reversing them. Through various proposals, the project seeks to explore how architects can aspire to not depend on the intercontinental flow of resources, but rather be able to internally balance the relationships between ecologies and economies.
Five Axes of Research
Through projects, research, and photography, the pavilion examines the use of local, regenerative, and low-carbon resources. As a whole, the project questions how to reduce the emissions associated with the extraction, manufacturing, distribution, installation, and deconstruction of the architecture we inhabit. The exhibition delves into the regional ecologies of resources such as wood, stone, and earth, as well as the forests, quarries, and soils from which they originate.
The exhibition is structured around five axes of internality for the decarbonization of architecture in Spain: Materials, Energy, Trades, Waste, and Emissions. Each axis has been addressed by a team of local architects and photographers who have studied a specific territory and resource in Spain.
- The first axis, Materials, analyzes the value chains of natural and regenerative materials in the Cantabrian coast, from forestry practices to the wood industry. The research was conducted by Daniel Ibáñez and Carla Ferrer, along with photographer María Azkarate.
- The second, Energy, examines the energy transition and its landscape implications, focusing on wind and hydroelectric power generation on the northwest Atlantic coast. This research was conducted by Estar, formed by Aurora Armental and Stefano Ciurlo, along with photographer Luis Díaz.
- The third, Trades, investigates how to de-escalate dependence on global technologies to recover local construction intelligence associated with land use in the Mediterranean region. In this case, Anna and Eugeni Bach led the research alongside photographer Caterina Barjau.
- The fourth, Waste, explores strategies for recovering, recycling, and reusing discarded materials in construction, with a case study in the Madrid metropolitan area. Lucas Muñoz led the research, while Ana Amado was in charge of the photography.
- And the last, Emissions, addresses the complete CO2 cycle throughout a building's lifespan, from extraction to demolition, with examples of emissions reduction in the Balearic Islands. This research was led by Carles Oliver and David Mayol, along with photographer Milena Villalba.
Materials hall. Photograph by María Azkarate.
The Exhibition
The exhibition will consist of a central hall serving as an introduction and will bring together the 16 architectural projects selected through a call for proposals. These architectural and landscape works in Spain, created by different studios, will be presented alongside 32 models and demonstrate the diversity of architectural approaches being undertaken throughout the country to balance ecologies and economies.
This overview is completed by the five side halls that will house the results of the research topics addressed by the teams of researchers and architects to analyze the decarbonization of architecture in Spain: Materials, Energy, Trades, Waste, and Emissions. Thus, the side halls will complete the pavilion's narrative, highlighting the alternatives being considered in Spain to address the issues at hand.
Furthermore, the exhibition will be built entirely with the materials featured in the show, with a prominent role for wood from communal forests in Galicia, thanks to the sponsorship of the lumber company FINSA. The exhibition will also feature a public program consisting of talks and seminars. The latter are being held at institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and the Cornell University School of Architecture. Coinciding with the opening in Venice, a public program will be held on May 10th, featuring participants in the exhibition's research galleries (Materials, Energy, Labor, Residues, Emissions).
To fuel interest until the opening of the Biennial, a map of Spain will be published, bringing together the landscapes and resources analyzed in the exhibition. Conceived as a collective and open-access tool for all citizens, this mapping transcends political boundaries to reveal the Iberian Peninsula as a key productive ecosystem in the country's decarbonization process.
