Postmodern Architecture at the Biennale Architettura 2025: Intelligens.

By Isaac Mei • June 5 2025 • 5 min read

In the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Polish Pavilion offers a compelling postmodern critique of what it means to truly feel safe in the chaos of today's world. Through the juxtaposition of modern safety technologies, such as fire alarms and emergency signage, and fuses with safety customs and practices, such as the gromnica (blessed candle), the holy corner, and a bowl of milk, the question of anxieties and how security and sense of security deal with them is brought up. How is one supposed to be secure or feel secure in the chaos and complexity of the modern world, even with modern solutions that are meant to act as a threshold of security? The exhibit collapses distinctions between the rational and the symbolic, the institutional and the intimate. The Pavilion isn't just an architectural display; it is a meditation on the nature of security itself.

In doing so, the Pavilion invites visitors to question the effectiveness of modern safety systems and what the definition of security even means in the postmodern world. Rather than offer clarity or comfort, the presentation of security items recognizes a quiet unease - that technological solutions alone may not resolve the deep fears that our psyche creates. In the paragraphs that follow, I will walk you through my own experience, tracing the way the space unfolded to paint the picture of tension between protection and vulnerability.

Before walking in, the exterior doesn't offer a grand face or cool style; instead, it was plain with nothing but a wejcha, or Polish wood wreath, above the "Polonia" engraving. The modest ornament marked the beginning of themes of vulnerability and cultural memory, setting the tone of a place where symbolism and tradition could speak louder than modern designs of protection. In the very first doorway, a horseshoe then hung above, invoking the ideas of luck and safety rooted in Polish superstition rather than technology. On my left, a fire extinguisher was put in the position of God over other symbols of fire extinguishers, as if it were a shrine to the fire extinguisher. It felt absurd that a functional object was elevated and revered the way it was. Before even entering the exhibit itself, something was obvious - the space wouldn't sell me on something cutting-edge or sleek. Something was going on that was somewhat unsettling.

Exalted Extinguisher

When I entered the room, there was no clear direction to look. There were no arrows, no signs, and no prescribed path. Instead, I was surrounded by little clusters of objects with signs describing them. Curious to interact, I wandered around, reading the different signs and trying to make meaning. Some elements were typical security elements, such as fuse boxes, a bunker door, alarms, cameras, and more. However, other elements, such as the bowl of milk, the holy corner, or the bottle on the wall, deviated heavily from the typical expectations. I was slightly confused. What was going on?

As I paused to take everything in, I realized the confusion wasn't accidental. It told a story. The exhibit was not just presenting a series of items on the wall; it was a stage for a collision of two fundamentally different worldviews - one entirely rooted in medieval symbolism, the other embedded in postmodern ideas. The bowl of milk, the wejcha, and the horseshoe weren't just random objects. They symbolized the older world, where security was found in ritual, tradition, and customs. In the medieval imagination, danger was omnipresent from a sacred order. A candle could bless the whole home. A horseshoe could fend off evil. The objects embodied meaning, something more than just function.

Traditional Security Methods with a bowl of milk, a weijcha, and unpainted wood

However, surrounding the objects were safety devices from the 20th and 21st centuries - security cameras, fuse boxes, and more that are supposed to neutralize threats naturally. Yet, mixed with superstitious objects, these tools felt stripped of their authority in the white room. A fire extinguisher, typically placed in the corner for last-minute emergencies, was displayed as sacred, an absurd sort of deity. It was as if the space was making fun of people's blind faith and rested assurance in technology and its logical solutions and replacing one superstition with another. In this sense, the emotional immediacy of the display perfectly mirrors what Clifford Geertz puts in his anthropological account of ritualized stakes of the Balinese cockfight. In the high-stakes nature of the Balinese culture, the consequences were deeply tied to the psychological outcomes, and as Geertz writes, "There are absolutely no IOUs, at least to a betting opponent … If you lose, you must pay it on the spot, before the next match begins" (68). The Pavilion functions similarly: it offers no abstraction, and every item immediately triggers reckoning with one's safety assumptions. Every aspect has an emotional confrontation, where the consequences are felt every time, just like in cockfighting. Every individual must choose wisely for their comfort. There is no safety delay, and each object demands a reaction. Do you trust the modern ideas of technology, or are you content with traditional methods? Or perhaps, do you not understand the fragility of your perceived securities?

Modern Security Methods with a Bunker Door, Fire Alarm, and Fuse Box

In fact, the display was postmodern in itself - self-aware, ironic, and purposely unsettling. It blurred the lines between function and belief, past and present, protection and symbolism. Everything was blurred together. The Pavilion collapsed the distinction between rational and irrational responses to fear. It was a complete confrontation with the fact that neither can completely resolve our anxieties. As Thomas Kuhn observed in moments of scientific rapture, "The period during which light was 'sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle' was a period of crisis - a period when something was wrong- and it ended only with the development of wave mechanics and the realization that light was a self-consistent entity different from both waves and particles" (115). The Pavilion mirrors this same crisis, not necessarily of science, but of meaning, where security methods can't just be categorized, and the space forces one to sit inside the blank walls of that unresolved tension. The juxtaposition completely forced me to confront the instability of frameworks of comfort and control.

Walking through the space, I realized the unease wasn't about the weird layout of the space - it was about me. I was drawn towards the security objects and was confused by the superstition. I couldn't and wouldn't understand. But that was the point. The Pavilion was designed to question and peer into the soul about an innate human question: What does being safe actually mean?

The Polish Pavilion didn't really provide any groundbreaking solutions to security; however, it exposed humans' fragile need for them. Whether it's candles, horseshoes, milk, or fire alarms, bunker doors, or walls, we project our hopes and fears into what we know. The idea of safety, then, is not just physical but historical, cultural, and deeply psychological. And perhaps, this is the first step forward in understanding the architecture of safety.