Building Biospheres is the catalogue of Belgium's pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, a working prototype in which plants, rather than machines, conditioned the air inside a building.
About This Book
Curated by landscape architect Bas Smets with neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, the pavilion was planted with subtropical species linked to sensors and responsive technology. Over six months the plants cooled the space, regulated its humidity and exchanged gases, turning the building into a small, self-adjusting biosphere.
This compact book gathers the thinking behind that experiment. Essays and interviews range across architecture, botany, neurobiology, artificial intelligence and philosophy, asking whether buildings might be designed with living systems rather than against them, and what plant intelligence could teach architects about climate.
Key Features
- Documents a full-scale prototype of a building climatised by plants
- Essays by Emanuele Coccia, Lydia Kallipoliti, Véronique Patteeuw and others
- Interviews with Stefano Mancuso, plant ecophysiologist Kathy Steppe and the pavilion's technical team
- Photography by Michiel De Cleene made inside the working prototype
- Pocket format suited to reading on site or in the studio
What You'll Discover
- How plants can be enlisted to regulate temperature, humidity and air quality indoors
- The feedback loop between living systems, sensors and building services
- Arguments for treating vegetation as an active participant in architecture
- Ideas from neurobiology and philosophy about plant intelligence
- What a biosphere-led approach might mean for future building design
About the Editors
Bas Smets leads Bureau Bas Smets, a Brussels landscape practice known for its work on public space and microclimates, and co-curated the pavilion. He edited the publication with Dennis Pohl and Bart Decroos, drawing together contributors from architecture, botany, neurobiology and philosophy.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Dimensions: TBC
- Pages: 320
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789492567413
- Publisher: Flanders Architecture Institute
Perfect For: Landscape architects, architects interested in passive and nature-based climate design, Biennale followers and readers drawn to the meeting of ecology and the built environment.