American philosopher Donna Haraway has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, while the late Italian architect and designer Italo Rota, who passed away last year at the age of 70, receives the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam. Both honors are part of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., taking place at the Giardini and Arsenale from May 10 to November 23, 2025.
The two recipients were recommended by this year's biennale curator, Italian architect Carlo Ratti, and the decision was approved by the event's board of directors. This year's Golden Lion awards ceremony, which celebrates architects' lifetime achievements, will take place on 10 May when the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale opens to the public.
ROTA ONE OF ARCHITECTURE'S "MOST ORIGINAL FIGURES"
Rota died on 6 April 2024. His architectural and design work was centred for over thirty years on constant and advanced cross-disciplinary research, from contemporary art to robotics, to develop innovative projects in which humanistic beauty and sustainability became integral and disruptive elements.
"Italo Rota was a forerunner," said Ratti. "His vision was that of a world in which the relevance of living entities and biology in general, nature in the broadest possible definition, and finally science and applied technology were united in a single breathing entity. Throughout his life, he had the extraordinary ability to traverse the second half of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the new century by flying above the major styles and cultures of design, establishing himself as one of the most original figures in Italian and European architecture. Raised under the wing of masters such as Franco Albini, Vittorio Gregotti, and Gae Aulenti, he cultivated a unique eclecticism and a rare ability to combine poetic vision and extreme analytical lucidity. A man of boundless culture, a passionate collector and researcher of both Wunderkammer objects and technological devices, and a generous teacher, he has contributed to the creation of some of the most influential cultural venues in Europe in recent decades, with projects such as the restoration of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the Museo del Novecento in Milan. His cultural legacy is well expressed by the title of his last monograph, Solo diventare natura ci salverà (“Only Becoming Nature Will Save Us”) (Milan: Libri Scheiwiller, 2023)”.
HARAWAY "ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL VOICES IN CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT"
“Donna Haraway is one of the most influential voices in contemporary thought, straddling the social sciences, anthropology, feminist criticism, and the philosophy of technology," said Ratti. Over the past four decades, she has explored, in a multidisciplinary manner and with a constant capacity for linguistic invention, issues such as the impact of technological evolution on our biological nature and the ways in which the environmental context of the Chthulucene redefines the boundaries between human and nonhuman. Haraway invented this definition, after the American writer H.P. Lovecraft, as an alternative to the term “Anthropocene” (normally used to define the human impact on Earth) to emphasise the urgency of the co-existence and symbiosis with other species. Her work and philosophy, radically critical but simultaneously optimistic and imaginative, are distinguished by their commitment to creating alternative worlds: to constructing positive visions in which the difficulties of the present can be overcome or mitigated through the making of new myths and the cultivation of new kin. Her contributions to the way we understand science, technology, race, gender, geography, and the environmental history of humanity have left indelible marks on the study of each, and their precedence to the notion that natural, artificial, and collective intelligences act together is self-evident. As designers grapple with a rapidly transforming present in which nature, technology, and society all present symptoms of divergence from the world as we know it, Haraway’s theory empowers us and her observations guide us. With gratitude, we recognize the lifetime of visionary literature she endows to the future, and we applaud her inspirations to architecture expressed in this exhibition and far beyond."
