The 19th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., curated by Carlo Ratti and organized by La Biennale di Venezia, will be open to the public from Saturday, May 10 to Sunday, November 23, 2025, at the Giardini, the Arsenale, and Forte Marghera. A pre-opening will be held on May 8 and 9, with the official inauguration and awards ceremony taking place on Saturday, May 10, 2025.
CURATORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
Intelligens serves as a dynamic laboratory, uniting experts across various forms of intelligence. For the first time, the Exhibition features over 750 participants: architects and engineers, mathematicians and climate scientists, philosophers and artists, chefs and coders, writers and woodcarvers, farmers and fashion designers, and many more. Curating on such a large scale required a fundamental shift in approach. The selection process has been open and bottom-up, guided by an interdisciplinary curatorial team. The Space for Ideas, our open call for projects from May 7 to June 21, 2024, generated an overwhelming global response. The resulting participant pool spans generations, from seasoned professionals still innovating at ninety to recent graduates just beginning their careers. Pritzker Prize winners, former La Biennale di Venezia Curators, Nobel laureates, Royal Professors appear alongside emerging architects and researchers. Intelligens challenges the tradition of the architect as the sole creator, with other professionals relegated to supporting roles. Therefore it was proposed a more inclusive authorship model was proposed, inspired by scientific research. In the era of adaptation, La Biennale di Venezia must collaborate with other institutions. Intelligens has forged connections with other global Institutions, the UN's COP30 in Belem, C40, the Davos Baukultur Alliance, the Soft Power Club, and many others. Its public program, Gens, will host a chorus of events and conversations, engaging audiences both large and small.
VENUES: THE CORDERIE
From the Corderie, visitors will traverse three thematic worlds: Natural Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, and Collective Intelligence. The Exhibition culminates in Out, and asks: can we look to space as a solution to the crises we face on Earth? The answer is no, space exploration is not a way out but a means to improve life here, on the only home we know. Each section is conceived as a modular, fractal space, an organism that links large and small-scale projects, creating a web of dialogue.
BIENNALE COLLEGE ARCHITETTURA 2024-2025
Eight projects have been selected for the second edition of Biennale College Architettura 2024/25. The goal of the College Architettura 2025 is to complement the 19th International Architecture Exhibition with a research laboratory for the development and production of projects using natural, artificial, and collective intelligence to fight the climate crisis. Over 200 students, graduate students, and emerging practitioners under the age of 30 from 49 countries around the world have joined the call for participation. The eight projects will receive a grant of 20,000 euros for the realization of the final work. The works will be presented, out of competition, as part of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
NATIONAL PARTICIPATIONS
66 National Participations will organize their exhibitions in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini (26), at the Arsenale (22) and in the city centre of Venice (15). 4 are the new Participations: Republic of Azerbaijan, Sultanate of Oman, Qatar, Togo. The Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale, sponsored and promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, is curated by Guendalina Salimei with the project Terræ Aquæ. L’Italia e l’intelligenza del mare. The Holy See Pavilion, promoted by Prefetto del Dicastero per la Cultura e l’Educazione della Santa Sede, Cardinale José Tolentino de Mendonça, this year will be held in the Complesso di Santa Maria Ausiliatrice (Fondamenta S. Gioacchin, Castello 450). The exhibition is titled "Opera aperta" and curated by Marina Otero Verzier and Giovanna Zabotti. The City of Venice participates with the historical Venice Pavilion at the Giardini, with the exhibition titled Biblioteche. Costruendo l’intelligenza veneziana. The Venice Pavilion will have its own emanation in other institutional spaces and in the premises of the Università IUAV di Venezia.
The project Margherissima, exhibited inside the Austrian armoury (Polveriera austriaca), Forte Marghera in Mestre, focuses in the area of Marghera and the contaminated territory located near Ponte della Libertà. It is designed by Nigel Coates and the Architectural Association with Michael Keverne, Guan Lee, John Maybury and Jan Bunge, participants in the International Exhibition competition.
For more information, visit www.labiennale.org.
