Architecture of Stewardship

Architecture is often seen as the creation of the architect alone. However, architecture is a collaborative endeavour involving diverse professionals, from urban planners, building designers and construction labourers to restoration architects, repair workers and maintenance staff.

Preserving built heritage depends on stewardship – a shared responsibility that involves caring for and steering the future of common goods. In the built environment, stewardship goes beyond maintaining structures to include decisions about access, future use, and redistribution.

The Pavilion of Finland in Venice’s Giardini della Biennale Park stands as a testament to this. Originally designed as a temporary structure by Alvar Aalto and his office for the 1956 International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the delicate wooden building has become a permanent monument. This wouldn’t be possible without continuous maintenance and repair.

By recounting the Pavilion’s history, this book illustrates that buildings are not static objects but dynamic processes influenced by human actions, global politics and non-human forces. The title, Architecture of Stewardship, proposes that adopting practices of stewardship enables the architectural profession to respond to the urgent need for change in our built environment with accountability to communities, future generations, the planet, and other species that inhabit it.

The collection of essays offers perspectives on stewardship from a range of Finnish and Italian contributors in academia, practice, and activism. The texts explore how people have stewarded land, resources, and communities throughout the Pavilion’s history and its Venetian context, and how these insights might inspire a different way to approach our built environment.

The book is published in conjunction with the Pavilion of Finland’s exhibition at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, running from 10 May to 23 November 2025. The editors of the book, architects Ella Kaira and Matti Jänkälä, curated the exhibition, The Pavilion – Architecture of Stewardship, commissioned and produced by Archinfo – Information Centre for Finnish Architecture.