designboom weekly

THIS WEEK AT DESIGNBOOM WAS: VENICE, VENICE, VENICE!
designboom landed in Venice last week to preview the 2025 Architecture Biennale and speak with architects, designers and artists participating in this year's edition. Under the theme of Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., the 19th International Architecture Exhibition is curated by Carlo Ratti, who brought together more than 750 participants, from architects to artists, chefs, photographers, coders, fashion designers and many more, to illustrate his vision of a more adaptive and resilient future. 'In the past, architecture has looked at different disciplines—think politics, the arts, and so on—but usually by venturing out into those areas,' Ratti told designboom during our interview. 'Now it’s almost the opposite. […]Architecture is kind of at the center, with other disciplines supporting it.' 

Part of the main exhibition is BIG's Ancient Future, an installation that brings together Bhutanese artisans and a robotic arm to simultaneously carve identical motifs into glulam timber beams, as well as SO-IL's Necto, a tensile textile structure of 3D knitted natural fibers that spans between the columns of the Arsenale. In the Giardini, national pavilions address the theme of Intelligens through a variety of approaches. The Belgian Pavilion's Building Biospheres by landscape architect Bas Smets and climate scientist biologist Stefano Mancuso uses the latest insights into plant intelligence to make urban environments more liveable and sustainable. With (RE)INVENTION, the Brazilian Pavilion draws on a reflection on the recent archaeological discovery of ancestral infrastructure in the Amazon in order to consider the contradictions and to question the socio-environmental conditions of the contemporary city. 'The exhibition offers a powerful outlook into the future by drawing a continuous line between ancestral knowledge, present-day practices, and future possibilities,' the curators tell designboom. 'While one part of the exhibition reveals how past societies lived in balance with their environment, and the other analyzes current urban and architectural practices that echo similar principles, the overall experience prompts visitors to reflect on how such lessons can shape future cities.'

For all these and more upcoming coverage explore our dedicated section here, and follow our  Venice Architecture Biennale Instagram account here for news, highlights and exclusive coverage. The Biennale remains on view util November 23rd, 2025, so if you are planning to attend make sure to check our ultimate guide here!

The weekly is an inside review curated by Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou.