Venice Architecture Biennale 2025: Ratti's Tech-Heavy Curatorial Flop

The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled 'Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.', opened under the direction of curator Carlo Ratti, an MIT professor and robotics entrepreneur. The main exhibition in the Corderie is criticized as a claustrophobic mess of bio- and techno-theatrics, featuring over 760 contributors crammed into a relentless succession of drones, 3D-printed blobs, and endless screens. Notable projects include Thomas Heatherwick's satellite for growing salad in space, a model house clad in astronaut suits, and a lunar data center built by a robot arm on a robot dog. The show relies heavily on expensive machines to solve non-existent problems, such as AI summaries on explanatory boards. In contrast, the national pavilions offer more grounded themes: Serbia's knitted canopy explores demolition, Denmark's pavilion reuses construction materials, Estonia's clads a palazzo with woodfibre insulation, and the Vatican's ongoing refurbishment of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice doubles as a community centre. The Polish Pavilion displays safety paraphernalia alongside traditional customs. The Biennale was commissioned under president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, appointed in 2023. The exhibition runs through November 2025.