May 26, 2025
Venice Architecture Biennale 2025: In Defense of Speculation
“The time has come for architecture to embrace adaptation: rethinking how we design for an altered world.” — Carlo Ratti, Chief Curator of the 19th Architecture Biennale
While this assessment rings true for those exhibits conceived with little footing in the real world from the outset, there’s still value in putting forward speculative ideas, even if these conceptual proposals have been tackled many times before. If not addressed here, where else? The same forbearance should be afforded to architect students exploring different facets of the field before choosing one or more directions to pursue. Like university, the Biennale should be a place for unfettered experimentation and subsequent debate, not just fully fledged strategies that remain limited in scope and shortsighted in application.
The following seven exhibits—on view through November 23—demonstrate the validity of this less prescriptive and more discursive mode of thinking. Each has responded to the central theme of “Intelligens Natural. Artificial. Collective,” derived by this edition’s chief curator Carlo Ratti, in explicit and less obvious ways. All offer a fresh, perhaps frequently treated, take on different aspects of sustainability within the immediate context of Venice, a city in a particularly precarious position regarding the ever-looming threat of ecological disaster.
“For decades, architecture’s response to the climate crisis has been centered on mitigation—designing to reduce our impact on the climate,” Ratti wrote in his curatorial statement. “But that approach is no longer enough. The time has come for architecture to embrace adaptation: rethinking how we design for an altered world. This year’s exhibition…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.”
Belgium’s Building Biospheres
Throughout civilization, human’s have erected structures to protect themselves from the elements but in the continuous refinement of these spaces, they’ve lost touch with nature. Presented within Belgium’s permanent pavilion by landscape architect Bas Smets and neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, the Building Biospheres installation reconsiders this dynamic and how plants could be strategically reintroduced within our interiors as beneficial microclimates. In particular, the collaborators have explored how this could be carried out within the context of disused or half occupied buildings within major urban centers.
“The prototype in Venice allows us to test the possibility for plants to actively produce and control a building’s indoor climate,” said Smets. “This makes us hope for an architecture as a microclimate where plants and humans can live together.”
Denmark’s Build of Site
With a hyper site-responsive and tangible approach, architect Søren Pihlmann transformed the permanent Danish pavilion into an active construction site and material library. Due to the all-too-real conditions of flood risk in Venice and outdated modalities, the modernist structure has been renovating since last december. As a way of highlighting the excess of building matter existing in the world, the Build of Site installation showcases what existing components could be upcycled and reutilized in new ways and how bio-based, high-tech, and recycled elements can be introduced side by side in the revamped space. Various encyclopedic publications presented among the carefully analyzed and placed materials reveal an almost scientific re-evaluation and classification of each element.
“It should be clear to most people by now that, going forward, we’ll have to think constructively with regard to what we’ve already put into the world,” says Pihlmann. “This has been perceived as a limitation. But now should be the time to discuss all the architectural possibilities provided by the ground, the stones, the concrete, or whatever you find in the place where you’ve been granted the privilege to build upon the world.”
Iceland’s Lavaforming
Uniquely situated at the intersection of two tectonic plates, Iceland often succumbs to volcanic eruptions and seemingly endless lava flows. Imagined as a futuristic world through immersive videos and “future” artifacts presented within the Nordic country’s temporary pavilion, multifaceted architect and culture maker Arnhildur Pálmadóttir’s Lavaforming project reveals how this geological matter could be harnessed to construct dwellings, entire cities even, all while reducing carbon emissions.
“Lavaforming is exploring a building material that has never been used before,” says Pálmadóttir. “The theme is both a proposal and a metaphor – architecture is in a paradigm shift, many of our current methods have been deemed obsolete or harmful in the long term. In our current predicament – we need to be bold, think in new ways, look at challenges and find the right resources.”
Morocco’s Materiae Palimpsest
For this year’s Biennale, The Kingdom of Morocco’s temporary pavilion at the Arsenale has been suffused in earth-based building materials. With the multimedia Materiae Palimpsest exhibition, architects Khalil Morad El Ghilali and El Mehdi Belyasmine are demonstrating how the age-old artisanal practice of implementing readily available soil—a common theme throughout this Biennale—in bricks and other building components could be optimized through the use of digital tools. On view are both traditional analog hand devices specific to the northern African country and state of the arttechnologies.
Projected videos feature artisans at work transforming this renewable and durable suite of materials as a means of disseminating this instinct knowledge to other parts of the world: a viable and scrappy methodology that could be implemented in other parts of the world to face shifts in climate and subsequent scarcity in available resources.
MIT’s Tree Form
At Palazzo Diedo – Berggruen Arts & Culture, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is debuting its Tree Forminitiative. Developed with sustainable wood supplier WholeTrees Structures and presented as part of the university’s Climate Work exhibition, the project demonstrates how digital workflows can unlock the spatial and structural logic of trees. The various propositions on view challenge the timber industry’s convention of discarding thinner branches and forks and suggest their potential as viable building components.
New computational models can be implemented to harness these structurally sound elements in engineering systems. The underlying idea is to use every part of a tree, reduce waste and carbon emissions, and, if not, optimise the potential of these plants in sequestering carbon.
Norman Foster Foundation Team and Porsche’s Gateway to Venice’s Waterway
Striking an unexpected figure within the Arsenale harbor is Gateway to Venice’s Waterway, a e-mobility transportation hub prototype imagined by Norman Foster in partnership with Porsche. The decidedly futuristic and animal-scaled-clad bridge reflects the precision engineering of the German car company’s legendary sports cars but is meant to anchor electric motor boats and water bikes, the Schiller S1-C in particular. Foster is an avid proponent of the sport and, with this installation, is suggesting another net-zero mode of getting around Venice.
“ ‘In the context of the Biennale, dreams inspired the reimagining of Venice’s transportation infrastructure, bridging heritage and innovation,” said Foster. “In architecture, it became a challenge to create a structure that not only functions as a transportation hub, but also resonates emotionally with its users. The biomorphic design reflects the dreamlike interplay of form, function, and sustainability,”
USM’s unEarthed / Second Nature / PolliNATION
Ever present in various sectors of architecture, design, and lifestyle, Swiss modular furniture company USM teamed up with the Virginia Tech Honors College to present a two-part installation entitled unEarthed / Second Nature / PolliNATION. The first parts—curated by Barcelona-based firm Cloud9 Architect and presented within the Giardini della Marinaressa
—brings together transdisciplinary and action-forward projects by 142 students and 12 faculty members that deal with environmental justice and interspecial coexistence.
Coinciding with the showcase, multivalent Los Angeles practice NoNo Studio is presenting Global Urban Garden Network, a participatory platform and digitally native ecosystem connecting and fostering the growth of urban gardens around the world. The exhibit consists of tryptic screen live streams of gardens in San Jose, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, and, of course, Venice.
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