PORCH: A Collective Threshold Between Architecture and Community

Starting May 10, 2025, the United States Pavilion in the Giardini of the Venice Biennale opens its doors with PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, a project that explores the American porch as a space of hospitality, civic exchange, and cultural expression. The exhibition aligns with the overall theme of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective, curated by Carlo Ratti. The project was developed by a multidisciplinary team comprising Marlon Blackwell Architects, Stephen Burks Man Made, D.I.R.T. studio, and TEN x TEN.

Organized by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, in collaboration with DesignConnects and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, PORCH is co-curated by Peter MacKeith, Susan Chin, and Rod Bigelow. The project transforms the Pavilion into a contemporary porch made of prefabricated solid wood and Venetian-sourced rammed earth. The space hosts artworks, curated objects, generous furnishings, and a shaded platform designed for dialogue and encounter.

A Threshold That Becomes a Destination

In American domestic culture, the porch is more than just a threshold: it is an extension of the home, open to the neighborhood—an in-between space linking the intimacy of the house to the collective space of the street. PORCH revives and reinterprets this architectural typology as a model for a more generous architecture—one not only meant to contain, but to welcome. The Pavilion thus becomes a porous structure, where architecture invites encounter and acts as a medium of proximity.

At the heart of the project is the polyphonic nature of its contributions: a national open call selected 54 participants from across the United States, each invited to propose their interpretation of the porch as a physical, social, or symbolic space. Every submission—whether a model, story, image, or object—serves as a "window" onto a potential way of inhabiting the boundary between the individual and the collective.
The result is an emotional and political geography of American architecture, composed of plural perspectives, diverse territories, and intergenerational practices.

Beyond the Installation: A Pavilion That Lives Over Time

Enriching the exhibition is a documentary section tracing the genealogy of the porch in the cultural and urban imagination of the United States, presenting its historical and symbolic complexity. Alongside this is PORCH: A Library, a collection of texts, narratives, and reflections spanning architectural history, social sciences, and beyond—broadening the scope of the research across disciplinary boundaries.

The project also looks to the future: at the end of the Biennale, part of the installation will be donated and repurposed as educational tools for Italian schools, extending the civic and pedagogical impact of the initiative over time

Marking the Pavilion’s calendar will be PORCH Fest, a cycle of public events—including readings, performances, conversations, and workshops—held at four moments throughout the year, turning the Pavilion into an active civic space. More than just an installation, PORCH is envisioned as a living space: meant to be inhabited, traversed, and shared. It is a project that rejects the idea of the pavilion as a neutral container, choosing instead to act as a platform for relationships and collective intelligence.

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