Parallel to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Salone Verde art & social club invites you to a “Workshop for cool Cities”. The local warming of cities due to climate change and intensified urbanization is widely discussed. At the Salone Verde, we ask how to live with climate change, not how to stop it.

The exhibition addresses the overheating of cities and draws attention to local building traditions and inherited ecological knowledge. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, it proposes unconventional strategies for adapting to climate change.

With contributions from three German academic institutions — the University of Stuttgart, HFT Stuttgart Interior Architecture, and Deggendorf Institute of Technology — supported with works by artist Antje Schiffers, “keep cool” brings together perspectives from architecture, design, engineering and art. Together, these academic and artistic voices shape the Salone Verde into a “workshop for cool cities”: a space for listening and for expanding or challenging our understanding of how we might live and build in a rapidly warming world.

How does one live with heat? How does one adapt to it? In Havana, Sergio, the director of the School of Product Design, says: “We have no solution for the heat. It’s not a technical problem, but a psychological one.” We fan the air toward ourselves and feel lighter on a stuffy day.

We can create comfortable living spaces using energy-intensive technologies — but these are part of the problem. Cultures that have accepted high temperatures for centuries have developed technologies that respond intelligently to these conditions. Their building techniques, materials, and forms contradict our conventional standards — and it is precisely through this contrast that they offer new perspectives on universal beauty.

Local building styles are masterpieces of adaptation to the conditions. They make use of natural resources and maintain a balance between humans and nature. Solar chimneys, wind towers, and earth channels are just some of the solutions developed by other cultures – and also by our own ancestors: “architecture without architects.” The era in which the so-called “developed industrial nations” explained the world to others is over. Today, these cultures share their stories — and we are here to listen.

Shadow casting and air movement are taken for granted in this context. At Salone Verde, we adapt both phenomena and develop them further through artistic means. Salone Verde becomes a “workshop for cool cities,” adopting a relaxed position within the wider debate. “Keep Cool” is an exhibition with two intertwined narratives: “Flight into Shadow” and “Heat is a Psychological Problem”.