Carlo Ratti’s Exhibition at the Arsenale – Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

Above, the installation “Speakers’ Corner” by Christopher Hawthorne, Johnston Marklee, and Florencia Rodriguez in the Venice Arsenale’s Corderie. Photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit.

Carlo Ratti’s exhibition at the Arsenale – Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

Carlo Ratti’s Corderie exhibition for the 19th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale did not leave critics and the public indifferent, garnering both positive comments and criticism.
Our opinion is that the exhibition is ambitious, very rich in ideas, projects, research, and experimentation. Perhaps too rich.
Indeed, the complexity of “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective” (you can read the article on to the theme chosen by the Biennale’s curator here), the large number of projects on display (more than 750 selected through an open call between May and June 2024), and the closure for restoration of the Central Pavilion at the Giardini -which reduced the curator’s exhibition to a single venue from the usual two- contribute to making the exhibition decidedly crowded with content and not the easiest to comprehend.

The exhibition’s design in this regard does not help: large installations, videos, prototypes, drawings, and material samples follow one another without any space to give breath to the exhibition. Of the large number of contributions on display, it is complicated to even understand the author, due to description panels that are difficult to read and often positioned in counterintuitive positions.
In short, the final impression is that there could be many more good and interesting things in the exhibition than one could see and remember, but most of them get lost due to a content hypertrophy that borders on confusion.
Perhaps it would have been better to make a more rigorous selection of what to display and work on a communication better suited to transmit such a complex and articulate theme.

As a note, we must say that the large and dense crowd, present even on the days once reserved for the press preview, did not help our visit, for sure.
Therefore, if you intend to visit the 2025 Biennale of Architecture, our advice is to take your time and avoid the busiest periods; this is generally sound advice for all the Biennales, but it is even truer this year.

Preceded by a small introductory section called Intro, the exhibition in the Corderie is divided into four parts, entitled Natural Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, and Out.
While the first three present experiences and proposals on the different ways in which architecture can, through various forms of intelligence, adapt to a planet now inevitably compromised due to climate change, the fourth investigates the possibility of the human race to escape the climate crisis by migrating outside Planet Earth (we anticipate that the answer is that we can’t).

Because of the extreme complexity and articulation of Carlo Ratti’s exhibition, we have not written a traditional, structured article; we took a more instinctive approach, and propose a report by images focused on the installations that intrigued us most.

Intro

Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadelarte; The Third Paradise Perspective.
The Third Paradise is a symbol of shared creation, of “preventative peace,” of the work of collective intelligence and responsibility operating through a multiplicity of strategies, cooperations, solutions, and fluid practices that shape our common future.

Transsolar, Bilge Kobas, Daniel A. Barber, Sonia Seneviratne; Terms and Conditions.
Terms and Conditions brings the outside in—the outside-side of the air conditioner is inside, suspended all around—and confronts visitors with the waste heat resulting from cooling the exhibition rooms beyond.

Beatriz Colomina, Roberto Kolter, Patricia Urquiola, Geoffrey West, Mark Wigley; The Other Side of the Hill. The Other Side of the Hill draws on the striking similarity of microbial and human populations to rethink our shared future. It confronts visitors with the vertiginous hill shaped by the exponential growth of the human population, which will reach 10 billion in a few more decades, and after which the population is projected to decline just as fast—perhaps even dropping to preindustrial levels.

Natural Intelligence

Ensamble Studio; Sun Stone. Sun Stone is a luminous and enigmatic floating structure. It is an homage to the delicate balance between the earth and the sun—a relationship that sustains life and drives ecological systems.

Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT Architects), Jampel Dell’Angelo (waterspace); The Architecture of Virtual Water. The Architecture of Virtual Water is an immersive installation that reveals the hidden presence of water in our everyday lives. Shaped by letter-formed panels spelling aqua, the pavilion guides visitors through a multi-sensorial experience, exposing the unseen water embedded in food, objects, and architecture. 

PNAT, Fabbrica dell’aria.La Fabbrica dell’Aria è un’installazione che sfrutta l’intelligenza delle piante per purificare l’aria degli ambienti chiusi. Agendo come una “biomacchina che respira”, utilizza il sistema brevettato Stomata® per incanalare l’aria attraverso un substrato in cui le radici delle piante e i batteri benefici degradano le sostanze inquinanti.

Mariana Popescu, TheGreenEyl, Riley Watts; Necto. Hoisted into place, shaped by tension, and selectively stiffened, Necto enacts a form-finding exercise that speculates on the future of temporary structures—flexible, efficient, and reconfigurable.

Studio Gang; The Living Orders of Venice. The Living Orders of Venice builds interest, wonder, and care for non-human city dwellers by hosting a crowdsourced ecological field study of the Biennale grounds using iNaturalist, a citizen-science app.

OLA Office for Living Architecture, Green Technologies in Landscape Architecture, Technical University of Munich; Architecture as Trees – Trees as Architecture.
The installation features two inosculated trees with roots and branches, imagery of a walkway in the treetops and a tree that is overgrowing a technical joint, and renders addressing issues like changing seasons and the integration of trees into the water and energy concept of a building, and themes of time and the transformation of public space.

Boonserm Premthada: Elephant Chapel. The installation features a four-meter-tall arched structure constructed entirely of elephant dung bricks that is strong yet lightweight, minimal yet durable, airy yet robust. 

Juliana Mariz de Oliveira Simantob, Claudia Gowgiel, Pienelopi Filothei Karali; Fricks: Upcycled Foamed Bricks. FRICKS explores how to repurpose construction waste, specifically bricks, into a new building material.

Maria Paz Gutierrez, Donald Gensler; Palm Onto-Intelligence. The installation features four material-territorial quarters that signify the unique social, technological, and material regenerative dynamics of future constructions in the Western Amazon. It showcases various permutations of synergistic material functionalities of palm, cork, and engineered yeast (DNA) to create lightweight, non-toxic insulation and façade systems. Photos © Federica Lusiardi/Inexhibit.

Angie Dub, Heidi Jalkh; Conq: Marine Biobased Building Materials. Combining crushed seashells with algae-based biopolymers, Conq creates a heat-free bioceramic made entirely from marine biomass.

Diana Scherer, Interwoven. Using a unique technique that employs natural growth processes to create textiles from plant roots, Interwoven guides root networks to grow into designed patterns. These growth patterns explore the intersection of microscopic plant anatomy and man-made structures, combining natural tissue formations with artificial designs. Photos © Federica Lusiardi/Inexhibit.

Lola Ben-Alon, Natural Materials Lab, Columbia University GSAPP; Earthen Rituals.
By translating earthen textures into code, the project creates 3D-printed earth-fiber tiles from construction waste and agricultural by-products.

Karen Antorveza Paez (Digital Building Technologies, ETH Zurich), Benjamin Dillenburger (Digital Building Technologies, ETH Zurich), Robert Kindler (Wood Materials Science Group, ETH Zurich), Dimitrios Terzis, BIO-Geos, EPFL, Lausanne); Geological Microbial Formations.
Geological Microbial Formations explores biocementation as a transformative approach to converting construction waste into architectural materials. It combines biotechnology, robotic fabrication, and architecture to leverage biomineralisation.

Artificial Intelligence

Philip F. Yuan, Bin He; Co-Poiesis. The pavilion – constructed from trees felled by typhoon Beibiya in Shanghai and transformed through digital fabrication, combining traditional carpentry with robotic precision – houses a performance featuring human musicians and humanoid robots engaged in collaborative drumming and dance.

Kate Crawford, Vladan Joler; Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power; photo © Federica Lusiardi/Inexhibit. Spanning twenty-four meters in length, Calculating Empires traces the story of calculation from al-Khwarizmi to deep neural nets and presents a richer historical tapestry to better understand the technological present. Photo © Federica Lusiardi/Inexhibit.

Refik Anadol Studio, Living Architecture Biophilia. Living Architecture: Biophilia is an AI Data Sculpture that transforms over 100 million images of Earth’s flora, fauna, and fungi into immersive digital ecosystems. 

Takashi Ikegami, Luc Steels; Am I a Strange Loop?. The installation features an “android lab” to carry out live AI experiments featuring the Alter3 humanoid robot, which has components for perception, actuator control, and episodic memory.

Pininfarina, newcleo, Fincantieri; Revolutionizing Clean Energy: Integrating Advanced Nuclear Solutions and the Built Environment. A full-scale model of a Small Modular Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (SMR) and an immersive multimedia installation inform visitors about SMR technology through infographics, data-viz, and diagrams.

Lluis Ortega, Enrique Romero, Julia Capomaggi, Nil Brullet; Recycling Intelligences. The installation features a 12-square-meter table with 370 dynamically backlit 3D-printed layouts—both original and AI-generated— accompanied by explanations of the AI’s processes.

Collective Intelligence

Bjarke Ingels Group, Laurian Ghinitoiu, Arata Mori; Ancient Future: Bridging Bhutan’s Tradition and Innovation. The installation features a six-metre wooden beam co-created by a Bhutanese artisan and AI-driven robotics. One half bears intricate traditional carvings; the other is AI’s interpretation of those designs. Together, they form a seamless narrative of human creativity and machine precision.

Pere Joan Ravetllat Mira, Sara Vima Grau, Jesús Quintana Gómez, Aleix Salazar Aloy, Còssima Cornadó Bardón, Marta Domènech Rodríguez, Isaac Colin Ramió; Open Regeneration of Housing Estates in Barcelona. The installation features an efficient infrastructure that can be attached to existing buildings to upgrade, protect, repair, reequip, and expand homes and shared spaces. The system is based on an open design that consists of a modular, self-supporting wooden structure.

Christopher Hawthorne, Johnston Marklee, Florencia Rodriguez; Speakers’ Corner. Occupying a pivotal hinge in the Arsenale gallery sequence, the primary feature of the Speakers’ Corner is a grandstand with seating for up to sixty people. Visitors seated here form the audience for workshops, debates, panels, and lectures throughout the exhibition.

a|911, Cadena Concepts, Esrawe; Acapulco: Selective Memories. After recent climate events exposed its vulnerabilities, Acapulco must reinvent itself. The installation explores design’s role in this revival, reclaiming historical, material, and natural knowledge to rethink coastal cities and tourism. The installation features a double celosia (latticework) that intertwines an archive of urban histories with an exercise in construction where tradition and innovation converge to reimagine the city’s transformative spirit.

Vela Celeste: Reimagining Home. Developed by Carlo Ratti Associati in collaboration with the Municipality of Naples, the installation “Vela Celeste: Reimagining Home” focuses on the demolition of the infamous Vele di Scampia buildings. More than 2,000 former residents, once calling the Vele home, now form a metropolitan-scale diaspora, awaiting relocation while holding onto a sense of homecoming. As part of this transformation, the Vela Celeste will remain, not as a relic of the past but as a civic space shaped by collective imagination. Rather than traditional consultations, residents will translate their memories and aspirations into AI-generated images, actively shaping the Vela Celeste’s future.

Martina Mazzarello (Senseable City Lab, MIT), Fabio Duarte (Senseable City Lab, MIT), JOURNEY, Washington Fajardo, Umberto Fugiglando (Senseable City Lab, MIT), Diego Morra (Senseable City Lab, MIT), Gareth Doherty (Harvard University); Data Clouds. The installation features a 1:50 scale hanging model of Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela, highlighting the problematic translation of complex data into traditional mapping methods. An immersive corridor gives visitors a first-person perspective of Rocinha, with a symmetrical view of photogrammetry and matching LiDAR data revealing the structural complexity of the settlement. 

Caterina Miralles; 0.5. 0.5 is an audiovisual installation that presents the contrasting roles of technological and collective intelligence in preserving the Venetian lagoon. The project brings together the analytical world of various academic centres for climatological research in Venice and the intergenerational knowledge of the fishing community in the north of the territory, critically examining the lagoon’s inherently fragile and oscillating ecosystem.

Out

Space Caviar, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Ersilia Vaudo; A Satellite Symphony. The installation is a reflection on how space-based technologies, originally conceived for space exploration, have had their most significant impact here on Earth. Drawing inspiration from Charles and Ray Eames’ landmark 1977 film Powers of Ten, A Satellite Symphony takes the Veneto region, particularly Venice and its lagoon, as the starting point for an exploration that traverses multiple scales: from the Earth’s core to the outer reaches of Earth’s orbit.

Aurelia Institute, Heatherwick Studio, Brent Sherwood; Space Garden. Space Garden proposes an orbiting, autonomous greenhouse that will support cutting-edge agricultural research and global engagement in the future of our Earth-Space ecosystem. The structure is composed of 31 growth chambers with individually controlled climates, designed for a variety of fruiting and flowering plants, trees, fungi, and algae.