¿What are you drawing? – Esteras Perrote

Drawing is stepping back in time to move closer to space.
To look at the city again.
To revisit the present.

Drawing
as memory
and as future.

A minimal gesture
that opens a dialogue
with others.

Because nothing lasts longer
than the city
in our history.

¿What are you drawing?
is an interactive installation presented in Room 17 of Palazzo Bembo, within the framework of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. The project proposes an open reflection on the city and the ways we inhabit it, inviting the public to participate through drawing as a tool for thinking and communication.

The installation is organized around a solid plane that traverses the room, dividing the space in two, much like walls and façades structure the relationship between the public and the private in the city. A window is inserted into this plane, conceived as a threshold that connects two opposing spatial conditions, inviting observation, passage, and a questioning of the boundaries between interior and exterior.

At the core of the proposal is the Inverse Window, which invites visitors to express, through drawing, their own ideas, memories, or questions about the city. Drawing is understood here as a universal language, capable of transcending cultural and linguistic boundaries, and as a primary form of thought in architecture. The sheets produced by visitors are deposited within the window, which operates simultaneously as threshold and repository, gradually transforming into a collective archive of perspectives on the city.

The window presented in the installation is the reconstruction of an architectural element from the A110 project, an intervention by Esteras Perrote Arquitectos in the historic center of Córdoba, Argentina. The project involved the recovery and renovation of an abandoned house, within an urban context where numerous historic buildings remain vacant or in a state of decay. A110 proposes a re-reading of the built heritage, understanding the city as a palimpsest in constant transformation, shaped by successive layers of time, use, and meaning.

By relocating this architectural fragment from Córdoba to Venice, the installation establishes a bridge between two urban contexts and opens a space for reflection on the ways cities are transformed and inhabited. The gesture of bringing a window, an everyday and seemingly minor element, into the museum proposes a renewed way of observing the city, recognizing in its fragments the potential to rethink our relationship with the built environment.

In this way, What are you drawing? proposes a sensory and collective experience in which drawing becomes a tool for imagining possible futures. Like cities themselves, the installation is completed through the actions of those who pass through it, becoming an open exercise in appropriation, memory, and collective construction.

LOCATION	Palazzo Bembo, Venecia, Italia
YEAR	2025
PROJECT	ESTERAS PERROTE
EXECUTION	European Cultural Centre
CLIENT	European Cultural Centre
TYPE OF WORK	Exhibition
AREA	14m2