Sustainability underpins new Rolex Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale

In partnership with Rolex

Precision, design vision and sustainability form an integral part in all Rolex projects – from the brand’s finely crafted watches to its discerning architectural endeavours. The latter, with a list of collaborators that reads like a who’s who of the field’s contemporary scene, include the Rolex Learning Center for EPFL in Lausanne by SANAA, and the Rolex USA headquarters in New York by David Chipperfield. In the same spirit, Rolex, a long-standing supporter of the Venice Architecture Biennale, has announced that it is launching a new pavilion in the Giardini for this year’s event, which is open from 10 May to 23 November 2025.

The building, designed by architect Mariam Issoufou, was conceived to represent the brand’s commitment to long-lasting, quality design with a sustainability-minded soul. Drawing on Issoufou’s architecture practice and experience (her studio, Mariam Issoufou Architects, has bases in Niamey, Zurich and New York), the pavilion is composed of natural materials – it features a recycled timber exterior; a translucent, coloured glass ceiling composed of elements made by Murano craftspeople; and terrazzo flooring, comprising an aggregate that includes recycled crushed ‘Cotisso’ glass (a leftover from the glassmaking process).

This palette not only brings texture and an artisanal, handmade approach to the forefront, but it also connects the building to its location, nodding to Venice’s rich cultural tapestry, as well as its fragile, precious historical context and ecological vulnerability.

Within the new space, a multi-layered exhibit is set to hone in further on these themes through film-led displays. A piece on the making of the pavilion itself will take the visitor on a journey through its different stages, telling the story of its creation.

A second film, a documentary titled Bourj Hammoud: The Value of the Existing, broadens the lens of exploration. Through the 2023-2024 Rolex mentoring programme, French architect Anne Lacaton, a firm proponent of building reuse and redesign in architecture, worked with young Lebanese-Armenian architect Arine Aprahamian. The results of their two-year collaboration, Aprahamian’s research project, are captured in this piece, which ‘explores how small and targeted interventions are the right strategy to improve daily life in Bourj Hammoud, a dense neighbourhood of Beirut where [the architect] grew up’.

Two slide shows examine the traditions and processes behind the careful refurbishment of two Rolex boutiques – in Milan, within the prestigious Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and in Tokyo, occupying four floors in the Rolex Tower. ACPV Architects spearheaded the former, and Gwenael Nicolas of Tokyo-based design studio Curiosity was behind the latter, each author working closely with local artisans to achieve an interior that both nods to the past and looks to the future.

Drawing on themes that feel current and urgent, such as sustainability and a striving to preserve tradition while fostering innovation (which also gently echoes the 2025 biennale curator Carlo Ratti’s theme ‘Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective’, underlining our connection with nature), the new Rolex Pavilion in Venice will be unveiled to the public on the biennale’s launch day on 10 May.

rolex.com