“Intelligens. Naturale. Artificiale. Collettiva” is the title of the 2025 Architecture Biennale which will be held in Venice, between the Arsenale and the Giardini, from 10 May to 23 November 2025 (pre-opening 8 and 9 May). The president of the Venice Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, and the curator of the 19th International Exhibition, the architect Carlo Ratti, revealed today, in the Sale delle Colonne of Ca’ Giustinian in Venice, the theme of the most important event dedicated to architecture at a global level: with a multiple and inclusive perspective, the exhibition will try to trace “new routes for the future, suggesting a range of solutions to the most pressing problems of the present”, starting from the climate crisis.
“The titles of International Architecture Exhibitions are usually announced in both English and Italian. In 2025 – explained Ratti – the title will instead be condensed into a single word for both languages, invoking the common Latin origin: ‘Intelligens” From ‘intelligens’ comes the modern ‘intelligence’; however, this choice also indicates an expansion of the associations of meaning. Translated separately, the final syllable, ‘gens’, means ‘people, people’: from here an imaginary emerges. alternative root, which suggests a more multiple and inclusive future of intelligence, which escapes the excessive limits of today’s focus on artificial intelligence”.
However, the 2025 Biennale will not only be about architecture, Ratti anticipated: this discipline will be part of “an extended team that must integrate art, engineering, biology, data science, social and political sciences, planetary sciences and other disciplines, connecting each of them to the materiality of urban space”.
“The built environment is among the major causes of atmospheric emissions. In this sense, architecture can be blamed for a large part of the environmental degradation of our planet – underlined Ratti – Faced with the acceleration of the climate crisis, we must resign ourselves to this role, or are we still able to offer substantial and non-cosmetic solutions that are effective and quick to implement. To respond to these challenges, we will try to put together a collection of experimental project proposals, inspired by a definition of ‘intelligence’ as the ability to adapt to the environment starting from a limited set of resources, knowledge or power. Objects, buildings and urban plans will be arranged along the axis of multiple and widespread intelligence – natural, artificial, collective. Some ideas will be destined to fail. But others will be able to show us promising paths.”
The exhibition conceived by Carlo Ratti imagines architects as “mutagenic agents”, capable of triggering evolutionary processes and directing them in new directions. “By learning from multiple scientific disciplines and advancing through trial and error, the next Biennial aims to accelerate the transformation of the present, in search of better futures.”
There are four methodological pillars of the 2025 Architecture Biennale: “Transdisciplinarity”, “Living Laboratory”, “Collection of Ideas” and “Circularity Protocol”. Due to transdisciplinarity, architectural projects will promote collaborations between different professionals, with the aim, wherever possible, of advancing scientific knowledge. In 2025 the Central Pavilion in the Giardini will be undergoing renovation: it will therefore be replaced by a series of special projects capable of transforming portions of the city of Venice into “living laboratories, where multiple forms of intelligence can converge”. “A collaborative approach to the design” of the Exhibition will be adopted, with a “collection of ideas” on the Biennale website “to broaden the heterogeneity of voices, visions and suggestions”. Finally, the Exhibition “aims to achieve particularly ambitious circularity objectives: through the development of a Circularity Manifesto, precise guidelines will be defined, outlining a new standard for future cultural events”.
With the aim of reintroducing a degree of coordination and coherence with the theme of the main International Exhibition among the National Pavilions, curator Carlo Ratti has announced that he will encourage participating countries to address the common theme “One place, one solution”. “It will be a way to highlight – clarifies Ratti – the ways in which human ingenuity can provide answers to the key challenge of our time: a challenge that can only be faced collaboratively, through a plurality of different approaches. We invite all Countries to share success stories: together, they will compose a ‘toolbox’ for a better future”.
For his part, the president of the Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, recalled in his speech the semiologist and philosopher Umberto Eco with his concept of “open work”, which can be well adapted to Ratti’s undertaking which “addresses and compares itself with the science and intelligence”. “Carlo Ratti’s special vision goes beyond contemporaneity. His idea of architecture is the answer to that need to intercept the tension of power and then bring it into action – said Buttafuoco – I am proud to be at your side, dear Carlo, in preparing and in offering this extraordinary edition of the Architecture Biennale which will be not only an exhibition but a chapter in starting the new book of tomorrow”.
Finally, Carlo Ratti presented the second edition of Biennale College Architettura, inviting students, graduates and emerging professionals under 30 (architecture, urban design, engineering, interior design, landscape architecture, built environment) to present projects that use intelligence natural, artificial and collective to fight the climate crisis. From this global pool of applications the artistic director will choose up to 16 projects which will be developed in the Biennale College Architettura programme. The selected candidates will subsequently be invited to participate in a 10-day workshop in Venice in September 2024 to develop the proposed projects with production plan and budget. The workshop, conducted by Carlo Ratti together with a group of curators and architects, tutors and mentors, will alternate group and individual moments, and dedicated meetings with visiting professors and cultural operators. A final selection of up to 8 projects will be chosen by Carlo Ratti himself. Each selected project will be awarded a contribution of 20,000 euros for production and will be presented, out of competition, as part of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition.