SITU at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 and Fondazione Prada

Venice, Italy – May 2025 — SITU is proud to announce its participation in two major exhibitions during the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The studio will present work in the U.S. Pavilion, PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, and contribute to Diagrams, an exhibition at Ca’ Corner della Regina curated by AMO/OMA for the Fondazione Prada.

In collaboration with the New York City Department of Transportation and WXY Studio, SITU’s contribution to PORCH highlights Dining Out NYC, the city’s initiative to develop open source modular designs for outdoor dining installations. The project exemplifies how design can enhance the public realm, reimagining street-side dining as a form of the American porch—an adaptable, democratic space for civic and social life. Drawing inspiration from the quintessential New York City stoop, the installation reflects how temporary interventions can evolve into lasting urban infrastructure, improving access, safety, and vibrancy in the city.

“Our work explores how small scale incremental actions can have urban scale impacts.” said SITU cofounder Basar Girit, “Outdoor dining is a great example of how informal and creative public space interventions can transform city life and produce novel spaces of social interaction.”

PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity is organized by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas in collaboration with DesignConnects and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It explores the porch as both architectural typology and metaphor—embodying hospitality, community, and the porous boundaries between public and private life.

PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity will debut publicly on May 10, 2025, at the opening of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition.

Simultaneously, SITU Research is honored to participate in Diagrams, an exhibition conceived by AMO/OMA and Rem Koolhaas for Fondazione Prada’s Venice venue. Presented across the ground and first floors of the 18th-century Palazzo Ca’ Corner della Regina, Diagrams gathers more than 300 rare documents, publications, digital images, and videos, spanning from the 12th century to the present and drawn from a wide range of geographical and cultural contexts. Organized thematically around nine urgent global topics—Built Environment, Health, Inequality, Migration, Environment, Resources, War, Truth, and Value—the exhibition reflects the diagram’s enduring role as a visual tool for interpreting complex systems and communicating across disciplines and time.

SITU Research's contribution explores the diagram not only as a representational device but as an evidentiary tool—one that shapes how contested events are understood and litigated.

Through a selection of excerpts from recent visual investigations, SITU Research reflects on the evolving role of diagrams in their own work and the longer intellectual history of the use of the diagram across disciplines. “We’ve always seen diagrams as more than just demonstrative tools—they’re frameworks for accountability, analysis, and design,” said Brad Samuels, Director of SITU Research. “Diagrams help us render important facts visible—offering clarity where obfuscation often prevails. They allow us to organize and interpret complex bodies of evidence, and have the potential to help assemble scattered information into coherent narratives that can inform how we understand facts.”

Together, these parallel exhibitions underscore SITU’s commitment to using design as a tool for public engagement and critical inquiry. Whether through modular street infrastructure or the investigative capacity of the diagram, SITU’s contributions demonstrate a desire to reorient architecture toward civic purpose, expanded fields of practice and new spaces of accountability.

To learn more about PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, visit here.
Exhibition Dates: 10 May – 24 November 2025
Location: U.S. Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venice, Italy
Team: NYC DOT, WXY Studio, and SITU
Curated by: Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design in collaboration with DesignConnects and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

To learn more about Diagrams, visit here. Read the full press release here.
Exhibition Dates: 10 May – 24 November 2025
Location: Fondazione Prada Venice, Ca' Corner della Regina, Santa Croce, Venice, Italy
Curated by: AMO/OMA, led by Rem Koolhaas

For more information and press materials about “Diagrams”:
Contact Fondazione Prada at press@fondazioneprada.org and SITU Research at press@situ.nyc.