On May 19th, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Venice Biennale, along with Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, curators of the 2027 Architecture Biennale, unveiled the title and theme of the forthcoming exhibition: Do Architecture – For the Possibility of Coexistence Facing a Real Reality.

In a press statement, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu elaborated on the chosen theme: “All these questions point to one essential path: facing real reality and local practice, and directly ‘do architecture’, especially a kind of ‘do’ that is grounded in bodily touch. It is precisely through this concrete act of ‘do’ that things which seem impossible to bring together can gather in one place.”

Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu were announced as the curators in late 2025 shortly after the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, directed by Carlo Ratti and titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., finished up. The couple established Amateur Architecture Studio in 1997, and launched the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art in 2003 and the School of Architecture in 2007. Noteworthy projects by them include the Ningbo Historic Museum, the renovation of Wencun Village, and the Xi'an Opera House and Concert Hall. Wang Shu, who received the Pritzker Prize in 2012, joins a legacy of Pritzker Prize-winning architects, including Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, and Alejandro Aravena, to curate the Architecture Biennale. Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu were invited to participate in both the 2010 Biennale by Sejima and the 2016 Biennale by Aravena.

“Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu return architecture to its most concrete, physical and essential dimension: that of building in direct relation to the land, to the materials, to the communities, and to the reality of places,” said Buttafuoco of the duo. “Their philosophy reaffirms the value of ‘doing’ as a cultural, ethical and constructive act, shunning spectacle and global standardization. Through the reuse of materials, traditional craftsmanship and slow transformation processes, they propose a vision of architecture that incorporates the past as a living matter of the present.”

The 20th International Architecture Exhibition will take place from May 8 to November 21, 2027, at the Giardini and Arsenale, among other venues in Venice.