Venice Architecture Biennale 2025: A Radical Rethinking Of Design & Intelligence

By Mehar Deep Kaur -

July 11, 2025

The Arsenale, Venice | Art Forum

As the canals of Venice glisten beneath the summer sun, the city once again becomes the beating heart of global architecture. The 19th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, running from May 10 to November 23, 2025, offers an audacious, provocative, and deeply interdisciplinary vision of what architecture can be in a rapidly transforming world. Curated by renowned architect and MIT professor Carlo Ratti, this year’s theme is “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.” It expands far beyond buildings, flashing light on systems, tools, materials, and cultural frameworks that shape the very act of design.

A Global Laboratory of Ideas

This year’s Biennale features over 300 projects from more than 750 contributors across 66 national pavilions, including first-time participants Azerbaijan, Oman, Qatar, and Togo. Ratti’s curatorial direction embraces radical openness, with proposals drawn not only from architects but from farmers, philosophers, scientists, chefs, and activists. This cross-disciplinary ethos is reflected in the breadth of work on display.

Necto, by Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu (SO–IL), Mariana Popescu & TheGreenEyl | Wallpaper

At the heart of this Biennale lies a deep curiosity about intelligence; how it is formed, expressed, and translated into the built environment. The pavilions spread across the Giardini, Arsenale, and various venues throughout Venice collectively explore three strands of intelligence. The exhibition resists rigidity in favor of possibility and plurality, allowing the city itself to become part of the exhibition. With the Central Pavilion under renovation, many installations spill into the streets, piazzas, and industrial buildings of Venice, reinforcing the curatorial theme of architecture as something rich and transformative.

Pushing the Boundaries of Architectural Intelligence

One of the most talked-about installations is the robotic bartender engineered with theatrical flair, mixing Aperol Spritz for visitors, a playful yet pointed commentary on automation’s role in futuristic social spaces. Elsewhere, carved Bhutanese beams and AI-generated forms sit alongside more grounded, deeply contextual designs.

Ancient Future by BIG | Dezeen

Nature is not only referenced but becomes a partner in construction. Several pavilions introduce materials like bacterial bio-cement, bricks made from elephant dung, lava-based concrete, and fungal insulation, innovations that suggest a future where buildings grow, adapt & biodegrade.

Architecture as Cultural Critique

Many national contributions interrogate architecture’s historical and geopolitical ensemble. The British Pavilion, co-curated by UK and Kenyan teams, examines postcolonial repair and material memory in “The Geology of Britannic Repair”. It transforms the pavilion into a layered site of encounter, using Kenyan stone, British brick, and overlapping constellations to symbolize rupture and reconnection.

Geology of Britanic Repair | Arch Daily

The Australian Pavilion presents a quietly powerful statement on Indigenous identity and sustainability through “Home”, a rammed-earth structure created by an all-Indigenous team using site-specific materials. After the Biennale, the structure will be ceremonially dismantled and returned to the land, underscoring an ethic of belongingness and cultural appreciation.

Home: The Rammed Earth Pavilion | Arch Daily

Other national pavilions reflect more urgent geopolitical contexts. Ukraine’s contribution focuses on vernacular housing solutions amidst conflict, while Estonia critiques the aesthetics and failures of its post-Soviet mass-housing insulation, revealing architecture’s power to either conceal or confront social issues.

Home: The Rammed Earth Pavilion | Arch Daily

Estonian pavilion ‘Let Me Warm You’ | Designboom

At Giardini’s Canada Pavilion, the Living Room Collective presents ‘Picoplanktonics’, a groundbreaking exploration of architecture as a living system rather than a static object. This installation reimagines buildings as ecological partners, think structures that grow, breathe, and clean our air.

3D Printed Canadian Biostructure Pavilion ‘Picoplanktonics’ | Arch Daily

A City-Wide Dialogue

Beyond the official pavilions, the city of Venice itself is activated as an architectural text. Restoration efforts in historic locations such as Piazza San Marco become part of the narrative, offering visitors a glimpse into architecture as an ongoing act of restoration. The Biennale also extends into ‘Ocean Space’, a hauntingly beautiful installation in the Chiesa di San Lorenzo curated by TBA21. It explores oceanic intelligence, climate ethics, and aquatic ecosystems as design fundamentals.

An installation by Territorial Agency represents global sea-level rise at Ocean Space in Venice | The Art Newspaper

The Biennale’s decentralization this year has fostered an unexpected array of discoveries. Visitors might begin their journey at the Arsenale, immersed in climate-conscious prototyping, and end their day in a quiet plaza exploring mathematical models or Indigenous installations. Each exhibition space feels like a portal into a different definition of intelligence.

Critical Reception: Between Radical Vision and Uneasy Optimism

Not all reviews have been glowing. Architectural critic Fabrizio Gallanti called this year’s Biennale “a theatre of fakery and deception,” cautioning against overhyping the architect’s ability to solve systemic crises. Some commentators have echoed this concern, noting that while the exhibits are intellectually rich, their impact may feel abstract or symbolic rather than actionable. Yet this critique itself underscores the deeper tension at the core of the 2025 Biennale: Can architecture truly shift the world, or is it a mirror reflecting our dreams and delusions?

Impact on the Future

For students of design, architecture, and allied fields, the 2025 Venice Biennale offers an invaluable opportunity to witness the expanding horizons of the discipline. It encourages young creatives to break disciplinary silos, to think not only as builders but as storytellers, strategists, environmentalists, and ethicists. It suggests that architecture’s future lies not in singular genius but in collaborative intelligence distributed across ecosystems, communities, and technologies.

Elephant Chapel by Boonserm Premthada | World-Architects