Korean Pavilion, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025
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https://www.archdaily.com/1034156/the-korean-pavilion-at-the-2025-venice-biennale-marks-30-years-with-little-toad-little-toad-unbuilding-pavilion
The Korean Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia marks its 30th anniversary with “Little Toad, Little Toad: Unbuilding Pavilion,” an exhibition commissioned by Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and curated by Curating Architecture Collective (CAC), composed of Chung Dahyoung, Kim Heejung, and Jung Sungkyu. Bringing together architects and artists Kim Hyunjong, Heechan Park, Young Yena, and Lee Dammy, the exhibition critically revisits the pavilion as both a physical structure and a symbolic space, tracing its trajectory since its completion in 1995 while speculating on its possible futures.
Korean Pavilion (Installation View), 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025Over the past three decades, the Korean Pavilion has served as a platform for cultural and national representation, while also engaging with the shifting political and environmental contexts of the Biennale. Little Toad, Little Toad: Unbuilding Pavilion takes the pavilion itself as the subject of inquiry, exploring its layered histories and its evolving role within the Giardini. At this milestone, the curators frame the pavilion as a house, at once literal and metaphorical, that embodies shifting perspectives on space, history, and memory.
Kim Hyunjong, New Voyage, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025
Kim Hyunjong, New Voyage, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025
The curatorial framework draws on the Korean folk song Little Toad, Little Toad (Dukkeoba, Dukkeoba), traditionally sung during children’s mud play. Its verses reference building, transformation, and crisis, themes that resonate with the pavilion’s history. The motifs of the “old house” and “new house” mirror the pavilion’s past and future, while the image of a “house on fire” reflects the dilemmas posed by climate change, sustainability, and the evolving identity of national pavilions. The toad, a mythical figure associated with metamorphosis and regeneration across cultures, is adopted as a conceptual guide that links the pavilion’s architectural presence to the wider ecological and cultural landscape of the Giardini.
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Lee Dammy, Overwriting, Overriding, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025
The exhibition unfolds through site-responsive works that engage processes of unbuilding and reassembling. Each project aims to bring forward overlooked values and meanings of the pavilion while proposing speculative interventions that reconsider its role. Lee Dammy’s Overwriting, Overriding introduces layered interventions that amplify unseen presences, trees, objects, and ephemeral narratives, fracturing conventional readings of the pavilion. Young Yena’s 30 Million Years Under the Pavilion speculatively engages with geological and biological histories predating the Giardini, reframing the pavilion as a site of deep time and forgotten life forms. In Time for Trees, Heechan Park highlights the interdependence between the pavilion and its surrounding landscape, visualizing the interplay between built and natural environments. Kim Hyunjong’s New Voyage, installed on the rooftop, transforms the underused space into an observatory oriented toward the Adriatic Sea, inviting new perspectives on movement, borders, and exchange.
Lee Dammy, Overwriting, Overriding, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025
Lee Dammy, Overwriting, Overriding, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025
Together, these installations interrogate the architectural, cultural, and ecological dimensions of the pavilion, engaging critically with its legacy while suggesting directions for its future. By positioning the pavilion as both subject and site, the exhibition reflects on three decades of history while situating the structure within broader debates on sustainability, cultural representation, and the temporality of architecture.
Young Yena, 30 Million Years Under the Pavilion, 2025. Image © Yongjoon Choi with Courtesy of Korean Pavilion 2025The 19th Venice Architecture Biennale opened on May 10 and runs until November 23, 2025, featuring 65 National Pavilions, with Azerbaijan, Oman, Qatar, and Togo participating for the first time. Romania’s “HUMAN SCALE” examines architectural drawing as a medium that integrates conceptual, technological, artistic, historical, and emotional intelligence. Poland’s “Lares and Penates” reflects on architecture as a form of protection in an age of uncertainty. Mexico’s “Chinampa Veneta” addresses the global ecological crisis by revisiting chinampas as a model for rethinking how we inhabit and cultivate our shared world.
We invite you to check out ArchDaily’s comprehensive coverage of the 2025 Venice Biennale.