Venice Architecture Biennale 2025: everything you need to know

From May 20 to November 23, 2025, the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale will take place, curated by architect and engineer Carlo Ratti. "To face a world on fire, architecture needs to harness all the intelligence around us. I feel honored to have the opportunity to be the curator of the 2025 Architecture Biennale," emphasizes the professional. With the theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective, this edition redefines the concept of intelligence and presents an approach on inclusion, adaptability and collaboration. The title suggests a future where intelligence transcends artificial boundaries, becoming a collective force for transformation. The exhibitions explore the intersections of architecture with other disciplines, such as biology, data science, engineering, and planetary sciences, while focusing on the materiality of urban spaces.

Through the eyes of Carlo Ratti

The 2025 Architecture Biennale investigates the role of projects in facing contemporary global challenges, primarily the climate crisis. According to Carlo Ratti, the built environment is not only a major contributor to degradation but a catalyst for change. "Architecture is at the center, but not alone," states the curator. Thus, the exhibition presents a wide variety of projects illustrating how smart solutions, stemming from interdisciplinary collaboration, can reshape our cities and their infrastructure. The works explore natural, artificial, and collective forms of intelligence, offering a new perspective on how architecture can respond to urgent issues, such as the scarcity of natural resources.

Main participants

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 will feature contributions from over 750 participants from various fields. Among them are architects and engineers, mathematicians and climate scientists, philosophers and artists, chefs and programmers, writers and wood sculptors, farmers, and fashion designers. The exhibitors include iconic names such as Bjarke Ingels Group, MAD Architects, Alejandro Aravena, Patricia Urquiola, and Mass Design Group, among many others. As the iconic Central Pavilion Giardini, which traditionally hosts part of the curator's exhibition, is closed for renovation, part of the main exhibition will be distributed throughout Venice, occupying diverse spaces and creatively interacting with the city. "Venice will become a living laboratory. The city itself — one of the most threatened on the planet by climate change — will serve as a backdrop for a new type of exhibition, where installations, prototypes, and experiments will be spread across the Giardini, Arsenale, and other neighborhoods," Ratti explains.

Special projects

This year, two special projects will accompany the main exhibition and national participations. One of them, entitled Margherissima, will be exhibited inside the Austrian Arsenal, Forte Marghera, in Mestre. Among the collaborators are the Architectural Association and Nigel Coates, along with Michael Kevern, Guan Lee, John Maybury, and Jan Bunge. The collaborative project, carried out by students of the AA, proposes the transformation of this industrial area of Venice into a city of the future, considering sustainability. The second project is the ninth collaboration of the Biennale with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the Special Project of the Applied Arts Pavilion. This year, the project will be called On Storage. Curated by Brendan Cormier in collaboration with Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the project will explore the global architecture of storage.

Golden Lions

In 2025, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was jointly awarded to Italian architect Italo Rota (recently deceased on April 6, 2024) and American philosopher Donna Haraway. The homage was granted on the recommendation of curator Carlo Ratti for the innovative thought and influence of the honorees. Haraway was described by Ratti as a seminal voice "in contemporary thought, encompassing social sciences, anthropology, feminist criticism, and philosophy of technology," while Rota "is a man of boundless culture, a passionate collector and researcher of both Wunderkammer objects and technological devices, and a generous teacher."

Brazil Pavilion

Architect Luciana Saboia and architects Eder Alencar and Matheus Seco, from the Plano Coletivo group, are the curators of the exhibition "(RE)INVENTION, which will occupy the Brazil pavilion during the Venice Architecture Biennale. The project was inspired by recent archaeological discoveries of ancestral infrastructures in the Amazon region and aims to promote a critical reflection on the contradictions and socio-environmental challenges of today. Aiming to create a narrative that transcends time, the exhibition will be presented in two acts. The first shows how, over 10,000 years ago, indigenous peoples transformed the landscapes around them by developing sophisticated infrastructures that combined technical knowledge and strategies for adapting to the natural projects. The second highlights contemporary Brazil through the relationships between architecture and infrastructure, as well as the possibilities for redefining the city based on a curation of research, processes, and practices. One of the highlights is the Platform-garden: a linear structure that, originally dependent on continuous irrigation, has been reinvented by incorporating native plants and those adapted to the climate of Central Brazil.

Other national pavilions

Denmark Under the curation of architect Søren Pihlmann, the Danish pavilion presents its proposal as a construction site. In collaboration with specialists from the Royal Danish Academy, the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, and ETH Zurich, the architect intends to create individual constructions, discussing and displaying hyperlocal construction methods and materials. "We have already created everything we need. That is why we need to be better at understanding and finding value in what already exists," he asserts. Luxembourg Aiming to shift the focus from the visual to the sonic, the Sonic Investigation from Luxembourg has created a pavilion that references the silent song 4'33'', by John Cage. The curation was carried out by a team composed of Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, and Alice Loumeau, who together celebrate, through their exhibitions, the multisensory aspects of architecture.

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Locations and tickets

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 will be open to the public from May 10 to November 23 — including two days of vernissage on May 8 and 9. The exhibitions will, as always, be divided between the famous venues of Venice — Arsenale and Giardini — with the former focused on Ratti's main show and the latter containing national participations in their respective pavilions. The tickets for the main venues are available at the entrance and also online through the site of the Architecture Biennale and the opening hours are from 11 AM to 7 PM (last entry at 6:45 PM), with the venue closed on Mondays (except on May 12 and November 17). The Biennale College Architettura, launched in 2023, also returns in 2025 for its second edition as part of the educational arm of the festival. Carlo Ratti invited students, postgraduates, and emerging professionals under 30 to participate and present projects using natural, artificial, and collective intelligence to combat the climate crisis. [april-veja-tambem]W3siaWQiOjE5MjYxMSwidGl0bGUiOiJFeHBvIDIwMjUgT3Nha2E6IGNvbmZpcmEgb3MgcHJpbmNpcGFpcyBwYXZpbGgmI3hGNTtlcyBlbSBkZXN0YXF1ZSJ9LHsiaWQiOjE5MTY0MCwidGl0bGUiOiJTUC1BcnRlIDIwMjU6IGNvbmZpcmEgb3MgcHJpbmNpcGFpcyBsYW4mI3hFNzthbWVudG9zIGRlIGRlc2lnbiBhdXRvcmFsIn0seyJpZCI6MTkxNDAxLCJ0aXRsZSI6IlRlbmQmI3hFQTtuY2lhcyBkZSBkZXNpZ24gcGFyYSBmaWNhciBkZSBvbGhvIGVtIDIwMjYifV0=[/april-veja-tambem]