Jian Mu Tower in Shenzhen, China, incorporates a large-scale farm into its 51-story structure. It is set to produce crops that can feed 40,000 people a year while also housing offices, a supermarket, and a food court. Courtesy Carlo Ratti Associati

Carlo Ratti Calls for a Circular Architecture Biennale

The curator invites participants to reduce waste and integrate natural systems through a new circularity manifesto.

As the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture curator, architect, engineer, and professor Carlo Ratti wants to demonstrate architecture’s relationship with natural systems. Ratti and his team have published a Circular Economy Manifesto, developed with guidance from Arup and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which calls on the exhibition’s participants to rethink their spaces and pavilions through circular design principles such as using a Whole-Life Carbon approach, maximizing recycled and reuse materials, designing for modularity for easy deconstruction, and integrating natural principles. METROPOLIS sat down with him to discuss his vision and initiatives for the next Biennale.

Francisco Brown: What is your central vision for the 2025 Biennale? 

Carlo Ratti: I think the biggest challenge of architecture today, which we are trying to address both with our practice at CRA (Carlo Ratti Associati) and our research at MIT, is to create a better alliance between natural and artificial systems. There are two ways: One way is with the artificial world, the world of sensors, AI, and so on. Systems that can help us transform a building, or even a city, into almost a living organism. The other way is to use the logic of nature itself. We, as architects, all know that these principles and circular practices are key ones. Those logics have informed much of our design work regarding the use of renewables in buildings and new types of sustainable and circular architecture.

Jian Mu Tower in Shenzhen, China Courtesy Carlo Ratti Associati
MIT’s Senseable City Lab study uses laser-scanning data to analyze the architectural logic of Brazilian favelas. Courtesy of MIT Senseable City Lab

FB: Global events, including the Olympics, have slowly adopted circular design strategies. Tell us about your decision to publish the Circular Economy Manifesto. 

CR: We’ve been looking at circularity in different ways for years at the studio. For instance, we did a Circular Garden at the Milan Design Week and later at the Italian Pavilion at the Dubai Expo. The idea is that everything you do in architecture can be reused or recycled at the end of its life. This new Circular Economy Manifesto followed a set of guidelines we put together in New York during Climate Week with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We know that we won’t be perfect next year. Still, we think this survey is the direction we want to push, especially for temporary events like the Olympic Games, when countries build very complex structures and then, after a short amount of time, it all goes to a landfill. The exhibition will later turn into an architectural manual for circular design.

FB: The manifesto asks the participants to showcase “bold examples of circular design that offer lasting sustainability legacy.” How are you guiding participants through this? 

CR: We are not forcing people to follow [the Manifesto] because we see this as the beginning of a process and the first step of a “circular future.” Some countries started designing the pavilion even before we announced the theme, whereas some countries still needed to pick the design, so it changed a lot between participants. We couldn’t impose it because it would be like changing the rules of the game while it is being played. So next year, the thought is to start developing some knowledge. It’s not about imposing but about proposing new ways to design. So we can later create a guide and apply it to other events, such as the Milan Design Week, which has shown [more] interest in becoming circular.

Smart Curbs is an MIT and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology research project on technology using computer vision to measure street activities in real time. Courtesy of MIT Senseable City Lab

FB: With the Biennale College Architettura, you invited students and young professionals to submit proposals that utilize natural, artificial, and collective intelligence to combat the climate crisis for an opportunity to build their projects. Tell me more about this.

CR: We were flooded with thousands of proposals from all over the world. So, on one hand, it was tough, but it was a hundred percent worth it for different reasons. One was about getting a taste of ideas, issues, and concerns from a different generation and parts of the world. And the second thing is that we’ve always believed in open-source architecture since we published Open Source Architecture (Thames & Hudson, 2015) [almost] ten years ago. We wanted a space where everybody could contribute to new ideas, and those ideas would replicate like a natural system. However, we know top-down happens much more in our field. This notion of the Promethean architect that ignores diversity, and the full complexity of the people, the environment, and the organic growth of cities. This open call and workshop invited participants to do the opposite and collaborate. This open process is what we need to bring back to architecture. We have seen many projects based on the idea that design is a collaborative effort, and networks today can help us build on the traditional way of doing things, for example. 

FB: How are you programming the Biennale to meet this collaborative process objective?

CR: We want to have primarily two types of “openings” in the Biennale. The first one is opening between different disciplines. In many teams, you will see fantastic architects, designers, and planners working with top Nobel Prize–level scientists, sociologists, artists, or other disciplines. So there’ll be this very intellectually promiscuous point of view. The second type of “opening” is from the point of view of age. Thanks to the open call, we found out about the fantastic work that was coming out of some people who were just at the university and were being invited to be alongside some of the most well-known architects. 

Hot Heart is a series of islands in Helsinki with the dual function of storing thermal energy and serving as a hub for recreational activities. The project was recognized as a Responsible Disruptor by METROPOLIS in 2022. Courtesy of Carlo Ratti Associati

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