First tour of the Biennial, and "exemplary" architectural lesson of The Vatican's First Ever Biennale Contribution

Andrew Berman Architect PLLC is a New York based practice focused on the realization of unique and finely executed spaces. The work of the studio capitalizes on the qualities of place and seeks creative opportunities in the desires and programmatic requirements of the client. A consistent engagement with our clients, professional consultants, contractors, engineers and fabricators throughout design and construction is a key means for the office to generate ideas and provide works of the greatest quality and expression.

Andrew Berman Architect was founded in 1995 and has gained recognition through notable projects such as the AIA Center for Architecture, the Writing Studio, FDNY Engine Company 259 Firehouse, MoMA PS1 Entrance Building and Gallery Renovations, The National Opera Center and the SculptureCenter. Current projects include a renovation of the Lower East Side Ecology Center, a two-stage theater for the MCC Theater Company, several artists' studios, as well as residential commissions.

Andrew D. Berman received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale College and a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture in 1988 where he was awarded the Takenaka Komuten Traveling Fellowship in Osaka, Japan. In 2010, Andrew received the Emerging Voices Award given by the Architectural League of New York, and in 2014 was made a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Since its founding in 1995 the practice has gained recognition through notable projects such as the Center for Architecture for the American Institute of Architects (2003), Writing Studio (2008), FDNY Engine Company 259 Firehouse (2009), MoMA PS1 Entrance Building (2011), The National Opera Center (2012), Stapleton Library (2013), and SculptureCenter (2014). In 2010, Andrew received the Emerging Voices Award given by The Architectural League of New York and in 2014 became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2016 Andrew was the recipient of the Architecture Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Norman Foster is considered by many to be the most prominent architect in Britain. He won the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2009 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes Prize.

Lord Foster rebuilt the Reichstag as a new German Parliament in Berlin and designed a contemporary Great Court for the British Museum. He linked St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern with the Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge across the Thames. He designed the Hearst Corporation Building in Manhattan, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.

He was born in Manchester, England, in 1935. Among his firm’s many other projects are London’s City Hall, the Bilbao Metro in Spain, the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London and the renovated courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

In the 1970s, Lord Foster was one of the most visible practitioners of high-tech architecture that fetishized machine culture. His triumphant 1986 Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building, conceived as a kit-of-parts plugged into a towering steel frame, was capitalism's answer to the populist Pompidou Center in Paris.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic, has written that although Lord Foster’s work has become sleeker and more predictable in recent years, his forms are always driven by an internal structural logic, and they treat their surroundings with a refreshing bluntness.

Awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts 2009.

Smiljan Radic Clarke was born in Santiago de Chile in 1965. He studied at the Catholic University of Chile's School of Architecture, where he graduated in 1989. Later, he studied at the Institutto di Architettura di Vezia, Italy. After travelling for three years, he opened his own practice in Santiago in 1995. In 2001 he was named ‘Best under 35 year old architect’ by the Chile College of Architects, and in 2009 he was appointed as an honourary member of the American Institute of Architects, USA.

Smiljan Radic has lectured extensively and has mounted several architecture exhibitions on his work, including in 2013 - The Wardrobe and the Mattress, Hermes Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Bus Stop for Krumbach, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; Ilustraciones, Galeria AFA, Santiago; in 2012 - An Orange Tree Noise at the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan and in 2010 Global Ends, Ma Gallery in Tokyo, 2010, and People Meet in Architecture, with sculptor Marcela Correa at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Smiljan Radic has won numerous contests such the Regional Theatre (Concepción, 2011) and the Telecomunication Tower (Santiago, 2014). His work has been published in several architecture journals and monographs, the most recent being El Croquis N° 167, Madrid, Spain. He currently lives and works in Chile.

Eduardo Souto de Moura was born in Porto, Portugal, on July 25, 1952. His father was an ophthalmologist, and his mother was a homemaker. He has one brother and one sister: she is also a doctor, and his brother is a lawyer with a political career that led him to serve as Attorney General of Portugal. He is married to architect Luisa Penha and has three daughters: Maria Luísa (an architect), Maria da Paz (a nurse), and Maria Eduarda, who is currently in her third year of architecture studies at the Faculty of Architecture in Porto.

He completed his early education at the Italian School of Porto. He later enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in the same city, where he initially studied sculpture. However, after a decisive encounter in Zurich with the artist Donald Judd, he decided to shift his professional path toward architecture. During his academic years, he worked with architects Noé Dinis and, later, Álvaro Siza, with whom he collaborated for five years. He also participated, together with his urbanism professor Fernandes de Sá, in a project for a market in Braga, which has since been demolished due to changes in commercial patterns.

After completing two years of military service, in 1980 he won the competition for the Casa das Artes in Porto, marking the beginning of his career as an independent architect. That same year, he founded his practice. In 1997, he completed the conversion of the Monastery of Santa Maria do Bouro into the Pousada Mosteiro de Amares, a state-run hotel that combines contemporary elements with the original 12th-century architecture. Among his most acclaimed works is also the Estádio Municipal de Braga (2003), carved into the side of a former quarry—an outstanding example of integration with the natural environment. In 2009, he completed the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, near Lisbon, whose red, pyramidal roofs create a powerful visual relationship with the surrounding landscape.

Throughout his career, he has been invited as a guest professor at many prestigious architecture schools, including Harvard, ETH Zurich, EPFL Lausanne, Paris-Belleville, Dublin, and Geneva, in addition to his continued work at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. In these academic settings, he has maintained intellectual dialogue and exchange with architects such as Jacques Herzog and Aldo Rossi.

His work, often described as “neo-Miesian,” is characterized by meticulous material selection—granite, wood, marble, brick, steel, and concrete—and a strong sensitivity to the use of color. Nevertheless, he avoids using endangered materials and advocates for responsible usage, especially of wood, promoting reforestation. He has stated that “there is no ecological architecture, no intelligent architecture, no sustainable architecture; there is only good architecture,” emphasizing that contemporary issues—energy, resources, costs, and social aspects—must always be considered. In this sense, he views architecture as a global issue.

At various times, he has expressed fascination with Mies van der Rohe, highlighting the tension between classicism and neoplasticism in Mies’s work, and the experimentation that made him “so modern that he was already post.” Although Souto de Moura acknowledges the Miesian influence—particularly evident in his Burgo Tower—he aligns himself with the reflection by Francesco Dal Co: “It is better to be good than original, rather than very original and bad.”

Souto de Moura has been recognized with numerous international awards. In 2011, he received the Pritzker Prize and was praised during the ceremony by then-U.S. President Barack Obama, who highlighted his Braga stadium. In 2018, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, and in 2024, he was decorated with the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.

A staunch advocate of situated, specific, and conscious architecture, he affirms that “there is no such thing as universal architecture; everything is rooted in its place.” He believes that designing involves building urban and geographic fragments, uniting ethics and aesthetics, just as the Greeks did. The son of a doctor, he has compared his professional approach to that of a physician carefully examining a patient’s body, underlining the precision, observation, and constant revision inherent to his methodology. He also encourages young architects to embrace rigorous study, travel, and continuous effort as fundamental pillars of architectural education.

Born and raised in a country shaped by the Age of Discovery, dictatorship, and the Carnation Revolution, his architecture reflects a deep cultural awareness and a firm commitment to the challenges of the present. In an age of ecological crises and natural disasters, Souto de Moura continues to design with the conviction that only intelligence, culture, and attention to context can lead to truly good architecture. The world now waits in anticipation for his next masterpiece.