The presentation to the invited international press of the next Architecture Biennale which will be held in 2025 and which will take place in the Gardens and Arsenale of Venice was held at the Ca' Giustinian Biennale venue.
The second edition of was also presented on the same day Biennale College Architecture for students, graduates and emerging professionals under 30, whose workshop will start in September 2024.
The title of the 2025 Architecture Biennale
The title of this edition is Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. Carlo Ratti explains it like this:
«The titles of International Architecture Exhibitions are usually announced in both English and Italian. In 2025, the title will instead be condensed into a single word for both languages, invoking the common Latin origin: Intelligens. The modern “intelligence” derives from intelligens; however, this choice also indicates an expansion of meaning associations. Translated separately, the final syllable, "gens", means "people": from here emerges an imaginary alternative root, which suggests a more multiple and inclusive future of intelligence, which escapes the excessive limits of today's focus on 'AI »
The exhibition will try to chart new routes for the future, suggesting a range of solutions to the most pressing problems of the present. It will put together a collection of experimental project proposals, inspired by a definition of "intelligence" as the ability to adapt to the environment starting from a limited set of resources, knowledge or power. Objects, buildings and urban plans will be arranged along the axis of multiple and widespread intelligence – natural, artificial, collective. Some ideas are destined to fail. But others will be able to show us promising paths.
The exhibition imagines architects as “mutagenic agents”
Figures capable of triggering evolutionary processes and directing them in new directions. By learning from multiple scientific disciplines and advancing through trial and error, this exhibition aims to accelerate the transformation of the present, in search of better futures.
There are four methodological pillars
Transdisciplinarity: The architectural projects will promote collaborations between different professionals, with the aim, wherever possible, of advancing scientific knowledge.
Living Laboratory: In 2025, the Central Pavilion at the Giardini will be under renovation. It will therefore be replaced by a series of special projects capable of transforming portions of Venice and the external areas of the Mostra della Biennale venues into Living Labs - living laboratories, where multiple forms of intelligence can converge.
Collection of Ideas: adopting a collaborative approach to design is fundamental, even more so in a time of crisis. On 7 May 2024 the Biennale website opens a space for the collection of ideas to broaden the heterogeneity of voices, visions and suggestions.
Circularity Protocol: the exhibition aims to achieve particularly ambitious circularity objectives. Through the development of a Circularity Manifesto, precise guidelines will be defined, outlining a new standard for future cultural events.
The statement by President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco
In the title Intelli/Gens meaning and sign converge. If intelligence is the basis of the evolutionary process of the individual, in the noblest sense of his being civilians (a noun of the third declension, therefore both masculine and feminine), architecture is the space in which it can unfold, in a constant negotiation with the territory. By stating functions, designing symbols, promoting relationships, intelligence constructs architectures in ethical, aesthetic and above all ecological terms. Not for nothing, remaining in the mood of etimo, oikos in Greek it means home but also environment. Which is why in his text of intent Ratti himself asks: "Will we be able to design buildings as intelligent as trees?"
The 19th International Architecture Exhibition will present, as usual, the National Participations with its own exhibitions in the Pavilions in the Giardini and the Arsenale, as well as in the historic center of Venice.
Biennale College Architecture, second edition
Carlo Ratti, Artistic Director of the Architecture Sector of the Venice Biennale, invites students, graduates and emerging professionals under 30 (architecture, urban design, engineering, interior design, landscape architecture, built environment) to present projects that use natural, artificial and collective intelligence to fight the climate crisis.
Who is Carlo Ratti
Of training architect and engineer, the Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the Polytechnic of Milan. He is director of the Senseable City Lab and founding partner of the architecture and innovation studio CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati (Turin, New York City, London). A graduate of the Polytechnic University of Turin and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, he earned a Master of Philosophy and a PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge in England, completing his doctoral thesis as a Fullbright Scholar at MIT. One of the ten most cited scholars internationally in the field of urban planning, is co-author of over 750 scientific publications, including the recent “Atlas of the Senseable City” (written with Antoine Picon, published by Yale University Press). Already a TED speaker, he regularly publishes opinion articles in the major international media, including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Project syndicate, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, El Pais. He serves as co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization. His curatorial experience includes projects in different parts of the world. He was educational director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin and curator of the Future Food District pavilion during Expo Milano 2015. He was chief curator of the eighth Shenzhen Urbanism/Architecture Biennial ( UABB) in 2019, co-curator of the second Porto Design Biennial in 2021 and Creative Mediator responsible for the award-winning Urban Vision of the European Nomad Biennial Manifesta 14 in Pristina in 2022. His work has been exhibited in venues such as MoMA The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale (International Architecture Exhibitions), the Design Museum in Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, the MAXXI in Rome. Three of his designs – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel and Scribit – were included in the magazine's annual “Best Inventions of the Year” list TEAM. Magazine Fast Company called him one of “America's most influential designers” and Blueprint Magazine included him in the list of “People who will change the world of design”. Bloomberg he named him the “philosopher of the sensorial city”.
The Artistic Director will choose from this global pool of applications up to 16 projects which will be developed in the Biennale College Architecture program. The selected candidates will then be invited to participate in a 10-day workshop in Venice in September 2024 to develop the proposed projects with production plan and budget. The workshop, conducted by Carlo Ratti together with a group of curators and architects, tutors and mentors, will alternate group and individual moments, and dedicated meetings with visiting professors and cultural operators. A final selection of up to 8 projects it will be chosen by Carlo Ratti himself. Each selected project will be awarded a contribution of 20.000 euros for production and will be presented, out of competition, as part of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition. The goal of this project is, among others, to broaden opportunities for emerging young professionals by sharing their work with a wide audience. The Venice Biennale has long supported the productions of emerging young people also in the sectors of Art, Cinema, Dance, Music and Theater and in the Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts.
The international call for Biennale College Architecture, published today on the Biennale website www.labiennale.org, It will be open till at 23.59pm CEST (Italian time) on June 21, 2024.
