La Biennale Di Venezia
Website Redesign
The Venice Biennale is one of the most important cultural events in the world, alternating between Art and Architecture editions across Venice’s Giardini and Arsenale. My goal was to rework a compressed Wikipedia article on the Biennale into a visitor-oriented website that could be explored in a short session, while still reflecting the scale and character of the event.
The final site is a multi-page prototype for desktop and mobile with four primary destinations: Home, Art Biennale, Architecture Biennale, and Pavilions, plus individual pavilion pages for Germany, Uruguay, and Hungary. It is a light, image-driven design that prioritizes wayfinding, full-screen media, and scannable sections, staying loyal to the Biennale’s two-venue reality and national pavilion structure. The visual system anchors to Biennale red, dark card backgrounds, and approachable typography to keep the experience both cinematic and readable.
Challenge
The original Wikipedia-style information on the Venice Biennale was comprehensive but not visitor-friendly. It emphasized governance, awards, and references instead of the questions real visitors have, like “What can I see?” and “What is the difference between the Art and Architecture Biennales?” That structure made it hard to quickly understand the venues, the alternating editions, and the role of national pavilions.
I needed to reorganize this encyclopedic content into a clear, time-bounded experience that foregrounded place, media, and primary journeys, without pretending to replace the official institutional site.
Results
Created a multi-page website that orients visitors around four core destinations: Home, Art Biennale, Architecture Biennale, and Pavilions, with dedicated pages for Germany, Uruguay, and Hungary.
Turned long paragraphs into scannable icon grids, media cards, and timelines that explain themes, venues, and pavilion stories at a glance.
Built a consistent navigation model with minimal primary links and a small “Explore the Biennale” strip at the bottom of each page so users always have a next step without being overwhelmed.
Established a visual and typographic system that uses Biennale red as a structural signal, dark cards for contrast, and accessible type pairings geared toward motion and readability on both desktop and mobile.
7
Pages
3
Pavilion Stories
17
Content Modules
Process
Mapped the original Wikipedia article as a node-link tree to understand breadth versus depth, capturing sections on history, structure, management, awards, and pavilions.
Redefined the information architecture around visitor journeys. The new top level focuses on Venice Biennale, Art, Architecture, and Pavilions, with Home acting as a short “about + router” instead of another long article.
Designed page patterns where each section begins with a brief explainer and hero media from my own footage, followed by icon grids, focused fact panels, and galleries rather than dense text blocks.
Created specialized layouts for each area: Art (featured installations with micro-curatorial captions and a closing gallery), Architecture (four-part thematic lenses, split media/text modules, and a video gallery), and a Pavilions index that introduces the model of national pavilions and links to three detailed pavilion pages.
Developed pavilion pages for Germany, Uruguay, and Hungary that summarize each exhibition’s core argument in plain language, using a restrained icon and color system that mirrors the physical installations without overwhelming them.
Defined a visual system using Biennale red for headings and wayfinding, very dark gray cards, and on-white reading surfaces, along with Rubik for headlines and Inter for body copy. Iconography is simple and stroke based, with labels and alt text annotations to support accessibility.
Prototyped both desktop and mobile interactions, including fixed navigation, compressed vertical timelines, tappable media cards, and thumb-reachable controls to keep the experience usable across devices.
Conclusion
This project let me transform a dense, reference-style article into a visitor-centered, media-rich site that better matches how people actually experience the Venice Biennale. By restructuring the information architecture, simplifying navigation, and designing distinct yet connected layouts for Home, Art, Architecture, and Pavilion pages, I built a prototype that balances storytelling with wayfinding.
Working end-to-end on IA, navigation, wireframing, visual design, and prototyping helped me master the full editorial web design pipeline. The result is a cohesive site model that showcases the Biennale’s global and local character while staying usable, accessible, and grounded in my own documentation of the event.