2025 Venice Biennale to transform city into a ‘living laboratory’ for architecture and climate resilience

Further details have been announced about the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Carlo Ratti – an Italian architect, engineer, and MIT professor. Titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., it will run from 10 May to 23 November 2025 across multiple venues in Venice. This edition of the biennale will feature over 750 participants, including architects, engineers, climate scientists, philosophers, and artists, with a focus on how different forms of intelligence can shape the built environment in response to the climate crisis.

The event will bring together exhibitions from 66 countries, with new participants including Azerbaijan, Oman, Qatar, and Togo. The Biennale College Architettura has selected eight projects, each receiving a €20,000 grant, and will host over 200 students and young practitioners from 49 countries.

With the Central Pavilion closed for renovation in 2025, Ratti has stated that “Venice will not just host the Biennale Architettura – it will become a living laboratory.”

Ratti added: “The city itself – one of the most imperiled on Earth in the face of a changing climate – will serve as the backdrop for a new kind of Exhibition, where installations, prototypes, and experiments are scattered across the Giardini, the Arsenale and other neighborhoods.”

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) will continue its partnership with the biennale, presenting On Storage, a special project curated by Brendan Cormier in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). The project will examine global storage architecture and logistics, featuring a newly commissioned six-channel film directed by DS+R.

Ratti has framed Intelligens as a response to the acceleration of climate change, stating that “architecture must become as flexible and dynamic as the world we are now designing for”. The curatorial approach is intended to move away from a singular authorship model, instead recognising contributions across disciplines and generations. The exhibition will include both Pritzker Prize-winning architects and emerging voices, reflecting what organisers describe as an inclusive and collaborative curatorial process.

The British Council has selected four architectural curators to represent the UK at the 2025 biennale, following a competition held last year.

Two architects and two academics were chosen from a shortlist of four design proposals.The curators are Owen Hopkins, director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University; Kathryn Yusoff, professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University; and Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi, co-founders and directors of the Nairobi-based Cave_bureau.

According to the British Council, the UK’s exhibition will examine architecture as an “earth practice,” exploring themes of repair, restitution, and renewal through the lens of decarbonisation and decolonisation.

The pre-opening of the biennale will take place on 8 and 9 May, followed by the official awards ceremony and inauguration on 10 May 2025, with the event running until 23 November.