"To face a burning world, architecture must harness all the intelligence around us,” architect Carlo Ratti pronounced on being named curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, organised biannually under La Biennale di Venezia. With something of a rallying cry for the discipline, Ratti’s curatorial theme, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective delves into and opens up the intersections between architecture and the scientific fields. The aim of this biennale is to advance a spirit of collaboration and foster interdisciplinary perspectives in architecture as a method to deal with, to combat even, a world in crisis. The “burning world”—one defined by ecological and climate breakdown, population boom and resource scarcity—is the central concern for participants to think through in their projects displayed in the curators’ show.

Set to open to the public from May 10 to November 23, 2025, the biennale lays heavy focus on climate-related sciences, foregrounding sustainable architecture and design. In his press conference announcing the programme for Intelligens, the Italian architect, engineer and principal at his eponymous practice—Carlo Ratti Associati—dwelled on the grim realities of a world that continues to grow hotter, continues to generate tons of waste and continues to urbanise exponentially—underscoring the lofty goal of facilitating a better future by rethinking design practice. “This year’s Exhibition Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. invites different types of intelligence to work together to rethink the built environment. The very Latin title Intelligens contains the word gens (“people”) - inviting us to experiment beyond today’s limited focus on AI and digital technologies,” he further noted.

The idea of a transdisciplinary approach to the projects—the many worlds that architecture must work with to define the future—is tantamount to gauging the essence of the curatorial brief and its outputs in this year’s iteration of the architecture biennale. Ratti’s exhibition, which primarily expands on his theme, will be housed within the Corderie in the Arsenale. Like every year, national participations will be housed between existing, permanent pavilions in the Giardini, or newer spaces in the Arsenale, along with being strewn across the city centre. Furthermore, with the Central Pavilion in the Giardini currently under renovation, part of the curator’s show will take over the city, with specially planned projects planned to tangibly engage with the urban conditions of Venice, turning it into a ‘dynamic lab’.

With an aspiration to foster “a more inclusive authorship model, inspired by scientific research,” hence critiquing architecture’s obsession with sole genius, Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 will host over 750 participants (contributing over 280 projects) who are not limited to the practice of architecture and design, instead bringing together contributions from Nobel laureates to emerging researchers, engineers, coders and even artisans, chefs, writers and farmers. While the lineup remains expansive and nearly impossible to traverse in a single day, STIR highlights its picks of the best exhibits, pavilions, displays and projects to watch out for this year.

1. Re-thinking architectures with Intelligens

The curator's showcase at the Corderie

The world on the verge of breakdown becomes the starting point for Ratti’s showcase for the biennale, which will be housed in the Arsenale’s Corderie as the Curator’s Exhibition. The first two installations speculate on the nature of the world post-disaster, after the climate crisis and steep population boom reach a crest. The first one, Terms and Conditions, presents an image of Venice 100 years from today, while in the second installation, The Other Side of the Hill, architectural historians and theorists Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley ask what happens when the aforementioned crest is reached and then starts to decline? Pivoting from the image of societal collapse, the exposition’s egress presents a note of hope, looking towards outer space with the installations Out through Oxyville and SpaceSuits.Us: A Case for Ultra Thin Adjustments. Both projects contemplate the possibilities of space exploration and the applications of space technology for current construction practices.

Apart from these installations, the curator’s show can be categorised under the three themes of natural, artificial and collective intelligences, with contributions from a diversity of practitioners who add their particular, pluralistic intelligences in conversation with each other. On this note, the exhibition design for the show is worth mentioning. As Ratti revealed during his press conference, Berlin-based architecture practice sub’s conception for the spatial design of the Curator’s Exhibition transforms the Corderie into fractal units where each project is displayed with a network of digital layers bringing each into dialogue with the others.

Given Ratti’s central condition of rethinking the manner in which architecture is conducted, many projects for his showcase tend towards speculation, such as with architectural historian Sylvia Lavin and DESIGN EARTH’s project The Perimeter of Architecture: Amid the Elements, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous’ Even in Arcadia or Swedish architect Pavels Hedström’s Fog-X. From more than 700 participants for the showcase, notable architectural practices such as Lebanon-based studio Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture, London-based Heatherwick Studio, New York-based OMA, Chinese architecture studio MAD Architects, German organisation HouseEurope! (established by architecture practice b+), Christoph Hesse Architects, South African architect Sumayya Vally’s practice Counterspace, and Kengo Kuma and Associates, among others, will be exhibiting works.

Space for Ideas

The Space for Ideas for this year’s exposition posed an open call approach to inviting participants for Intelligens. This ensured participation from diverse backgrounds as well as a lot of radical and innovative design practices. These include Bangladeshi architects Rizvi Hassan’s Born in a Camp and Marina Tabassum’s Khudi Bari, Thai architect Boonserm Premthada’s Elephant Chapel, Lagos-based architect and curator Tosin Oshinowo’s research work with Alternative Urbanism: The Self-Organised Markets of Lagos, London-based research practice Material Cultures’ Planting Buildings: Housing the Ecoregion, and Ghana-based Limbo Accra’s The Ritual, The Void, The Repair, to name a few.

2. Re-presenting the nation

Highlighting national presentations

Building on the central themes of Intelligens, curators for the national pavilions will present projects that appear to fundamentally rethink how architecture is practised, with a particular focus on national contexts. It becomes an interesting exercise to dwell on how national participants choose to interpret the theme, revealing the country's rhetoric for perception on what is invariably a global platform. This geopolitical manoeuvring also underlies the historic decisions behind which countries have permanent pavilions to display works and which ones cycle through temporary pavilions.

Within the Giardini, 29 countries have permanent spaces, including Australia and Korea, the only ones to be built post-1980. Qatar's will be the first permanent pavilion to be built in the Giardini in over 20 years, set to be designed by Lina Ghotmeh. This will also be Qatar’s first showcase at the biennale, along with the Republic of Azerbaijan, Sultanate of Oman and Togo, who will have temporary shows spread between the Arsenale and San Marco in mainland Venice.

Ratti’s insistence on injecting scientific rationality into the discipline means some of the more grounded pavilions investigate new materialities, centring their projects around unconventional and renewable resources for construction. Several countries have also interpreted this brief to think about building and dwelling using the natural world as a means to conceive of an ‘alternate architecture’.

Within this purview, some promising contributions include Iceland’s project, Lavaforming, which focuses on lava flows and how they present themselves as a renewable resource for building; and Denmark’s Build of Site which explores circular economies in construction. Similarly, Finland will reveal the labours that go into constructing and maintaining buildings, advocating for an architecture of care and repair through The Pavilion – Architecture of Stewardship in its permanent space designed by Alvar Aalto. Exploring the potential of nature, Belgium’s pavilion, conceptualised by landscape architect Bas Smets, uses biospheres to reimagine spaces. The Canada Pavilion by Living Room Collective questions how we can collaborate with nature in building, with a focus on picoplanktons. One of the most radical pavilions on display this year will be the Nordic Countries, whose project Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture is created by performance artist Teo Ala-Ruona. It re-conceptualises architecture using the trans body as a standard for ergonomics.

3. Re-viewing the city’s networks

Venice as a 'dynamic lab'

A number of projects this year take advantage of and examine the unique urban fabric of the ‘City of Canals’. For instance, the Norman Foster Foundation, Porsche, Empty+Bau and Aerotrope will look at Venice’s relationship with its canals, proposing a new hybrid vehicle for navigation. On the other hand, installations in various places throughout Venice by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Aaron Betsky, Natural Systems Utilities, SODAI and chef Davide Oldani will attempt to reuse waste water to make espressos.

Conversely, the Manameh Pavilion by Rashid and Ahmed Bin Shabib, Alia Al Mur, Yusaku Imamura, Jonathan Shannon and Vladimir Yavachev will bring vernacular building traditions into conversation, contemplating how traditional cooling techniques from the Gulf region could be transposed onto European contexts.

Special Projects

Two projects have been especially conceived for the biennale this year. The first, Margherissima, will be exhibited inside the Austrian armoury (Polveriera austriaca) and is conceptualised by Nigel Coates and the Architectural Association with Michael Kevern, Guan Lee, John Maybury and Jan Bunge. It looks at Marghera, a Venetian borough marked by its industrial activity. The designers propose a new neighbourhood design for the region, which is already gradually transforming as a result of climate change.

The second project is being realised by La Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The museum will present On Storage as part of their ninth Applied Arts Pavilion. The showcase will be curated by Brendan Cormier, with a newly commissioned six-channel film by Diller Scofidio + Renfro that critically examines the architecture of storage.

4. Re-using materials for the future

For an exhibition so focused on sustainability and the perils of resource consumption in the creative fields, it is imperative to think about what happens to displayed works once the showcase concludes. To this end, Ratti collaborated with Arup and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to set out a Circular Economy Manifesto that was shared with all the participants. This includes a research handbook produced between China and Italy by Archi-Neering-Design/AND Office, Massimiliano Condotta and Valeria Tatano – Università IUAV of Venice, Jin Arts, Pills, Róng Design Library and Typo-D.

5. Re-engaging peripheral contributions

Collateral events

La Biennale is also partnering with international institutions to put on Collateral Events during Intelligens. These events include parallel showcases and sessions in different locations for (roughly) the same duration as the biennale. The Fundació Mies van der Rohe will put on a special competition showcase of the EUmies Awards’ Young Talent 2025 called Intelligens. Talent, while UNESCO will showcase Deep Surfaces. Architecture to enhance the visitor experience of UNESCO sites, dwelling on the relevance of preservation in architecture. The Macao Museum of Art will similarly host a parallel exhibition at the Arsenale, Parallel Worlds, and The Diriyah Biennale Foundation will set up a special event for the AlMusalla Prize 2025.

6. Re-assembling the Gens

Public programming

As part of the expansive public programming for Intelligens, a host of workshops, activities and debates are planned for the public under the aegis of Gens (or ‘people’ in Latin). A dedicated Speakers’ Corner to host the programme has been designed by Christopher Hawthorne, Johnston Marklee and Florencia Rodriguez at the Corderie. Through May and June, five talks have been planned that discursively touch upon different ways in which to tackle the climate crisis. These include talk sessions named Gone with the (Hot) Wind? Cities and Artistic Heritage Facing the Climate Crisis, and The Intelligence of Cities and Collective Baukultur, which is co-organised with the Davos Baukultur Alliance. Speakers for these sessions include policy makers, professors, architects and urban planners from around Europe.

Biennale College Architettura

For the second edition of Biennale College Architettura 2024/25, eight student presentations will be exhibited as part of the Intelligens showcase. The contributions include projects by graduate students and emerging practitioners under the age of 30, all from different geographical contexts, which were selected from over 200 entries. The first Biennale College was initiated by Lesley Lokko as a space for learning and in tandem with the curatorial theme, this year’s Biennale College will function as a research laboratory to work on ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis.

Apart from participation from renowned universities and the Biennale College, special Biennale Sessions have been planned as part of the programming. Through these, La Biennale hopes to invite universities, academies of fine arts and other institutes of higher learning to Venice to attend the biennale.

Despite criticisms of the biennale leaning heavily on theory or conceptual projections and despite Ratti’s avowal of scientific rigour for the current exhibition, most contributions look at and employ architecture as a speculative tool, thinking beyond the idea of architecture as building alone. This is especially vital when one considers the exhibition format for architecture, bringing into question what the product of the discipline is. While criticisms about the speculative nature of biennales and expositions are valid, they often supersede the idea that architecture is not simply building. In fact, that we need to think of architecture as a process, a dialogue, or a way to think about and critique the conditions of the world only becomes reinforced.

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is open to the public from May 10 to November 23, 2025. Follow STIR’s coverage of Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 (Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective) as we traverse the most radical pavilions and projects at this year’s showcase in Venice.