Ensuring a seamless visitor experience at Qatar’s Pavilion in the Giardini of the Venice Biennale thanks to data-driven crowd management strategies

The new Qatar Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a landmark cultural project scheduled to open in 2027 within the historic Giardini della Biennale. Commissioned by Qatar Museums and designed by Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture, the pavilion will become only the third permanent national pavilion established in the Giardini in the last fifty years.

More than a building, the Pavilion is conceived as a civic space for exchange, where perspectives shift and the traditions of Venice and Qatar converge in a poetic architectural dialogue between past and present.

Each edition of the Venice Biennale attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world, generating intense pedestrian flows and high-density conditions throughout the Giardini and surrounding exhibition spaces.

Within this context, the new pavilion required a carefully designed crowd management strategy capable of balancing operational efficiency, visitor comfort and safety.

As part of the multidisciplinary team supporting the Pavilion’s development, Systematica is responsible for the crowd management strategy for the future Qatar Pavilion.

Our work focuses on the crowd management strategy, combining visitors’ flow patterns and crowd control measures with spatial analysis and benchmarking to define optimal density. The goal is ensuring a safe, seamless visitor experience for all.