Biennial Architecture, Visionary and with record numbers

“For decades, architecture responded to the climatic crisis with mitigation: designing to reduce our impact on the climate. But this approach is no longer enough. While the climate becomes less and less clerily, it is the time that architecture passes from mitigation to adapt: ​​rethink the way we design in view of a deeply changed world, “said the architect and engineer, Carlo Ratti, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and at the Polytechnic of Milan and director of the Senseable City Lab, By illustrating today, Tuesday 11 February, his Biennial Architecture in Ca ‘Giustinian, home of the Venice Biennale.

“Venice, the city of the waters, becomes a local model to be read on a global scale: a complexity laboratory par excellence, in which to find solutions useful for the whole world”, commented Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Venice Biennale, which he defined ” Visionary “the exhibition curated by Ratti, because it will indicate how to” build the world intelligently, listening to the intelligence of the world “. Already from the title, Buttafuoco underlined, the exhibition “announces itself as a founding reflection for the next future, a matter of study and debate for the scientific and artistic community and for the public that will visit it”.

The adaptation to climatic challenges, explained Ratti, “requires a radical change in our practice” and “architecture represents a central node that must guide the process with optimism. In the age of adaptation, architecture must draw on All forms of intelligence: natural, artificial, collective. It is dynamic, just like the world for which he is planning “.

The exhibition curated by Ratti was also built “from the bottom” thanks to “a wave of nominations” which in the spring of a year ago “made it possible to discover unpublished and unheeded voices that otherwise would have gone unnoticed”. The group of participants that arose, explained Ratti, “embraces several generations: as expert professionals who at ninety years are still able to innovate to recent graduates who have just embarked on their career. Winners of the Pritzker Prize, former curators of the Venice Biennale, Nobel Prizes, emeritus professors appear next to emerging architects and researchers.

The Biennale Architecture also collaborates with other global institutions, with the United Nations Cop30, with the C40, with the Baukultur Alliance in Davos, with the Soft Power Club and many other organisms.

At the Corders of the Arsenale there will be the main focus of the exhibition which, explained Ratti, opens with “a raw figure: while global temperatures increase, the world population decreases. This is the reality that architects must face in the age of adaptation. from here visitors will cross three thematic worlds: Natural Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Collective Intelligence. Our answer is no: the exploration of space is not an escape route, but a means of improving life here, in the only house we know “.

With the central pavilion, in the renovation phase throughout 2025, Venice will not only host the architecture Biennale, but will become a living laboratory. “The city itself – one of the most exposed and vulnerable in the face of climate change – will be the background to a new type of exhibition, in which installations, prototypes and experiments will be scattered between the gardens, the arsenal and other neighborhoods”, he anticipated Rats.

The Italian Pavilion at the Tesse delle Virgini in Arsenale, supported and promoted by the Directorate General of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, is curated by Guendalina Salimei with the “Terræ Aquæ. Italy and the intelligence of the sea” project. The Pavilion of the Holy See, promoted by the prefect of the Dicastery for the culture and education of the Holy See, Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, will take place this year in the complex of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice (Fondamenta San Gioacchin, Castello 450). The exhibition has as a “open work” title and is curated by Marina Otero Verzier and Giovanna Zabotti. The Municipality of Venice participates with the historic Venice pavilion in the gardens, with the preparation of the exhibition entitled “Libraries. Building Venetian intelligence”. The city pavilion will have its emanation in other institutional spaces and in the offices of the IUAV University of Venice.

The exhibition of architecture will contribute specifically to the environmental sustainability project carried out since 2021 from the Venice Biennale. The Circular Economy Manifesto launched by Carlo Ratti, with the ARUP guide and the contribution of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, strengthens the Biennale commitment in this goal, promoting an increasingly sustainable model for the design, installation and operation of All its activities and events.

“The challenge is to create pavilions and spaces that are an example of a bold circular thought that generates a lasting legacy in terms of sustainability – said Ratti highlighted – The goal is to eliminate waste, circulating the materials and rejecting Natural systems, thus showing that architecture and built environment can coexist in harmony with our planet “.