The pavilion for the Nordic countries—located in the Giardini, among its other neoclassical, modernist and contemporary counterparts that declare their distinct, sovereign status—is a minimalist, seemingly lightweight structure. Rhythmic contraptions of concrete and glass encase two trees that occupy the site, demarcating the national pavilion's boundaries, with the building and its visitors circulating these nodes. Its glass facade conceals nothing; inside, one can marvel at the ethereality of the concrete, rendered weightless by an abundance of natural light. On encountering this white cube—this pure, minimalist paradigm bound to the tenets of modernism—performance artist Teo Ala-Ruona had the urge to destroy it. The pavilion, a symbol of petromodernity¹ according to the artist, operates as a stage where normative gender performances are reinforced. Critiquing the subliminal ways in which the built environment controls our identities and bodily autonomy, Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture, is a performance art-based project conceived by Ala-Ruona with curator Kaisa Karvinen for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.

"I think of my trans body—and more broadly, the very existence of transcorporeality—as a transformative potential that alters how we think. It shows us that ideas of a permanent and essentialist purity of the human are unfounded," Ala-Ruona notes in conversation with STIR, "What is essential in the nature of transcorporeality’s self-modification—whether it takes place at the level of language or matter—is that this modification is undertaken in the service of a more livable life. The re-imagining of the self happens in order to break free from preordained frames. How might ideas of building a life that challenges norms, and is more livable, serve as the foundation for the human image that guides architecture?"

How should we reconsider the petromodern remains? What should we destroy, and what should we repair? – Teo Ala-Ruona, Bodytopian Architecture (2025)

Positioning transcorporeality² as a paradigm for the future and the trans body as a lens to examine architecture, the speculative proposal by the Finnish artist is based on LGBTQIA+ lived experiences and the notion of transgression; of impurity infiltrating the virtuous and moral, an ideal upheld by the modernising project. Ala-Ruona presents his arguments as a series of five scores that dwell on impurity, decategorisation, performance, technobody and reuse to analyse what the pavilion designed by Sverre Fehn in the late 1950s represents - modernist architecture and its pervasive effect on human behaviour. This extension of Ala-Ruona’s ongoing work on trans embodiment and ecology suggests a new orientation from which to engage with our buildings, and in this suggestion calls for a disavowal of the extractivist mentalities of the Anthropocene. "The desire to destroy is directed at the legacy of modernism, which shapes social power structures and influences our perception of the body, eventually impacting architectural design processes," he notes in an essay accompanying the project, which underlies its theoretical framework. Destruction inherently ruins; it makes dirty what was pure, and through this messiness, a new world order can emerge, Ala-Ruona theorises. "Ecological thinking must be able to stretch to include questions of aesthetics and waste, rather than remaining a form of greenwashing, in which most of the produced aesthetics still emphasize cleanliness and smoothness," he urges in conversation.

The pavilion declares itself a bodytopia³, the word spray-painted in neon orange on the pavilion's clear glass facade. As Ala-Ruona writes in his essay, "Just as I see bodies as inherently mutable and adaptable, in the concept of bodytopia, I consider both the built environment and the bodies within it to be changeable." The body transformed by architecture, which in turn transforms architecture, becomes the lens through which to imagine otherwise. Inside, in the daylight filled space, empty of artefacts, stands a decrepit cuboid, rebars poking through disintegrating concrete. On the other end of the room is a derelict car, with two concrete pillars supporting a stage jammed into its windshields. The only other objects in the expansive space are two screens and two benches. It's sparse yet eerie at the same time in the image of decay it presents. This suggestion of impurity, the first score or thematic tentpole for the showcase, is posed as a challenge to the ideal of purity in modernism.

Architecture failed to create pure bodies. Technobody, which has activated and actualised its own transcorporeality – the potential of a body beyond norms – has now squatted the space of the Modulor Man. – Teo Ala-Ruona, Bodytopian Architecture (2025)

The evangelising project of modernism, built largely on the tenets of the perceived racial supremacy and virtuousness, led to the development of categorisations and hierarchies, and the eventual infliction of sterility and a disavowal of that which is uncategorisable in design. Critiquing this ideal of sterility, Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley call architects doctors, creating incisions in buildings, cutting out what is impure; commenting on how ‘good design’ is considered to be where everything is in its place. As Ala-Ruona argues, in fact, modernity is far from pure. It only creates a fiction of its purity by concealing its material origins and its reliance on natural resources, rooted in petrochemicals in our current age.

As counter to this, Ala-Ruona writes, "The time has come for us to learn to tolerate what some might deem uncomfortable, incongruous dirt, emerging from beneath the imagined cleanliness of smooth surfaces and sanitised environments, bodies and experiences." The allusion to dirt and dirtying also brings to mind a more recent affliction from the imagery in pop artist Lorde’s latest music video. Playing a trans man, she dances in a room with white walls and a floor covered ankle deep in soil. The image of the dirt, or as Mary Douglas defines it, "matter out of place", and its significance for a perspective that hopes to dismantle what is considered right (or as matter in its place) is critical. Dirt signals an alignment with the natural as against unquestioned allegiance to civil culture. Messiness upsets order, and stringent order has always been a core tenet of the civilising mission of modernity.

To dirty is to move towards a world where categories no longer exist, or are at least reduced to inconsequential. In the next score, decategorisation, it is the idea that categories inherently force us into standardised moulds that Ala-Ruona hopes to dismantle. The modernist gaze separates; it desires a segregation of perfection and impurity. And this ideal, the standard against which everything else is categorised, is invariably the white male figure—from the Vitruvian man to Le Corbusier's Modulor figure. In such a conception, the trans body, as Ala-Ruona observes, is either disregarded or miscategorised, a violence enacted on different ways of being. The existence of categories inevitably means that bodies are, in specific ways, imposed upon us by our built environment.

Performance, which becomes the third score for Ala-Ruona's reconception of modernist ideology, pertains to both artworks (in this case, the pavilion) and the audience. As Ala-Ruona understands it, they are both on display. Noting the performance art layer of the showcase, Ala-Ruona describes it as a revolutionary space for him. Elaborating, he states, "It’s an arena where I can define the politics of the performance myself, and also set the terms for how bodies are viewed on stage. Architecture as a stage — as the stage of everyday life — is a space where I rarely have control over how I am read. The ways of categorizing bodies in architectural environments have been trained into us through the modernist conception of the human. Through my work, I aim to propose a dismantling and reconfiguration of that conception." Adding to this, Kaisa Karvinen, curator for the pavilion, notes, "While performance art isn’t a traditional research method in architecture, these disciplines share a deep interest in similar themes: the body, spatiality, materiality, and both visible and invisible norms. It has been encouraging to see that many architects have found the work touching or thought-provoking."

We could also think about performance within the pavilion through Sara Ahmed's philosophical conception of queer phenomenology. In Orientations, she writes, “I offer an approach to how bodies take shape through tending toward objects that are reachable, which are available within the bodily horizon,” going on to similarly argue about the effects social differences have on how bodies inhabit spaces. The pavilion, then, could be viewed as an orientation device, simply through it being a stage for everyday encounters to take place, which in their own way reinforce gendered ways of being. Or, as Colomina puts it, architecture becomes “a viewing mechanism that produces the subject”.

Fiction is material. Thinking is fiction. Thinking is material. Somatic fiction, then, is the materialisation of speculative thinking in the body. – Teo Ala-Ruona, Bodytopian Architecture (2025)

The dismantling of normative performances defined by binary understandings of gender, apart from tending towards queer conceptions of space, is also a sharp critique of the usual violence which trans, disabled or othered bodies face, viewed as others simply because they have been placed on "the stages, backstages and auditoriums of everyday life [...] in which the main actors are cisgendered, able-bodied, white, thin, fit, neurotypical end-times survivors." How,  then, do we conceive of a world that allows us to become ‘critical spectators’ (a term Bertolt Brecht uses to analyse our political reality as a performance)?

The performance artist, through the project, suggests the model of the technobody⁴. The assemblage of technology and human, often seen as 'impure' by the appropriating contemporary gaze, is presented here as a possibility for a new architecture. The technobody is equated to the trans experience in how trans bodies co-opt technology, Ala-Ruona notes, "I view technology as a socially, politically, historically and ecologically multilayered force that demands critical scrutiny but also holds the potential to create more liveable futures, particularly from trans, crip and reproductive rights perspectives. I reject the idea of technology as merely a patriarchal tool and challenge ecofeminist and ecofascist notions that seek purity in nature."

The Nordic Countries pavilion, pivoted around two trees, then appears in a constant state of flux. Its floor baulks under the tree’s roots, and its concrete frame is decaying. Soon, it will need to be refurbished or updated with a new structure. The concrete building, seen as a symbol of timelessness, has come undone. The final stage or score of Ala-Ruona’s reimagination of the extractivist nature of design and the normative roles buildings impose on us is proposed to be reuse. One of the most interesting arguments that Ala-Ruona puts forth with his essay is thinking of the trans body as a case study for repurposing. "Transcorporeality is a recycled embodiment that observes the mind, matter, and sociopolitical power structures within oneself," he writes. To reuse something is to engage with the impure, to make do with what is disintegrating; something which is to be discarded by the logic of capitalist consumption. Through the lens of transcorporeality, Ala-Ruona argues that we can practice a form of ecological thinking wherein we reconceptualise materiality and semiotics. Trans experience, in this project, offers a powerful look at their experiences of what often goes unconsidered, while showcasing a pluralistic means of critiquing the built environment and the binary logic they impose on bodies.

As to a future for the project, Karvinen stresses on the themes as offering urgent questions for the discipline. She notes, "The exhibition makes visible the fact that architecture is always a material record of its time of the values and norms embedded within it. These questions can and should serve as starting points for other critical or speculative projects, especially those engaging with today’s urgent social and ecological questions. When an artwork asks questions, it’s incredibly rewarding to see it spark further dialogue or takes part in generating other works." Pavilions are, by their very condition, stages to put on display a model of being. Ala-Ruona equates the Nordic pavilion to a monument, immovable and permanent, here drawing a parallel to genders assigned at birth. If the model is to queer itself, as Ala-Ruona hopes, this "queer phenomenology might enjoy [the] failure to be proper.” Instead of proposing an alternative conception of architecture that—if Ala-Ruona's essay is to be incised—would perpetuate the selfsame categorisations of modernity, the suggestion of transcorporeality is an invitation to be improper.

References

Glossary of terms from Teo Ala-Ruona’s essay accompanying Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture titled Bodytopian Architecture.

^1. Petromodernity: Petromodernity is defined by the artist in their    essay as a term used to signify “modern life based in the cheap energy systems made possible by oil.” The term is used to reveal how modern architecture is bound in the petromodern mindset, affecting the way we understand the human being, body and gender.
^2. Transcorporeality: Transcorporeality for Ala-Ruona refers to the interplay between the psychological, mental, conceptual, and material dimensions of a trans person’s experience of themselves. In the essay, it is used as a theoretical tool for reflection.
^3. Bodytopia: Bodytopia refers to the assemblage of the body and the spaces it inhabits, highlighting how each shapes the other.
^4. Technobody: The idea of the technobody is conceived as an autonomous condition where a self utilises technology to enhance liveability in the name of emancipatory justice.

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is open to the public from May 10 to November 23, 2025. Follow STIR’s coverage of Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 (Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective) as we traverse the most radical pavilions and projects at this year’s showcase in Venice.