This year for the first time, the Vatican will participate in the Venice Architecture Biennale.
The Catholic Church’s country-within-a-city tapped Italian curator and architecture historian Francesco Dal Co to select ten architects from ten countries to design ten chapels for the pavilion. The chapels must be able to be reconstructed elsewhere, as the Vatican has plans to place them in localities that lack their own houses of worship after the exhibition closes. Paraguay media ABC and Última Hora first reported the news, and ArchDaily picked it up for the stateside audience.
Here are the ten chosen architects:
- Andrew Berman, USA
- Carla Juaçaba, Brazil
- Eduardo Souto de Moura, Portugal
- Eva Prats & Ricardo Flores, Spain
- Francesco Cellini, Italy
- Javier Corvalán, Paraguay
- Norman Foster, United Kingdom
- Sean Godsell, Australia
- Smiljan Radic, Chile
- Teronobu Fujimori, Japan
Although this is the Vatican’s first time at the Venice Architecture Biennale, it first entered the other, (much) older Venice Biennale in 2013. The international art showcase occurs in the architecture event’s off years.