Now past the halfway point of the Venice Architecture Biennale, there’s still plenty of time to visit this biannual event celebrating the past, present, and future of built environments. This year, we were struck by how forward-looking and solution-oriented, but at the same time artfully conceptual and genuinely engaging, the 19th edition was. Let us lead you through our biggest takeaways, discoveries, and what-not-to-miss recommendations.
Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
Carlo Ratti, the curator of the 19th edition, coined the theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. The concept couldn’t be more clearly reflected across the show. Natural stands for architecture that treats nature as an ally in design – inviting fungi and bacteria to join forces and co-create a more sustainable future through material experimentation and circular practices. Artificial points to the role of technology: futuristic robots and AI teaming up with architects and designers to tackle current and coming challenges, often requiring them to move beyond their comfort zones.
Collective is, simply, working together: collaborative teams of architects, scientists, artists, local communities, and often non-human participants. And finally, bringing it back to the front: Intelligens – a kind of synthesis of all the above. It’s about uniting the natural (non-human), the technological, and the collective, often drawing from heritage or indigenous know-how, to develop new intuitions and forms of brilliance. This year made it clear: the focus is shifting from prevention to adaptation, responding to changes already in motion.
Cooling Off with Canal Espresso
Climate change consequences are a clear and inevitable undercurrent running through many projects and interventions. The Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to the Kingdom of Bahrain for Heatwave, curated by architect Andrea Faraguna. It’s a modular cooling structure providing shade and thermal relief in response to rising temperatures. Designed with regional construction workers in mind, it creates a space to rest and cool down, using traditional Bahraini passive techniques, such as wind towers and geothermal wells, combined with current engineering tools.
Just outside the Arsenale, by the canal, Cool Forest by SCAPE creates a quieter kind of refuge. It’s a microforest of trees chosen for Venice’s future, hotter, drier climate. Sensors inserted in the soil and trees track temperature, humidity, sap flow, and growth, making the invisible work of cooling the landscape visible. Visitors wander or sit among the vegetation, learning to read its signs. The planting is meant to be dismantled and replanted around Venice after the Biennale, giving the forest a second life.
Literally next to the Cool Forest, a visually intriguing set of hybrid natural-artificial purification systems half-floats in the air, filtering water from the Venetian canal all the way to an espresso bar at the other end. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Canal Café makes the process visible – a suspended chain of tubes, filters, and planters turning salty polluted water into a drinkable one. A cross between engineered structure and mechanical performance, the project was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Participation in the main exhibition.
“Microbes and fungi made a strong appearance this year, with many projects exploring their practical potential as building materials in architecture and design.”
Architecture That Grows and Heals
Microbes and fungi made a strong appearance this year, with many projects exploring their practical potential as building materials in architecture and design.
In the Arsenale, MycoMuseum by the Indian practice Anomalia looks at the structural and symbolic role of mycelium in sustainable design. Geological Microbial Formations by ETH Zurich and EPFL features a robotic arm that produces construction material by growing mineral formations with bacteria. Using waste, urea, and calcium ions, the process activates Sporosarcina pasteurii to generate calcite. The material grows slowly, layering into compact, stone-like forms. Live for the duration of the show, it functions as a public-facing lab.
The Montenegro Pavilion presents a more abstract and atmospheric installation. Terram Intelligere consists of suspended polycarbonate structures filled with soil-based bacterial cultures. Over the course of the Biennale, the bacteria inside grow and produce pigments that change in response to light and temperature. These organic colours are explored as a possible alternative to synthetic and toxic dyes used in construction.
The most aesthetically grand was Picoplanktonics from the Canadian Pavilion. It fills the space with large printed column-like structures that host living cyanobacteria. These organisms absorb carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and slowly mineralise the material around them. The system is based on four years of bio-fabrication research at ETH Zurich, adapted here to Venice’s unique conditions. Kept alive through constant monitoring of light and humidity, the whole thing gives off a distinctly sci-fi feel.
Built by Hand, Built by Code
Bhutanese woodcarvers concentrate on their work, finishing meticulous, detailed designs on one side of a long timber beam. The robotic arm moves slowly and with care, brushing dust and debris off the patterns on the other side in almost dance-like motions. This robot and human partnership is Ancient Future: Bridging Bhutan’s Tradition and Innovation by BIG. The six-metre beam was created through this collaboration, finalised during the Biennale’s opening days, with one side carved by hand and the other produced using AI-driven milling, both following the same traditional Bhutanese motifs. The project doesn’t draw a hard line between old and new, instead suggesting that tradition can continue through adaptation, and that preservation might also mean letting tools change.
Elsewhere in the Arsenale, Machine Mosaic by Daniela Rus features a robot laying bricks and ceramic tiles, reacting to its surroundings and adjusting its actions. Close by, CO-POIESIS by Philip F Yuan and Bin He turned storm-fallen into a structure using digital fabrication to give it new architectural life. Robotic arms cut and fit the salvaged wood into constructural pieces, working with irregular material while “raising questions about authorship, control and the ethical use of emerging technologies” – in Carlo Ratti’s own words.
Speculative works also imagine how robotics might support architecture in environments beyond Earth. BioSuit and Lunar Ark propose tools and structures for places that are unstable, unfamiliar, or inhospitable. Moving beyond fabrication and into adaptation, these projects ask how architecture might function when human presence is fragile or temporary.
Structures That Hold Us
While exploring the Venice Biennale, whether in the Arsenale, Giardini, or elsewhere, it became clear that many projects focused on community, creating spaces to bring people together.
The Irish Pavilion, designed by Cotter & Naessens, consists of a circular timber space made from Irish beech and hosting a large handwoven rug, where visitors sit and listen to layered sound recordings: interviews with Citizens’ Assembly designers and participants, poetry, music, and audio from the making of the pavilion itself. Based on the Citizens’ Assembly model introduced in Ireland in 2016, the project treats architecture as a platform for dialogue. After Venice, the pavilion will travel to public sites across Ireland, continuing its role as a space for open conversation.
Some pavilions ask for reflection on specific issues. The Architecture of Virtual Water in Arsenale spells the word “AQUA” in wood framing. The walls are made from used filter paper, worked by hand, and inside, digital visuals and sound point toward the unseen impact of water use. It’s a space built for reflection on the often overlooked (or taken for granted) presence of water in our everyday lives.
Several pavilions use materials and movement to create something more responsive and test the potential of new technologies. MVRDV’s SOMBRA structure uses pressurised air to open and close panels depending on the sun’s position in the sky. The structure shifts as the day moves, offering changing pockets of shade without using electricity. Back in Arsenale, Necto by SO-IL, Mariana Popescu and TheGreenEyl is made from 3D-knitted natural fibres. Luminous threads are embedded throughout the structure, catching light as it moves across the surface. A DNA-encoded coating stores data about the material’s composition and structural behaviour, allowing it to be traced and analysed directly from the fibres.
Moving towards the canal at the Arsenale, Gateway to Venice’s Waterway, designed by Foster + Partners with Porsche, is a 37-metre aluminium bridge. Visitors cross it on foot, but it’s also a resting point with a view of the open water. The design draws on the form of Venice’s historic bridges and incorporates references from Porsche’s engineering history. It’s presented as part of a future network for zero-emission transport – and at the end, a joyful surprise awaits the visitors: a set of Schiller water bikes ready to be taken for a spin.
Elsewhere, the focus is on slowing down. The Luxembourg and Argentina pavilions offer places to lie down and rest (or even nap). The German Pavilion Stresstest places full-size trees inside one of the rooms, noticeably changing the temperature and atmosphere of the space – a contrast to the physically warmer space elsewhere in the building that simulates the effects of urban heat.
The Australian Pavilion Home takes a tactile approach. Curated by the country’s first all-Indigenous team, the installation centres on a circular rammed-earth structure filled with sand and partly edged with seating. Around it, a display of small sculptural objects invites interaction. Each piece was created by architecture and design students from across Australia, responding to what home means to them. Visitors are drawn in to explore the space with their bodies: walking barefoot, touching the objects, pausing to sit and chat.
“Architecture often speaks to sight and sound, but smell, though easy to ignore, has its own power.”
The Smell of Earth and Fire
Architecture often speaks to sight and sound, but smell, though easy to ignore, has its own power.
Two pavilions stand out here. The Kosovo Pavilion, Lulebora nuk çel më (The Lulebora No Longer Blooms), features an olfactory calendar developed with artist and scent researcher Sissel Tolaas. The installation translates the sensory knowledge of Kosovan farmers into a series of climate-related smells – a kind of informal archive that tracks environmental change. In a time when traditional planting calendars no longer apply, this local, embodied knowledge becomes a tool for survival.
Thinking about speculative futures, The Icelandic Pavilion, Lavaforming, imagines the use of controlled lava flows to shape buildings, or even entire cities. The space combines video, text, sound, and scent to build this speculative scenario. The perfume, developed by Icelandic studio Fischersund, is called LAVA and is meant to evoke the experience of standing in a volcanic environment: hot, unstable, mineral.
Old Stories, New Voices
This year marks the debut of national pavilions from Azerbaijan, Oman, Qatar, and Togo. All four treat heritage as something active: built, adapted, and reinterpreted in the present. Oman revisits the Sablah, a traditional communal space, through a new installation curated by Majeda Alhinai. Qatar, still without a permanent pavilion (but to be built soon), put up a temporary bamboo structure by Yasmeen Lari on the theme of hospitality.
Togo presents a visual timeline of its architectural evolution, from ancestral cave dwellings and Tamberma clay houses to colonial styles and post-independence modernism, reflecting on architecture as a record of changing identity. Azerbaijan focuses on recent national projects that sit between preservation and redevelopment, including the regeneration of Baku’s White City, new infrastructure, and the reconstruction of cultural sites displaced by conflict.
A Toolkit for Feeling Safe
Last but not least, this year’s Polish Pavilion feels exceptionally light, playful, and genuinely fun. It could have worked just as well in the art biennale. Lares and Penates: On Building a Sense of Security in Architecture was developed by a multidisciplinary team: curator and art historian Aleksandra Kędziorek, architect Maciej Siuda, and artists Krzysztof Maniak and Katarzyna Przezwańska.
The exhibition looks at how architecture protects and shelters, drawing on both everyday safety features and age-old rituals. Fuses and fire extinguishers appear alongside eggshells buried in foundations for luck, or candles placed in windows to ward off storms. These objects, regulations, and beliefs are shown side by side, treated with the same level of attention. The exposition is cleverly put together, full of odd details, and a welcome and enlightening surprise in the middle of the Biennale – definitely well worth a visit.
