Voices of the last surviving architect restore 30 years of Korea's Venice Biennale pavilion

The Korean Pavilion opened in Castello Park at the Venice Biennale in 1995 as the 26th national pavilion and the last permanent exhibition space to be built there. Its completion required fierce collaboration and diplomatic negotiation between architects from South Korea and Italy, who together broke through strict local building regulations and bureaucratic barriers. Three decades on, the records of that "architectural diplomacy" have resurfaced as a key historical source attesting to the cultural bonds between the two countries.

According to Arts Council Korea on Monday, an oral history collection on Franco Mancuso — published by the Arko Arts Record Center — was spotlighted as a symbolic achievement of bilateral cultural exchange at a book talk titled "Italy? Books! — Italy as Encountered by Koreans," hosted by the Italian Embassy in Seoul on Friday.

Jeon Jin-young, professor emeritus in the Department of Architecture at Myongji University, who led the oral history research, drew out the testimony of Mancuso (born 1937) — who co-designed the Korean Pavilion alongside the late architect Kim Seok-chul (1943–2016) — and placed it in scholarly and historical context. Mancuso is the sole surviving architect who can bear witness to the near-impossible construction of the pavilion in the early 1990s. The Arko Arts Record Center compiled his on-site records and experiences into a 2025 publication, "Research on the Establishment and Operation of the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale II: Construction and Remodeling Plans."

The book talk also reaffirmed ties with the Italian Embassy in Seoul, which had championed the pavilion project by helping persuade authorities back in Italy of its merits during the planning stage. Italian Ambassador to South Korea Emilia Gatto, who personally wrote the foreword to the oral history collection, said at the event that Arko's work restoring the history of the pavilion's construction and operation "carries exceptional weight as a historical record," adding that it "will serve as a new bridge between the two countries by passing on the memory of our cultural cooperation to future generations."

A companion exhibition visually reconstructs the origins of the Korean Pavilion and the spatial struggles involved in building it. Running through Nov. 30 at the Arko Arts Record Center in Seocho-dong, Seoul, the show — titled "One Table: 7. Paper to Space, Korean Pavilion" — brings together materials donated by Mancuso and holdings from the center's own collection. Visitors can trace the full arc of the project, from the behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiations between the two countries to the design battles waged on paper to overcome the constraints of a limited site.

Lee Beom-heon, chairman of Arts Council Korea, said it was meaningful to see the Mancuso oral history collection recognized as a leading achievement of cultural exchange between the two countries, and said the council would "continue to pursue wide-ranging international cooperation projects that go beyond preserving archival assets and use them as a medium for connection."