PSEUDONATURE installation project by architect Iassen Markov in the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in La Biennale di Venezia 2025 has reframed architectural responses to sustainability through an artificial snow-making system powered by solar energy. Installed at Sala Tiziano in Venice and opened on May 9, 2025, the project stages a self-canceling climate cycle where solar energy generates snow that gradually disables the energy source. A reimagined Bulgarian odaya connects artificial intelligence, handcrafted symbolism, and collective memory. A digital fireplace and a mythologically inspired carpet by artist Rosie Eisor act as metaphors for conflicting forms of intelligence. The installation is extended through Radical Recipes for a Better Climate, a catalog of adaptive strategies authored by professionals across disciplines and synthesized by artificial intelligence. The project constructs a narrative around material fragility, conceptual contradiction, and the necessity for architecture to engage with ecological uncertainty through both design and discourse.
PSEUDONATURE, presented in the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in La Biennale di Venezia 2025, explores the unresolved tensions between natural systems and technological control. Designed by architect Iassen Markov and installed at Sala Tiziano within the Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, the installation creates an active environmental contradiction. A solar-powered machine generates snow in the heat of the Venetian summer, forming a closed loop that undermines itself. As snow accumulates on the ground, it buries the photovoltaic panels that drive the system, limiting further energy production. The stronger the sun, the more snow it creates, which in turn reduces the ability to generate more energy. This operational instability questions whether technological processes intended to simulate or regulate natural conditions can ever achieve balance.
The project sets up a spatial narrative where architecture participates in the collapse of control it seeks to impose. Rather than proposing solutions, PSEUDONATURE operates as a demonstration of feedback and contradiction, where the pursuit of sustainable equilibrium results in continual disruption. The system’s dependence on its failure highlights the vulnerability of design approaches based on simulation, prediction, or regulation in the face of ecological unpredictability.
Inside the pavilion, Markov introduces a conceptual version of the odaya, a traditional Bulgarian living room historically used as a shared domestic space for reflection and exchange. This abstracted interior becomes a space where collective intelligence, cultural memory, and algorithmic logic interact. A virtual fireplace, animated by artificial intelligence, flickers with light but emits no heat. Its presence emphasizes the artificiality of the room, where the atmosphere replaces substance. A handwoven carpet by artist Rosie Eisor anchors the setting with a narrative rooted in symbolism. The textile features three mythological creatures locked in tension, held together by a serpent, forming a visual metaphor for the interrelationship between human knowledge, environmental systems, and artificial reasoning. These forces remain in conflict yet remain bound by the same structure.
This interior experience contrasts with the external snow mechanism, yet both are rooted in systems that challenge stability. The odaya, like the snowfield, presents a fragile model of coexistence shaped by conflicting inputs. Neither resolves; both remain in active negotiation. The spatial conditions invite visitors to consider how contemporary architecture might support forms of collective processing, rather than mastery or intervention alone.
The project expands through Radical Recipes for a Better Climate, a catalog that collects adaptation strategies from architects, scientists, and designers. Each contributor proposes a method or idea in response to changing environmental conditions. These strategies are then processed by artificial intelligence, producing a composite recipe that integrates disciplinary knowledge into a shared vision. This catalog operates both as an archive and as a conceptual experiment in distributed authorship. The act of curation and synthesis repositions architectural design as a collaborative and iterative act, shaped equally by human input and machine logic.
Material choices throughout the installation reinforce its conceptual concerns. Polycarbonate surfaces, aluminum frames, and visible joints recall the language of an incomplete construction site. This raw aesthetic resists formal closure and suggests a work in constant formation. Rather than presenting a refined model of environmental control, the pavilion reveals the provisional nature of interventions that seek to shape or moderate complex systems. The exposed construction becomes a framework for asking questions rather than offering definitive spatial answers.
Outside the pavilion, snow production responds in real-time to solar conditions. Inside, symbolic references invite intellectual engagement with environmental instability. Together, the two parts create a complete system of reflection, one rooted in action and the other in imagination. The space demands cognitive participation, urging visitors to think critically about the structures they inhabit and the mechanisms they construct to confront change.
PSEUDONATURE positions architecture as an instrument for observing and working through contradiction rather than eliminating it. Markov’s design resists the notion of sustainability as equilibrium or control. Instead, it suggests that meaningful environmental engagement arises from an ability to interpret and adapt to unstable conditions. The project invites a reconsideration of how built environments might respond to future challenges not by seeking resolution, but by remaining responsive to complexity, imbalance, and the interdependence of systems that shape our shared world.
Location
Address: Sala Tiziano, Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Fondamenta Delle Zattere Ai Gesuati 919, 30123 Venice, Veneto, Italy
Location is for general reference and may represent a city or country, not necessarily a precise address.
