The Venice Biennale of Architecture demands a lot of reading. Unveiled this month, the 19th edition of the world’s foremost architectural festival entails a feast (or a barrage) for the eyes. Carlo Ratti’s central exhibit, “Intelligens,” boasts some 750 participants and 300-odd projects, served up via a wealth of installations and a deluge of wall text. Across the national pavilions, meanwhile, complex questions of techno-optimism, vernacular traditions or material salvage are often paired with appropriately detailed explanations. The Canadian pavilion tells its story differently.

Stepping inside, a wall of tanks greets the eye, creating a kind of futuristic — if dystopic — entry foyer. Stacked three by three, the nine transparent cases are home to an assortment of sinuous greenish-blue lattice pattern structures, all fed by pipes that keep the glass walls consistently dewy with humidity.

Past the foyer, the same structures emerge from a shallow pool of water. Here, the sandy latticework climbs a pair of brown towers, evoking leaves suspended between the branches of artificial trees. Periodically, an attendant in a blue lab coat will wade into the water to mist the structures with a fine spray of synthetic seawater. It comes across less like an exhibition than a science experiment in motion — a feeling amplified by the exposed shelves of back of house chemical storage and maintenance equipment that bookend the spiral-shaped pavilion.

It isn’t over yet. The installation continuous outdoors, culminating in the pocket courtyard tucked alongside the pavilion’s entrance. Here, I encounter — and even touch — another pair of the blue-green forms en plein air. It feels like a freshly built sandcastle. At the exit, a wall text explains the strange and poetic array of forms. Dubbed “Picoplanktonics,” Canada’s official entry to the 2025 biennale comprises a series of 3D-printed sand structures, which are held together by novel bio-technology that incorporates living matter into the structure — including a type of bacteria that draws carbon dioxide from the air.

Curated by Living Room Collective, an interdisciplinary team comprising Canadian architect and ETH Zurich bio-researcher Andrea Shin Ling together with the core group of Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui and Clayton Lee, Picoplanktonics is a fusion of architecture, art and science. As Ling explains, the project explores the potential of carbon reduction through biological building.

Living Room Collective’s Nicholas Hoban, Clayton Lee, Andrea Shin Ling and Vincent Hui (l-r).

“The sand structures contain a biologically based binder — which is like a glue — and cyanobacteria. And this type of bacteria is particularly interesting because it’s a species that’s able to do something called dual carbon sequestration,” Ling tells me. “It can sequester CO2 both through photosynthesis and something called biocementation; it makes minerals that bind the sand together, but it’s a very slow process.” Over time, the structures gradually (though only slightly) strengthen as they absorb more carbon.

Picoplanktonics is a test bed. As Ling notes, the three different environments are an opportunity to explore how the science experiment works outside of the lab. “As scientists, we’re used to testing things in a controlled, sterile setting, but if we want to actually harness them, we have to understand how they react with other microbes, including from our own bodies,” says Ling. “The tanks are a fairly controlled, regulated condition, while the sculptures are more susceptible to changing conditions, and the outdoor structures are completely exposed to the elements.”

For Living Room Collective, the aspiration is that cyanobacteria-infused structures can eventually become part of design practice — potentially as roof or facade installations that introduce carbon sequestration into individual buildings. Could it scale into a practical architectural solution? I kindly doubt it. Just a few days into the biennale, indoor and outdoor forms alike already fray with wear, with the majestic sand sculptures dissolving into the pool of water.

Yet, even if the practical applications prove (at least in the short term) relatively limited, Picoplanktonics’ fleeting structures leave a lasting impact. As an exhibition design, it elegantly navigates the graceful yet irregular contours of the Canadian pavilion — a compact 1958 design by Italy’s BBPR that’s proven notoriously challenging for curators to program. A walk through the space is imbued with a sense of passage, while the structures themselves — the fragile stuff of sand and organism — express impermanence and evolution. These are living things.

According to Living Room Collective’s Clayton Lee, the exhibition’s ethereal nature is core to its meaning. “We’re attempting to foster a kind of present and future conversation. It’s not about making something perfect and final,” says Lee, a performance artist with a background in theatre. And there is a thespian sort of beauty to watching the caretakers tend to the delicate 3D-printed latticework, putting the built and natural environment into conversation with us humans. “It’s a sort of performance, but the act of taking care of something is not performative,” says Ling.

Days after the press preview and opening day crowds thin out, I return to a much quieter Canadian pavilion. It looks all the smaller when the place is nearly empty, sitting discretely tucked into a corner between the much grander, older edifices representing Great Britain and Germany. I stand and watch as the attendants quietly do the work of care and maintenance, performing the banal good acts that — if we’re lucky — will increasingly come to define architectural practice in the decades to come. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it, though I know there’s much more to read about the science behind it all. That can come later. For now, I’m happy to watch.