In Venice, Italy, Carlo Ratti introduced immediately that Intelligens is the title of the nineteenth Worldwide Structure Exhibition—the 2025 Venice Structure Biennale. Intelligens refers back to the phrase intelligence whereas its closing syllable, based on a press release from the Biennale, recollects “gens,” or the Latin phrase for individuals. With out moving into specifics, Ratti mentioned the exhibition can be organized round three central themes: pure intelligence, synthetic intelligence, and collective intelligence.
“Since [John] Ruskin everybody has been coming to Venice, and asking how the world can save Venice. However immediately, perhaps Venice can save the world,” Ratti mentioned at an occasion asserting the theme and curatorial outlook. “Venice is a synthesis of various types of intelligence—of pure, synthetic, and collective intelligence. Can we use Venice as a lab for addressing local weather disaster?”
Ratti continued that he desires to construct an “exhibition that’s 100% round the place every little thing we use is reused and recycled.” He mentioned too that: “We need to carry structure again into the middle of the dialog.”
The chief curator additional famous that, in the course of the 2025 Biennale, the Central Pavilion can be closed for refurbishment. Relatively than viewing this as an inconvenience, Ratti hopes to spill the Central Pavilion’s typical capabilities out into the town.
These plans had been delivered after an introductory speech by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Venice Biennale for the four-year time period between 2024 and 2027. Buttafuoco’s opening phrases mentioned the thought of “Venice as hydropolis.” He alluded to Umberto Eco, the Greek thinker Heraclitus, and Pope Francis’s current go to to Venice as driving forces behind the exhibition’s pondering.
Carlo Ratti was named chief curator of the Venice Structure Biennale final December. His appointment follows that of Lesley Lokko, who led the curation for the 2023 iteration which explored how Africa generally is a Laboratory of the Future.
In Venice immediately, Ratti advised journalists that he’s taken with creating an open supply exhibition the place everybody can share their concepts. “We’ll use your entire enter as curators and bear in mind each voice,” Ratti continued. “It gained’t be a top-down choice. It is going to even be bottom-up.”
Ratti mentioned this open supply framework takes inspiration from Umberto Eco, and his ruminations on the idea of opera aperta, Italian for “open work.” He additionally mentioned this exhibition attracts from Buckminster Fuller, in addition to Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon’s philosophy about synthetic intelligence.
“Enrollment at structure faculties around the globe goes down,” Ratti supplied. “Which means that perhaps individuals don’t see structure as an answer to the local weather disaster. So perhaps a huge impact we are able to have on this Biennale is by telling the general public that one of the best ways to sort out the local weather disaster and local weather anxiousness is by structure and design.”
Ratti mentioned that he can’t at the moment give particulars about particular person exhibitions. However so far, France and the U.Okay. have introduced their theme and title. The French Pavilion can be curated by Jakob + Macfarlane underneath the title Residing with/ Vivre avec. The British Pavilion, curated by Nairobi workplace Cave Bureau alongside Kathryn Yusoff and Owen Hopkins, will discover the architectures of restore, restitution, and renewal.
The nineteenth Worldwide Structure Exhibition can be held in Venice from Might 24 to November 23, 2025.