The Mugak/ Biennial kicks off in Donostia with the opening of its pavilion

2025 October 10

• Under the title “Lightness and Protest: Embroidery as a Feminine Utopia,” the proposal by Izaskun Chinchilla Architects will occupy the Alderdi Eder esplanade until November 9.
• The pavilion will be one of this year’s Mugak/ Biennial venues in Donostia, although activities will take place throughout the city—from its bus shelters, which will host the exhibition “Uchronias of San Sebastián,” to the Iesu Church, the setting for the immersive audiovisual installation and performance “HAUSTURAK.”
• One of the highlights of this fifth edition will be a conversation with the legendary English architect Sir Peter Cook, on November 22 at the Teatro Principal.

10|10|2025

The Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial of Euskadi has inaugurated the pavilion that now presides over the Alderdi Eder esplanade and, with it, the program of its fifth edition in Donostia. The main architectural event of the Atlantic Arc—promoted by the Basque Government’s Department of Housing and Urban Agenda—began yesterday with the presentation of its central exhibition and the inaugural lecture by Professor Lesley Lokko OBE at the Kursaal.

“Lightness and Protest: Embroidery as a Feminine Utopia” is the proposal by the Madrid-based studio Izaskun Chinchilla Architects, which reinterprets utopia through care, collectivity, and craftsmanship. Inspired by “craftivism” (a form of activism rooted in craft practices to advocate for anti-capitalism, environmentalism, or feminism) and in Basque tradition, the installation combines 3D printing and embroidery as languages of activism and memory. Its construction uses recycled materials such as sailcloths and plastics recovered from the sea.

The structure pays tribute to symbols of the Basque territory such as the Tree of Gernika, the kaiku jackets, and the La Concha railing, and it integrates embroidery frames that capture citizens’ dreams and protests about issues like tourism-driven gentrification, housing, inequality, or biodiversity loss. Conceived as an open, flexible space, the pavilion invites collective embroidery and communal activities, reminding us that to embroider is also to narrate and to transform. Thus, the installation reclaims the political value of the manual and participatory against vertical discourses and technocratic solutions.

This afternoon, a roundtable will bring together Izaskun Chinchilla, Jesús San Vicente (Equipo 01, second prize), and Oscar Cruz (Cruz Atelier, honorable mention) from the Onsite Mugak/ call, which selected the ephemeral architectures for the three Basque capitals. The discussion will focus on the concept of utopia in architecture—the thematic core of this fifth Biennial—and will allow the speakers to share their reflections and creative processes. The session will be moderated by Juan Francisco Fuentes-Lojo, architect and editor-in-chief of Diariodesign.

Activities at the pavilion will continue over the weekend with “Dream Embroidery,” a series of collective embroidery workshops to create pieces reflecting ideas on the city, memory, and feminine utopia. Four sessions will be held on Saturday with prominent guests: Yolanda Andrés, Sarah Corbett, and Izaskun Chinchilla herself. On Sunday, a jam session led by Maushaus and A Secret Club will offer an informal gathering of musical improvisation and performance, open to families and children.

Sir Peter Cook, October 22 in Donostia

The legendary architect Sir Peter Cook will be in Donostia on October 22 at 7:00 p.m. at the Teatro Principal, where he will converse with designboom’s chief editor, Sofia Lekka, coinciding with his 89th birthday. He will invite the audience to rethink architecture as a space of imagination and transformation. His talk aligns with this edition’s theme and directly connects with his lifelong exploration of new ways of inhabiting and conceiving the city.

Sir Peter Cook (Essex, 1936), cofounder of the Archigram collective, is a key figure in twentieth-century architectural radicalism. With visionary proposals such as “Plug-In City” and “Filter City” (both featured in “Eu-topias, Ou-topias”), he transformed debates on urbanism, technology, and urban life.

A rich program running until November 14

Among the proposals already open to the public in Donostia is “Uchronias of San Sebastián” by Santos Bregaña, which presents unrealized architectural and urban projects for the city in DBus shelters. These are ideas conceived in moments such as 1813, when the city was devastated, but which never left the drawing board. How would Donostia look today if they had been built? A series of “postcards,” accompanied by texts by writer Harkaitz Cano, imagine these alternative realities. Starting this Saturday, a series of “weird tourism” guided tours will depart from the Euskadi Institute of Architecture.

On October 14, the workshop “Architecture without Building,” organized by Maushaus and No Man’s Land Foundation with students from the University of the Basque Country’s School of Architecture (ETSA-EHU), will culminate in a public installation next to the Alderdi Eder pavilion. It will open at 4:00 p.m., followed at 5:00 p.m. by a performance by artist Ion Munduate interpreting the resulting structure.

Another exhibition of this edition opens on October 15 at the former fire station on Easo Street. “Hurrengo Geltokia: Amara-Easo” presents to the public one of the most significant social housing urban transformations in recent decades: the Playa de Vías project. The exhibition features the five award-winning projects from the public competition to amend the city’s General Urban Plan (PGOU).

That same day, the workshop “We Make Cities” by the transdisciplinary office Lugadero will take place at the Euskadi Institute of Architecture, proposing a collective process to imagine futures using generative artificial intelligence tools in a critical and creative way. The resulting scenes—images, narratives, and visualizations—will become part of the Biennial’s central exhibition.

On October 16, two new projects open. The first, “Limina: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project 30,” arrives at Chillida Leku, curated by Jon Garbizu and Victoria Collar (Garbizu Collar Architecture) and Gonzalo Peña Sancho (Kri arquitectura). It features works by contemporary artist Koen Vanmechelen, known for his innovative approach combining art, science, nature, and society. The exhibition establishes an encounter between sculpture, architecture, and landscape, inviting new readings of the spaces we inhabit and transforming the museum into a living laboratory for exploring possible futures.

That same afternoon, the Peña Ganchegui Young Basque Architecture Prize exhibition will also open at the Euskadi Institute of Architecture’s lobby, showcasing the work of the five finalists of its fifth edition: AMA studio, Xabier Artola, Sara Enríquez (Lokuluxka studio), Borja Martínez (Interplay studio), and Mikel Ortiz de Eribe (Eitzen studio). The jury’s decision will be announced that same evening during a gala at the Institute.

The program returns to Chillida Leku on October 26 with the workshop “Interspecies,” inviting participants to explore, through sensory experience, the non-human perspective of the native species inhabiting Chillida Leku. Participants will create edible pellets based on the diets of local creatures and, by consuming them, will be invited to traverse the landscape, engage with the place, and seek a visceral connection with the animal world.

“HAUSTURAK” will surprise audiences with a performance and audiovisual installation on the evenings of November 6, 7, and 8. During these three sessions at the Iesu Church, this immersive experience will integrate architecture, visual art, sound creation, and dance. Inspired by the work of architect Lebbeus Woods, it will transform the church’s interior—designed by Rafael Moneo—into a space in constant fracture and repair.

Donostia will also host the closing event of this edition, on November 14. The finale will take the form of a roundtable asking, “What is a Biennial for?”—a reflection on architecture biennials as platforms to amplify emerging discourses. Today, they face the challenge of defining themselves between the critical and the spectacular, the experimental and the institutional. In this context, curators and international cultural agents—Eva Franch, Ethel Baraona, Iker Gil, Fabrizio Gallanti, and José Ángel Medina—will engage in a collective reflection on the meaning and future of architecture biennials, moderated by Marta Rincón. The event will conclude with a musical performance, marking the grand finale of Mugak/ 2025.

Details of all these activities and many others can be found in the program and on the Mugak/ 2025 website. All events are free of charge, although some require prior registration.