Carlo Ratti Calls for a Circular Architecture Biennale

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.

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. 

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• Carlo Ratti
• Circularity
• Francisco Brown
• Venice Biennale