Doctoral fellow Andrea Shin Ling leads collective to represent Canada at the Biennale di Venezia 2025
The Living Room Collective was selected amongst a group of five shortlisted candidates. The pavilion utilizes materials embedded with living cells to create a biological architecture.
The Canada Council for the Arts external pageannounced that the Living Room Collective will represent Canada at the Biennale die Venezia, the 19th International Architecture Exhibition that takes place from May to November 2025. The collective was selected amongst a group of external pagefive shortlisted candidates. It is led by architect and bio-designer Andrea Shin Ling, who is currently a doctoral fellow at the Chair of Digital Building Technologies of ETH professor Benjamin Dillenburger, which is part of the Institute of Technology in Architecture. Together with the other core team members Nicholas Hoban from the University of Toronto, Vincent Hui from the Toronto Metropolitan University and Clayton Lee from the Fierce Festival she will curate the next architecture exhibition at the Canada Pavilion.
The group of architects, scientists, artists, and educators work at the intersection of architecture, biology, and digital fabrication. The collective investigates how a biological architecture could be fabricated. The project is planned as a living pavilion that utilizes materials embedded with living cells in an architectural context. It uses innovative fabrication techniques and integrates structural reinforcement and carbon sequestration into living structures that are then tended to throughout their life cycle. "The project is an extension of our living and regenerative materials research at the chair for Digital Building Technologies, in collaboration with the Macromolecular Engineering Lab," Andrea Shin Ling explains. "It was made possible by the ITA fellowship and the Advanced Engineering with Living Materials Initiative at ETH."
The exhibition will demonstrate the possibilities of a collaborative relationship with nature. The group wants to “engage in a critical dialogue around alternative design practices that can sit alongside contemporary carbon neutral building strategies”, the collective writes. “In the face of climate collapse, the Living Room Collective proposes a new model of architecture that places regenerative processes and care at its core”, it says in a statement by the selection committee. “The project seeks to upend an architectural legacy of a human-centered built environment, imagining a radically transformed future for both Canadian and global architecture.”
Living Room Collective
Andrea Shin Ling is an architect and bio-designer who works at the intersection of design, digital fabrication and biology. She is currently a doctoral fellow at the Chair of Digital Building Technologies at the Institute of Technology & Architecture at ETH Zurich.
Nicholas Hoban is the Director of Applied Technologies at the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto, and a Lecturer within the Daniels technology specialist program.
Vincent Hui is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Science, with knowledge across diverse domains from design studios to digital tools.
Clayton Lee is a curator, producer and performance artist. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s 2023 artists-in-residence.