Venice Thinks: Architecture as Intelligence at the 2025 Biennale
Venice — a city where the very fabric of space whispers of time, water, and memory. Here, among canals and stone facades, the 19th International Architecture Biennale unfolds. From May 10 to November 23, 2025, the city transforms into an intellectual laboratory where architecture ceases to be mere form and becomes thought.
The curator of the exhibition, Carlo Ratti — architect, engineer, and thinker — offers not another parade of facades, but a reflection: Can architecture think? And if so — how?
Theme: “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.”
This triad — natural, artificial, and collective intelligence — is not just a theme but the philosophical framework of the entire exhibition. Architecture here doesn’t build — it contemplates. It learns from trees, debates with algorithms, listens to the voice of the street.
Natural intelligence evokes biomimicry, resilience, and symbiosis. Artificial intelligence brings algorithms, neural networks, and code-born design. Collective intelligence draws from community, memory, and participatory creation. Together, they form a new kind of architectural consciousness, where buildings are not objects — but subjects.
Pavilions: A Geography of Ideas and Intuition
Each country brings not just projects, but fragments of thought. Each pavilion is a chapter in the book the world is writing. Moving from one to another, the visitor journeys through different levels of architectural awareness.
The pavilion of China immediately draws attention. In Co-Exist, architecture breathes — bioactive surfaces respond to touch and light. It’s not a metaphor, but an attempt to create an environment that feels and adapts like a living organism.
From the organic to the digital, Armenia offers a dialogue between past and future. Their project reconstructs ancient monasteries and temples using neural networks. Architecture here is not stone, but memory — restored through algorithm. A poem written by machines in the language of tradition.
If Armenia speaks of memory, Australia speaks of home as ritual. In the Home pavilion, space becomes a map where each point is a story tied to land, culture, and body. Home is not a building, but a feeling of belonging, conveyed through architectural gesture.
From the personal to the universal, Austria presents Agency for Better Living — a modular lab where architecture mediates between the individual and the city. The space reacts to the visitor’s emotional state, like a mirror reflecting the inner world.
The UAE takes a different path — through pressure. Their installation Pressure Cooker is a capsule where temperature, sound, and light shift to simulate climate and social stress. Architecture here doesn’t soothe — it compresses, forcing us to feel what it means to live under pressure.
Finally, the Netherlands abandon the visual and offer architecture through sound. Their pavilion is an acoustic space navigated by impulses, where perception becomes bodily. This is architecture you hear — not see.
Highlights: Architecture That Provokes
Among many projects, Canal Café by Diller Scofidio + Renfro stands out. Visitors are offered coffee brewed from purified water of the Grand Canal. Not a performance, but a manifesto of trust in technology and sustainability. The project received the Golden Lion for Best Pavilion.
The central pavilion poses the essential question: “Can we build structures as intelligent as trees?” The answers lie in living facades, sensory panels, and ventilation through greenery. This is architecture that breathes.
Digital Satellites: Architecture Beyond Walls
For the first time, the Biennale is accompanied by two digital platforms:
- Spatial Intelligens — exploring architecture as spatial cognition.
- In Other Words — describing architecture through sound, movement, and emotion.
These platforms extend the exhibition beyond Venice, turning it into a global conversation.
Criticism: Meaning or Simulation?
Yet not everything is met with applause. Many architects and critics argue that the 2025 Biennale is too abstract. The themes of intelligence sound poetic but offer few concrete solutions for cities plagued by overcrowding, poverty, and climate threats.
Some pavilions resemble art installations more than architectural proposals. The exhibition feels elitist, closed off, speaking a language not everyone understands.
Still, perhaps its “meaninglessness” is not failure, but invitation. An invitation to rethink. After all, architecture is not only concrete and glass — but the questions we ask ourselves before we build.
In Conclusion: A City That Thinks
Venice in 2025 is not just a place to showcase architecture. It is a city that thinks. It thinks about the future, about nature, about humanity. And if architecture truly can be intelligent, then perhaps it is here — for the first time — that it has spoken aloud.