Qatar’s National Pavilion at Venice Biennale Will Be Designed by Lina Ghotmeh
139April 12, 2025
Qatar has chosen Lebanese-born architect Lina Ghotmeh to design the country’s permanent pavilion at theVenice Biennale. The pavilion is to rise in the Giardini alongside those of the US, France, England, and roughly thirty other countries. It is only the third permanent pavilion to be constructed at the Biennale in the past fifty years, after those of Australia and South Korea.
Ghotmeh, founder of the Paris-based firm Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture, is known for contemporary designs centering ecological concerns, traditional craftmanship, and a concern with materials. Among the projects she has been responsible for to date are the redesign of the Western Range galleries of the British Museum, announced earlier this year; the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion in London; Ateliers Hermès in Normandy, France’s first low-carbon, energy-positive industrial building (2023); Stone Garden Housing tower in Beirut (2020); and the Estonian National Museum in Tartu (2016). Her firm is also designing the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum in Saudi Arabia and the Bahrain Pavilion for Expo 2025.
“[Ghotmeh’s] work is inspiring new and traditional audiences with its sensitivity to the human condition and its confident, innovative flair,” said Qatar Museums chair Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in a statement. “Lina has a worldview and sensibility that has grown from her native Lebanon to reach across cultures. She has wholeheartedly embraced our vision for the Qatar Pavilion as a platform for the artistic, architectural, and cultural creativity of our nation and the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.”
No completion date has yet been announced for the pavilion, but a temporary structure will be erected on its future site in May, as part of the Nineteenth Venice Architecture Biennale.