The natural and the artificial go hand in hand at the Venice Architecture Biennale

Five large artificial lagoons, under a hundred air conditioning units, dominate a large, darkened room where the temperature and humidity are high, and the feeling of oppression even more so. Thus, with the installation The Third Paradise Perspective, designed by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto Foundation, the Venice Architecture Biennale welcomes visitors. The climate crisis that will make our lives more difficult in the future is often talked about. But that dystopian future can already be felt in this room.

The 2025 Architecture Biennale, which opens to the public this Saturday (until November 23), is titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective , and is curated by Carlo Ratti. It aims to respond to the climate challenge with architectural resources that integrate natural resources, those of the era of artificial intelligence, and the power of collectivity and coordinated work.

Carlo Ratti is the curator of this edition, which presents a particularly diverse selection at the Arsenale

The second room opens with The Other Side of the Hill , a large semicircular amphitheater that reflects the growth of the world's population, a determining factor in climate disorder. If we had to wait until the beginning of the 20th century to reach one billion inhabitants, 125 years later we're already heading towards 8 billion. This makes it inadvisable to continue building as we have been doing (in fact, the blocks of the stands are made of recyclable material extracted from the lagoon). And behind it, there's speculation about another type of construction, in this case amorphous and inspired by the work of bacteria. "Bacteria," says Mark Wigley, one of the signers of the piece, "have things to teach us: they're efficient and they share knowledge."

“The future of architecture is not in the control of nature, but in collaboration with it,” we read further on. In his installation, Stonecrust , Andrés Jaque warns about our extractive use of stones. And he delivers some news: the mineral kingdom is not made of inert material. Stones are not dead, because they are an ecosystem capable of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. “We should take care of them,” says Jaque, “like we take care of a garden.”

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Other Spanish firms such as Antón García Abril and Benedetta Tagliabue contribute to this section focused on nature, which includes a surprising installation, The Elephant Chapel , formed by catenary arches made with round bricks, manufactured with pachyderm droppings.

This section is followed by the one devoted to the artificial. In it, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler present their Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 , with an exhaustive map of communications and computing, control and classification, from the 16th century to the present: from the printing press to algorithms and automated generation. An example of the latter is the following installation, which creates spectacular and colorful artificial images by processing, combining, and animating one hundred million photos of flora and fauna.

Proposals for the future abound: from the design of a nuclear reactor to a varied selection of robots.

Proposals for the future abound: from the innovative nuclear reactor designed by Pininfarina, barely 5 meters tall, which runs on waste from conventional nuclear reactors, recyclable for this purpose around twenty times, to a varied selection of robots powered by artificial intelligence. One of them, more of a humanoid, the work of Luc Steels, answers any type of question and is able to list the feelings motivating the facial expressions of the person asking it. Another plays a percussion instrument following the notes visitors play on another. Other robots, these built by the ETH Zurich and other universities, are also shown performing tasks related to the construction industry, such as waste management, material molding, and the construction of a large wire mesh by a robot trapped inside it.

The final section of the exhibition at the Arsenale, perhaps overly cluttered this year, is dedicated to the Collective and opens with an expressive video by Yan Arthus-Bertrand on the world of human tower builders. Following this, two Bhutanese artisans use gouges to carve arabesques into a future wooden coffered ceiling, assisted by a robot that precisely planes away the remaining shavings. This living installation bears the work of Bjarke Ingels, Laurika Cohnkitoui, and Arata Mori.

Carlo Ratti, curator of the Biennale, joins this section with his project for a floating plaza in Venice. And Caterina Miralles closes with a video documenting life in the lagoon, from the work of traditional fishermen to that of the officials who oversee its highly technical control.

The last section, called Out, includes various montages related to the idea that there is no planet B, and that it is easier to make the poles, the ocean, or the hottest desert habitable than outer space, where, however, research applicable on Earth can be carried out.

Outside the Arsenale, we have proof of this: the prototype home created by Chileans Pamela Prado and Pedro Ignacio Alonso for the Atacama Desert, capable of cooling itself with the local winds and obtaining water from the fog. Also outside the complex, other installations focus on Venice and the need for improved access to water. For example, the Norman Foster Foundation, with support from Porsche, proposes a new access ramp for vaporetti , a silvery, transparent tunnel. Or Aaron Betsky, who purifies lagoon water with plants and then uses it to make a cup of coffee. Or another that aims to reintroduce crickets to Venice.

The Out section includes various montages related to the idea that there is no planet B.

This year, the Biennale's central pavilion is closed. Those of Russia, Israel, and Venezuela were also closed yesterday, for other reasons. But in the Giardini, the highlights were those of Spain (see next page); Denmark, which has taken advantage of the ongoing renovation work to create furniture from waste and thus demonstrate the practical benefits of recycling; and the United Kingdom, which envelops its neoclassical pavilion with a Masai latticework made from natural resources and, inside, proposes a British approach to geological restoration.

We close this hasty and incomplete chronicle with a mention of the German pavilion, whose elegantly presented collection of data on rising temperatures includes, among others, the following: in Dusseldorf last summer, temperatures reached levels comparable to those of Dubai; in Spain, July averaged 32°C; at the Acropolis, temperatures reached over 43°C... and in one of the rooms of this pavilion, which is heated to 38°C, you can see how the human brain heats up at that temperature, in an atmosphere that is not inferior, in terms of oppression, to the sensations of the room described in the first paragraph of this text.