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The title of the Biennale Architettura 2025 is Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, President of the Venice Biennale, and Carlo Ratti, curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, made the announcement at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
The next Venice Biennale Architettura will take place May 10 – November 23, 2025, at the Giardini, Arsenale, and other locations around Venice. Its title won’t have Italian and English versions, as usually happens, but has been summarized into a single Latin word. The root gens, or “people,” suggests a more diverse and inclusive future for intelligence that goes beyond the current focus on AI.
The main focus of the 2025 International Architecture Exhibition will be the built environment and the many disciplines that shape it, including, but not limited to, art, engineering, biology, data science, social and political sciences, and planetary sciences. The exhibition will examine architecture’s role in environmental degradation and the emission of greenhouse gases to find concrete, effective solutions to combat the climate crisis.
“The 19th International Architecture Exhibition will map new paths for the future by presenting a range of solutions to today’s most urgent problems. It will bring together a group of experimental design proposals, inspired by a definition of intelligence as the ability to adapt to one’s environment with limited resources, knowledge, or power.
Objects, buildings, and urban plans will be arranged according to natural, artificial, and collective intelligences. Although some ideas will fail, others will point the way forward.
The exhibition will cast architects in the role of ‘mutagens’ that trigger evolutionary processes and guide them in new directions. By learning from many scientific disciplines and going forward by trial and error, we hope the exhibition will accelerate the transformation of the present in search of a better future.”
– Carlo Ratti, curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition
Crossdisciplinarity – The focus here is on architectural projects that foster collaboration between different professionals in the interests of advancing scientific knowledge.
Living Laboratory – In 2025, the Giardini central pavilion will be undergoing renovation and will be replaced by a number of special projects that will transform parts of Venice and the outdoor areas of the Biennale venues into Living Laboratories, where different forms of intelligence will merge.
Space for Ideas – Taking a collaborative approach to design is crucial, especially in times of crisis. From May 7, 2024, the Biennale website will include a space for gathering ideas to broaden the diversity of voices and visions.
Circularity – The exhibition will aim to achieve ambitious goals in terms of circularity, and will compile a Circularity Policy that establishes precise guidelines and new standards for cultural events.
Another feature of Tuesday’s press conference was the second edition of Biennale College Architettura, a contest dedicated to emerging professionals. The workshop held as part of the event is scheduled for September 2024. As artistic director of the architecture sector of the Venice Biennale, Carlo Ratti invited students, graduates, and emerging professionals under the age of 30 in the fields of architecture, urban design, engineering, interior design, and landscape design to present projects created using natural, artificial, and collective intelligence to combat the climate crisis.
The creators of up to 16 projects will then take part in a 10-day workshop in Venice in September this year to develop their projects in terms of production and budgets under the guidance of industry experts. From these, Ratti will then select a maximum of eight projects, each of which will be awarded 20,000 euros funding. The projects will also be showcased at the 2025 Biennale Architettura.
The international call for applications for the Biennale College Architettura is available on the Biennale website, www.labiennale.org, and will close at 11:59 p.m. on June 21, 2024.
>>> Also discover the Golden Lion awards at the Venice Biennale Arte 2024
Images courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
