SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness, Dutch pavilion at Venice Biennale
Nieuwe Instituut presents SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness, the Dutch contribution to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, developed in collaboration with curator Amanda Pinatih and social designer Gabriel Fontana. Hosted at the Rietveld Pavilion in the Giardini in Venice, the project reimagines the sports bar to question how architecture shapes social dynamics.
The museum describes the projects as follows:
How can architecture resist exclusionary social norms? How can we create spaces that nurture new ways of coexisting? SIDELINED explores these questions by presenting an alternative sports bar, continuing designer Gabriel Fontana’s investigation into social dynamics in through the lens of sport. By subverting traditional norms and suggesting deviations, the Dutch Pavilion strives to change the rules of the game.
Sport, as both a reflection and producer of societal conventions, shapes group identities and can often be divisive, polarising and exclusionary. Fontana challenges these structures by understanding sport as an architectural system—one that regulates spaces, bodies, and behaviour—opening the playing field to inclusivity, empathy, and solidarity.
In collaboration with designer Koos Breen, artist Jeannette Slütter, curator Amanda Pinatih, and including works by a range of artists, researchers, and others, SIDELINED shows how built spaces can be hostile or welcoming, encouraging new ways of thinking about bodies, spaces, and identities.
Responding to the Biennale’s theme of Intelligens, the pavilion stages encounters that disrupt the norms of sport and its architecture, inviting visitors to engage through play and observation. The font used for the pavilion is WT Skrappa by Jacob Wise.
Who Are We Cheering For? is the sports newspaper accompanying the exhibition.
The newspaper was developed by Gabriel Fontana and Amanda Pinatih, edited by Maia Kenney and produced with the help of Frank Verkade and Charly Blödel. It was designed by Doğa Gönüllü, using the typefaces Feraz by Giulia Boggio and Literata by Irene Vlachou, Veronika Burian, Vera Evstafieva and José Scaglione.
