The 19^th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., curated by Carlo Ratti and organised by La Biennale di Venezia, will open to the public from Saturday May 10 to Sunday November 23, 2025, at the Giardini, the Arsenale and at Forte Marghera.The awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on Saturday May 10, 2025.

THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF THE CURATOR

«Architecture has always been a response to a hostile climate. From the earliest “primitive hut,” human design has not only been led by the need for shelter and survival, but also driven by optimism. Our creations have always strived to bridge the gaps between a harsh environment, the safe, liveable spaces we require, and the lives we want to live. Today, as the climate becomes less forgiving, that dynamic is being taken to a new level. Over the past two years, climate change has accelerated in ways that defy even the best scientific models. 2024 marked a grim milestone, as Earth registered its hottest temperatures on record, pushing global averages beyond the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target. And in the fires of Los Angeles, in the floods of Valencia and Sherpur, in the droughts of Sicily, we have witnessed the elements attacking us with unprecedented ferocity. When the knowledge and systems that have long guided our understanding begin to fail, new forms of thinking are needed. For decades, ever since we started counting carbon, architecture’s response to the climate crisis has been centred on mitigation—on reducing our impact on the climate. That approach is no longer enough. Architecture must pivot away from mitigation, reconnect with its longer history of adaptation, and rethink how we design for an altered world.»

«Adaptation demands a fundamental shift in architectural practice. This year’s Exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., invites different types of intelligence to work together to rethink the built environment. The title, a neologism whose final syllable, “gens,” is Latin for “people,” is an invitation to experiment with intelligence beyond today’s limited focus on AI and digital technologies and demonstrate how we can adapt to the world of tomorrow with confidence and optimism. Intelligens serves as a dynamic laboratory, uniting experts across various forms of intelligence. For the first time, the Exhibition features over 300 contributions from more than 750 participants: architects and engineers, mathematicians and climate scientists, philosophers and artists, chefs and coders, writers and woodcarvers, farmers and fashion designers, and many more. In times of adaptation, architecture is at the centre. In times of adaptation, architecture needs to draw on multiple forms of intelligence: natural, artificial, and collective. In times of adaptation, architecture needs to reach out across generations and across disciplines, from the hard sciences to the arts. In times of adaptation, architecture must rethink authorship and become more inclusive. Architecture must become as flexible and dynamic as the world we are now designing for.» 

AN OPEN CURATORIAL FRAMEWORK

«We set out with a mission: to open up the curatorial process. Wherever travel took us, we invited the local community to join us—friends, colleagues, and a vast network spanning architecture and beyond— to gather around the table. The central curatorial exercise for Biennale Architettura 2025 was the Space for Ideas, an open call for proposals from people all around the world that evolved into the platform for feedback and iteration between the Curator and participants in the Exhibition. The massive response to this open forum presented a challenge in terms of sheer information processing. It also exposed a set of thinkers, practitioners, and new proposals that may have been impossible to unearth otherwise. This curatorial process has produced an Exhibition that is greater than the sum of its parts, and greater than it could have been through individual outreach alone. The Space for Ideas was an experiment, and an effort towards replicating the spontaneity that might be considered one of the signatures of intelligence across its many forms. The resulting participant pool spans generations—from seasoned professionals still innovating at ninety to recent graduates just beginning their careers. Pritzker Prize winners, former La Biennale di Venezia Curators, Nobel laureates, and Royal Professors appear alongside emerging architects and researchers. This richness of contributions calls for a new approach to authorship. Intelligens challenges the tradition of the architect as the sole creator, with other professionals relegated to supporting roles. The Exhibition demonstrates a more inclusive authorship model that is inspired by academic research. There, authorship is attributed to those who contribute significantly to the design, execution, and analysis of a project, regardless of their primary role. This collaborative approach ensures that every contributor’s intellectual input is acknowledged. Similarly, in times of adaptation, all voices driving design must be recognised.»

«The Biennale Architettura’s Circular Economy Manifesto, developed together with Arup and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, sets bold goals for reducing waste and promoting material reuse. And most of the Exhibition itself is designed using recycled wood panels, which will be shredded at the end of the Exhibition and turned into new materials.»

THE EXHIBITION

«The Exhibition begins in the Corderie with a stark confrontation: global temperatures rise while global populations fall. This is the reality architects must face in times of adaptation. From here, visitors traverse through three thematic worlds, which each in their own way put forward experiments in adaptation: Natural Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, and Collective Intelligence. The Exhibition culminates in the Artiglierie with Out, which looks to space not as an escape, but as a way to help address the crises we face on Earth. Each section is conceived as a modular, fractal space: an organism that links large and small-scale projects, creating a web of dialogue and allowing visitors to find their own way through the Exhibition.»

«With the venue of the Central Pavilion under renovation in 2025, Venice will not just host the Biennale Architettura—it will become a Living Lab. The city itself—one of the most imperilled on Earth in the face of a changing climate—will serve as the backdrop for a new kind of Exhibition, where installations, prototypes, and experiments are scattered across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other neighbourhoods. These Special Projects involve multidisciplinary teams comprising architects, scientists, and supporting companies, and offer innovative solutions and insights to pressing local and global issues. Running throughout the Exhibition are projects that form a Canon, which might hold valuable lessons for architects seeking to comprehensively address the theme of the Biennale Architettura today.»

«Inspired by Rem Koolhaas’s approach at the Biennale Architettura 2014, we sought to create thematic coherence among the National Participations under the framework One Place, One Solution. We invited each nation to explore architectural strategies grounded in their local context, yet ones that are relevant to global challenges.»

«Ultimately, the Biennale Architettura 2025 is more than an Exhibition; it’s a chain reaction, it is an experiment in uniting different voices and forms of intelligence. Some will resonate louder than others. Nonetheless, we hope that this choral effort will offer new insights into one of the defining challenges of our time: adapting to an altered world.» – (The full text by Carlo Ratti is included in the Press Kit)

GENS PUBLIC PROGRAMME

«In times of adaptation – explains Carlo Ratti – institutions such as La Biennale di Venezia are in a unique position to create collaborations with other leading institutions and bring its message to as wide of an audience as possible. Intelligens has forged connections with other global Institutions, the UN’s COP30 in Belem, C40, the Davos Baukultur Alliance, the Soft Power Club, and many others. Its public programme, GENS, will host a multitude of conferences, workshops, and other activations that engage audiences both large and small, local and remote.»

GENS will run throughout the six months of the Exhibition. The Conferences will take place starting May 10 in Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian (La Biennale’s headquarters in San Marco) and in the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, where scientists, artists, activists, students, politicians and practitioners all come together to showcase the breadth of human approaches to adaptation. The Workshops will run starting from the first pre-opening day, Thursday 8 May, at the Speakers’ Corner in the Corderie dell’Arsenale at the heart of the Exhibition, emphasizing interdisciplinary dialogue as a key theme of Intelligens. Along with the Conferences, the Workshops invite the public to engage with the ideas and materials of the Exhibition, mobilizing collective intelligence to transform the built and natural environments in response to the climate crisis, and expanding the meaning of Intelligens through public discourse.

The Speakers’ Corner is designed by Christopher Hawthorne (Senior Critic, Yale School of Architecture), Johnston Marklee (Johnston Marklee & Associates) and Florencia Rodriguez (Director, University of Illinois Chicago School of Architecture), with the support of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Complementing these events is Restaging Criticism, a series of meetings dedicated to contemporary architectural criticism, curated by Christopher Hawthorne and Florencia Rodriguez for the Speakers’ Corner, and structured around four categories: Modes and Platforms, Territories, Operative/Operation, Emerging Voices. The full programme will be continuously updated on the Biennale website: https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2025/gens-public-programme