DUST one of 54 exhibitors at the US Pavilion in the 2025 Venice Biennale
DUST presents Ofrescas: Between Earth and Sky, an installation that will be on view in the United States Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The work responds to the curatorial theme of the US Pavilion—PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity—by reflecting on the peoples, wildlife, landscapes, and stories of El Norte—the Spanish name for the borderlands of Mexico and the American Southwest.
The installation comes at a time when public land in America generally and El Norte specifically is being plundered for minerals and other resources and sold off for development, when over-extraction is draining aquifers and threatening water supplies, when biodiverse ecosystems are being ravaged by human activity and climate change, and when the security of immigrants in the United States is at its most imperiled.
Against this backdrop, Ofrescas offers a quiet but resolute celebration of the land, the stories it tells, the histories it contains, and the lives of the immigrants, native peoples, and others that call El Norte home. It frames El Norte not as a zone of conflict, but as a place of convergence—where deep-rooted cultures, ancestral knowledge, geology, flora, and fauna come together, create meaning, and find expression in current design thinking. By bringing forward voices, objects, and ecologies that define El Norte, it frames it as a cultural center—a fluid, resilient, and richly storied.
“El Norte is itself a porch,” says Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr., one of DUST’s founding principals. “It is a threshold—a place of passage that holds the traces of everything and everyone that passes through it, and a place of connection between earth and sky, people and land, past and future, self and other.”
DUST’s installation takes form as a blackened topographic relief of the desert borderlands. Upon its surface rest objects—offerings—encased in epoxy and embodying the land’s rich traditions, its knowledge systems, and its stories of emergence, connection, transformation, survival, and sacred connection to nature.
- A cicada sings of emergence and resilience.
- Turquoise and mica evoke sun and moon, grounding the installation in cosmology and trade.
- A meteorite gestures toward the cosmos and the interstellar origins of life.
- Bones and berries, maize and juniper ash, and seeds tell of abundance, nourishment, and cycles of return.
- A Wa’ato—a traditional Tohono O’odham shade structure—pays homage to the porch as elemental architecture, sheltering life in a desert climate.
The installation is accompanied by a prose-poem that imagines the story of El Norte and mythical “porches” that appeared in it being told to future generations. Connecting El Norte to the Biennale, the poem is written in homage to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, his book of prose-poems that imagines Marco Polo describing Venice to Kublai Kahn.
DUST was invited to exhibit as part of PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity in recognition of their Wildlife Pavilion in Patagonia, Arizona—a project conceived as a contemporary porch for communal gathering, birdwatching, and ecological stewardship at the Paton Center for Hummingbirds. Designed for the Tucson Bird Alliance, the pavilion carries forward the legacy of Wally and Marion Paton, who opened their backyard to fellow birders during annual migrations. Now permanently preserved as a birdwatching site by the Tucson Bird Alliance, the pavilion replaces the Patons’ original makeshift setup with a shaded, permanent structure—acting as a contemporary porch that welcomes visitors to observe, gather, and connect with the surrounding habitat.
PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity will debut publicly on May 10, 2025, at the opening of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition.
About DUST
Founded in 2007 by Cade Hayes and Jesus Edmundo Robles, Jr., DUST is an award-winning architecture studio known for designing buildings grounded, elemental, and fully of their place. DUST was named one of Forbes’ 200 Best Residential Architects in America in 2024 and received the top prize in the Jeff Harnar Award for Contemporary Architecture in the Southwest in 2021. Ofrescas: Between Earth and Sky was created by the full DUST team: Cade Hayes, Jesus Edmundo Robles, Jr., Natalia Zieman Hayes, Jerrick Lee Tsosie, Jacob Downard, and Tania Verdugo.
About PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity
PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity is the US Pavilion exhibition at. the 19th Exhibition of Architecture for the Venice Biennale. The exhibition is curated by The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, University of Arkansas, in collaboration with DesignConnects and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It focuses on the porch as a central element in American architecture, highlighting its social, environmental, and democratic significance. The exhibition is co-organized by Peter MacKeith, Dean of the Fay Jones School; Susan Chin of DesignConnects; and Rod Bigelow of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, emphasizing their approach to the project and its theme.
It features a diverse range of American architectural projects and practices, including a new, contemporary porch extension of the U.S. Pavilion that serves as the site of interactive events and exploration of the evolving role of the porch in contemporary society. The exhibition aims to foster cultural exchange and public engagement through a variety of activities, including musical performances, readings, and educational programs, all centered around the theme of generosity, civic engagement, community building and social and environmental resilience.
An interdisciplinary design team comprising Marlon Blackwell Architects, Stephen Burks Man Made, D.I.R.T. studio, and TEN x TEN is creating a welcoming, newly constructed PORCH that weaves around and through the U.S. Pavilion.
About The Biennale Architettura
Established in 1895, La Biennale di Venezia is considered the most prestigious international art and architecture exhibitions in the world, introducing hundreds of thousands of visitors to exciting new architecture every two years. The 19th International Biennale Architettura of La Biennale di Venezia (May 10 – November 23, 2025) will be curated by architect and engineer Carlo Ratti.