Why, Banksy wonders, has he never been invited to the Venice Biennale? Perhaps because they knew he’d do something just like this, invited or not. The elusive British street artist set up an unauthorized stall in what appears to be the city’s famous Piazza San Marco, displaying a nine-panel oil painting of a cruise ship. The piece references the chronic problem of overcrowding in Venice due to tourist activity, leading many residents to call for a ban on cruise ships.

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Posting a video of the kiosk on Instagram (which is essentially the artist’s way of verifying that a work is his), Banksy reveals that he was ultimately told to leave due to lack of a permit.

The artist also claimed responsibility for a new mural that popped up on the wall of a private home along the canal, showing a migrant child holding a pink flare. That piece is likely a response to Italy’s recent actions against migrants, which have led to the closure of ports. Italian forces are said to have ignored ships full of refugees, allowing them to capsize with hundreds of people on board. At least 250 drowned.

It is hard to walk through Venice, Italy without wondering how the place was built, its architecture rising inexplicably out of the dark water below, or how water, power and internet traverse its myriad canals. The Rialto Bridge is a great place to begin unpacking these mysteries.

Making this bridge possible is a forest of over 12,000 tree trunks burrowing below the surface. Dating back centuries, these foundations are embedded through loose soil below the waterline and into solid clay below, and support over 10,000 tons worth of structure above.

The whole city sits on over 10,000,000 tree trunks. The wood doesn’t rot because the poles are protected by surrounding mud, away from oxygen that would lead to decay.

Meanwhile, bridges like the Rialto serve a function beyond just connecting people — they also help water and utilities flow around the city, without needing to burrow underground or displace space in shallow canals.

The city still faces threats from structural decay, sinking structures and rising water levels, but perhaps the most amazing thing is that it is still standing at all hundreds of years after it was built.

Ten acclaimed international architects including Norman Foster and Terunobu Fujimori have built an incredible series of modern chapels for the Holy See on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore as part of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. Tucked into the woods, the temporary chapels collectively form the Vatican Pavilion. The number ten references the Ten Commandments, and the project symbolizes the concept of ‘via pulchritudinous,’ which means ‘way of beauty.’

It’s the Vatican City’s first ever exhibition for the event, and each individual chapel offers a unique way to engage with both the physical setting and the divine. The architects were asked to look at the century-old ‘Woodland Chapel’ in Stockholm by Erik Gunnar Asplund for inspiration. Curator Francesco Dal Co, who professes that he’s not Catholic or even a believer, notes that the chapels are meant to be enjoyable for everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs.

Norman Foster

Foster + Partners created an airy, open chapel made of open wooden slats forming a membrane around three central crosses. Built by Italian furniture company Tecno, the chapel includes a ramped steel floor structure. The steel masts and cross arms are braced by steel cables. Jasmine vines planted around the structure will climb it throughout the summer. All ten pavilions are due to be taken down on November 25th, 2018.

“The project stated with the selection of the site,” says Foster. “On a visit to San Giorgio Maggiore, close to Palladio’s magnificent church and the Teatro Verde, I found a green space with two mature trees beautifully framing the view of the lagoon. It was like a small oasis in the big garden, perfect for contemplation. Our aim was to create a small space diffused with dappled shade and removed from the normality of passers-by, focused instead on the water and the sky beyond – a sanctuary.”

Eduardo Souto de Moura

Along with Foster, Switzerland’s Eduardo Souto de Moura is the second Pritzker Prize winner participating in the Vatican’s pavilion. His contribution looks monolithic from outside, with slabs of weathered-looking stone surrounding a small altar, but it’s more open than it seems. The narrow space inside is lined with benches, and only a portion of the roof is covered. At the entrance, visitors must navigate around a pre-existing tree.

“No, it is not a chapel, not a sanctuary and in any case not a tomb,” reads the text from the ‘Vatican Chapels’ catalogue. “It is simply a place enclosed by four stone walls, while another stone at the center might be the altar. The entrance is screened by a tree we want to conserve. The walls, inside, have a ledge on which we can sit and wait… waiting with our feet on the ground, head in hands. ‘Things themselves know when they ought to happen.’”

Smiljan Radic

Chilean architect (of Croatian heritage) Smiljan Radic envisions his chapel as a “roadside shrine,” inspired by places along roadways where grieving loved ones leave flowers for people who have perished in accidents. Radic notes that in any chapel, the scale is a trick, as the small building tries to have as large of a presence as a church or temple.

“Perhaps due to this desire for greatness, the elements of architecture seen in them are miniaturized,” he says. “Windows doors, columns are shrunk down, just big enough for a person to fit through, and their walls are large opaque sheets, avoiding the perforations that would betray this exquisite domestic size… all this confuses us and we are left doubting the human scale. In this way, in a chapel and also in a roadside shrine, the monumental and the domestic live in harmony. This seems to be the basis of the issue in my small conical chapel, with its thin walls and open roof.”

MAP studio

MAP studio, led by Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel, present the Asplund Chapel, housing the drawings of architect Gunnar Asplund. The design references Asplund’s work but reduces it to the scale of a hut, clad in wooden shingles interrupted only by triangular skylights on either side.

“The exhibition is integrated into the pavilion itself: a unicom defines the entire interior space and hosts, in the articulation of the thickness of the walls, the reproductions of the design drawings by Gunnar Asplund for the Skogskapellet, the texts and the models.”

Carla Juaçaba

Utter simplicity defines the contribution of Brazilian architect Carla Juaçaba, whose ‘chapel’ is really just a series of metal bars creating a stark symbol in the grass of the island. The surrounding vegetation defines the ‘interior space,’ a meadow of benches gazing at an oversized, minimalist cross.

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10 Architects Design Modern Chapels For The Vatican At The Venice Biennale

Historic architecture meets modern art on the canals of Venice, where a pair of gigantic hands emerge from the depths to lend support above the waterline.

Designed by Lorenzo Quinn, “Support” was put into place a month in advance of the 57th International Art Biennale but is already drawing massive crowds ahead of its official debut.

It was prefabricated and shipped into positioned down the Grand Canal, then assembled and positioned so that it appears to support the Sagredo Hotel, a structure dating back to the 14th century.

Like many historic buildings in the city, this one rises straight up from the water — also like others, it is threatened by the prospect of higher sea levels as well as sinking and settling of the ground below.

“I wanted to sculpt what is considered the hardest and most technically challenging part of the human body. the hand holds so much power – the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy” says the artist.

“Venice is a floating art city that has inspired cultures for centuries, but to continue to do so it needs the support of our generation and future ones, because it is threatened by climate change and time decay.”

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“Reflecting on the two sides of human nature, the creative and the destructive, as well as the capacity for humans to act and make an impact on history and the environment, Quinn addresses the ability for humans to make a change and re-balance the world around them—environmentally, economically, socially,” writes the Halycon Gallery, which represents Quinn.

The phrases ‘adult toys’ and ‘city blocks’ take on a different meaning when applied to architecturally sophisticated LEGO sets like these, enabling you to make your own miniature replicas of the cityscapes including the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Berlin TV Tower, St. Mark’s Basilica and much more. The Architecture Skyline Series explores the most famous architectural achievements of three cities: New York, Venice and Berlin.

These aren’t your ordinary blank slate LEGO bricks, from which all manner of creations can spring, but rather very specific pieces for very specific structures.

With the NYC package, you’ll get the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty and Flatiron Building as well as the brand new One World Trade Center. Berlin includes the Reichstag, Victory Column, Deutsche Bahn Tower, Berlin TV Tower and Brandenburg Gate. The Venice model will give you St. Mark’s Basilica and Campanile, Rialto Bridge, St. Theodore and the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs.

LEGO has been teasing the release of these sets on Facebook for weeks, and has now revealed that they’ll be available on an unnamed date in January 2016. Follow the company’s Facebook page if you want to be among the first to find out so you can snatch up your own box.

These upcoming sets arrive on the heels of a stunning model of the Louvre in Paris, as well as LEGO’s Architecture Studio, which offers 1210 white and transparent bricks to design and build the architecture of your imagination. Check out the LEGO Architecture series for other classic structures, like Rome’s Trevi Fountain and the Lincoln Memorial.