The Euskadi Mugak International Biennial/ will advocate building “castles in the air”

2024 July 22

The three Basque capitals will host the fifth edition in October and November 2025.

The Biennial will provide spaces for collective reflection and experimentation with the aim of exploring today´s architectural utopias.

The Bilbao architect María Arana Zubiate will return as commissioner.

The fifth edition of the Euskadi Mugak International Biennial/ now has a date and theme. It will be held at the end of 2025, from October to November. As in previous editions, the three Basque capitals will host an extensive programme with the purpose of sharing spaces for reflection and collective experimentation.

Castles in the air, or, how to build utopia today. This is the concept chosen by the Euskadi Mugak International Biennial/ for its fifth edition, which will be held in October and November 2025 in the three Basque capitals. The biannual event is promoted by the Basque Government's Department of Housing and the Urban Agenda and will once again offer spaces for collective reflection and experimentation, “with the aim of exploring the architectural utopias of our time that facilitate our moving towards in future constructions that improve the habitability conditions of the dwellings.

In a moment/or phase, when it seems that we have lost the ability to conceive a better society, where pragmatism and functionality aimed towards economic and sustainable efficiency barely offers any room for spontaneity, the organization seeks to put an active focus on utopia, “as a system of thought that helps us solve future challenges”. The Valencia philosopher Francismo Martorell Campos has already expressed this: “The goal of utopia is to transform reality, not to escape from it, and this encourages us to imagine utopias as a response to the turbulent times in which we live/and the current defeatism that we face”. A vision, the utopian vision, that over time has shown the ability to guide and shape the evolution of humanity, and has fostered more desirable, harmonious, supportive, egalitarian and innovative scenarios.

-Amaia Arana Zubiate will return as commissioner

Amaia Arana Zubiate will return as commissioner for the fifth edition of the Euskadi Mugak International Architecture Biennale. María is a graduate of the UPV/EHU School of Architecture, and a curator and cultural programmer. Since 2009, she has been a project co-ordinator at Urbanbat, a social initiative co-operative dedicated to the research and design of participatory urban egeneration processes.

In the words of María Arana, curator of the Biennial, “Many of the current social and urban policies, such as, for example, universal suffrage, gender equality, minority rights, the construction of skyscrapers, garden cities or public transportation, were branded “utopian” at the time. We therefore believe that this space must be created with utopia as its foundation". Arana Zubiate also emphasized that “In the previous edition, Mugak/ gained in quality and variety of perspectives from which to analyze architecture, design, and urbanism; in addition, it attracted a younger audience than in previous editions, which confirms the interest of the new generations in this discipline and in reflecting on why we live as we do in our cities and towns and how we can do so in the future. In the fifth edition of Mugak/, we would like to imagine the future cities from a utopian perspective collectively.”