The next Biennale Architettura invites to explore interdisciplinary intelligence and built environment
Miina Jutila
The theme of the next Biennale Architettura will emphasise the role of people and community in intelligence. The title was announced today by Carlo Ratti, curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition.
The title of the Biennale Architettura 2025 is 'Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.’ Carlo Ratti, Italian architect and engineer, and Curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, opened up the many dimensions of the theme, explaining that the term intelligens is based on the common Latin precedent of the English and Italian languages, condensing the title into a single word for both languages.
“The final syllable, “gens”, is Latin for “people”. A new, fictional root emerges, suggesting a future of intelligence that is inclusive, multiple, and imaginative beyond today’s limiting focus on AI,” Ratti explained.
The Biennale Architettura will take a wide look at the built environment and the many disciplines that shape it, said the curator, who is known as an expert in urban planning. “Architecture is at the center, but not alone.”
Within the context of the theme, the aim is also to seek solutions to the role of architecture in the climate crisis. The theme calls for effective responses, proposals and experiments that understand intelligence as the ability to adapt to the environment with limited resources.
Intelligens, as an overarching term, is divided into three parts: natural, artificial and collective. Individual objects, buildings and larger urban structures overlap in the different aspects of the theme and together form experiments or solutions for the future," Ratti said.
The Exhibition will cast architects in the role of “mutagens” stimulating natural evolutionary processes and sending them off in new directions, explained Ratti. “Learning from many sciences, this exhibition hopes to accelerate the transformation of the present through fearless trial and error, and to find a better future in the process.”
Read more about the title and theme of the biennale through this link.
The 19th Venice Architecture Biennale will open to the public on 10 May 2025 and will remain open until 23 November.
The exhibition at the Pavilion of Finland, produced by Archinfo, is curated by architects Ella Kaira and Matti Jänkälä. Read more through this link.
