STRESSTEST – GERMAN PAVILION
19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
May 10 – November 23, 2025

There is an urgent need for action! STRESSTEST, the German entry in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Nicola Borgmann, Elisabeth Endres, Gabriele G. Kiefer and Daniele Santucci, shows the dramatic impacts of global warming on urban life.

Heavy rains, floods, and heat waves, while climate change reveals itself worldwide in increasing temperatures, extreme weather and rising sea levels, its effects are directly felt at the local level of the city: Urban spaces suffer from heat stress. Sealed surfaces, reflective facades and a lack of shade, water and vegetation create heat islands that cannot cool off and regenerate even at night. In the foreseeable future, temperatures will reach levels that people, animals, plants and infrastructure will barely be able to tolerate.

This endangers not only the social life and productivity of the city but also the health and survival of its residents. Currently, the urban population is already exposed to higher risks of dehydration and cardiovascular diseases; the number of heat deaths is growing. This is a situation that urgently calls for resilient urban development. Without effective countermeasures, some cities, in Europe as well, will become uninhabitable in a few decades.

The German entry to the Biennale Architettura 2025 takes this concrete threat as its starting point. The STRESSTEST exhibit makes the future reality of urban climate physically and psychologically tangible and impressively illustrates that architecture and landscape architecture not only can but must create climate-friendly cities. The exhibit in the German pavilion is divided thematically into two areas: STRESS and DE-STRESS.

In the STRESS rooms, visitors experience the reality of extreme urban heat in the flesh and can directly grasp the complex correlations and effects of a warmer climate. The DE-STRESS rooms provide a tangible contrast: a space for relaxation and for the solutions in which architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning are no longer thought of as purely functional or design disciplines, but are part of a holistic, climate-resistant system.

For the identification of effective adaptation measures, a precise measurement of heat stress is essential. Urban morphology, materiality and microclimatic interactions significantly influence temperature trends. With the aid of digital images of actual urban regions, climate change scenarios and their effects on urban spaces are visually presented.

They must become the 2/4 foundation for new and sustainable city planning in which politics and administration, industry and business, planners and citizens jointly negotiate and develop strategies for heat-stressed cities. Stresstest shows that green infrastructure, innovative technologies and interdisciplinary collaboration are the decisive levers for making cities more resilient, healthier and more liveable.

A work developed for the German pavilion by the artist Christoph Brech engages poetically with the complex interplay of atmospheric phenomena. His delicate, animated installation references the uncertainties and dynamics of a changing climate and widely broadcasts its message for all to see. The pavilion operates on solar energy. All materials used in the exhibit will be put to predefined
subsequent use.

more. www.stresstest.world