Education, professionalism, and versatility in relating to different disciplines. Carlo Ratti is the best pick for science’s needs, too, since it is a perimeter that architecture and urbanism hasn’t fully developed its experimentation potential. […] Never as much as today we need a kind of architecture that knows how to dialogue with new sciences and new languages both digital and non-, all of whom revolutionize our daily lives.

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco

Your proposal for the Architecture Biennale seems to have a great ambition: to rethink what a biennial can be today. What does the ‘non-ordinariness’ of Intelligens mean, considering the global phenomenon of biennials?
The biennials were born, as we know, with the Venice Biennale and have a specific target: to promote the most interesting ideas in the world of art and architecture. However, today, the biennial, even in Venice, has lost its original role as a simple showcase as a result of the immediate access to works and ideas through internet. Therefore it’s much more interesting to think of the Biennale not as a mere exhibition of what is there, but rather as a tool to promote the development of ideas that do not exist yet. This year Venice becomes a lab that welcomes architects, designers, engineers and other professionals from other disciplines to answer a key question: how can natural, artificial and collective intelligence face the challenges of a changing planet?

Lesley Lokko had also proposed a workshop formula in the edition she curated two years ago, although the goal of her Biennale was above all to make visible a lot of practices that remained mostly hidden or invisible. How do you interpret “being a laboratory” referred to your Biennale?
Lesley Lokko curated a very interesting Biennale, with a strong focus on politics and decolonization. In this sense, her Biennale was a “revolution”. Personally – maybe because of my Turin origin – I believe, like Gramsci, that revolutions must also be led within the institutions themselves, gradually transforming them. This year, therefore, we are trying to innovate by working with very important scientific institutions and universities, as well as including a great geographical and generational diversity among the participants. In an era of extreme climate change, it is essential to bring together not only architecture, but all the other disciplines that dialogue and interact with it, working together at a transnational and transgenerational level to look for concrete answers to the urgent questions that our time poses.

In Latin intelligentia comes from “intus légere”, which means “to read inside”, to thoroughly understand things. A necessary process of understanding that allows us to act appropriately and effectively. How does this Biennale speak of intelligence, or rather, of different forms of intelligence?
If the title of the Biennale 2025 is formulated in Latin it’s not a mere coincidence. In fact it is the root of the Latin word intelligens, present participle of the verb intelligere, which has led to the word “intelligence” in English and “intelligenza” in Italian. We have chosen the Latin version, intelligens, as the title of this Biennale precisely to extend the meaning of “intelligence” beyond its current meaning. Often, today, when we talk about intelligence, we immediately think of artificial intelligence. But intelligence comes in many forms. We are interested in exploring this plurality: natural, artificial and collective intelligence. The etymology of gens also recalls the idea of community and of people meeting together. Our Biennale wants to reflect on these interactions, in an effort to overcome the reductive vision associated with intelligence.

In fact, this “plurality of intelligence” could also be a way of developing ideas. In this Biennale, architecture seems to play the role of a discipline that can bring together other disciplines, in order to produce new ideas in the name of interaction between the multiple expressive languages of the present. So who is the architect today? And what is architecture?
Architecture has always been a convergence of different types of intelligence that has allowed our adaptation to hostile climates occurred over the millennia. As early as the 18th century, the abbot Marc-Antoine Laugier spoke of the “primitive hut” as the origin of architecture, that is, the need to use trees, leaves and leafy branches as a shelter from bad weather. Today, because of climate changes never recorded before, we must continue to gather the same different types of intelligence that have allowed us to shape the built environment and integrate them with different disciplines, in order to design new ideas, new solutions. I would no longer speak of “refuge”, a term that, at least in Italian, also evokes an almost escapist dimension, but rather of an “interface” between man and the environment. We are experiencing this more and more: the recent fires in Los Angeles, the floods in Valencia and many other extreme events which have occurred in the last few years show how the environment is becoming increasingly unpredictable. It is a theme that concerns all of us and not just the architecture world.
We might wonder whether there is something new in the relationship between architecture and climate change. Architecture has always engaged with climate, but historically its response to climate change has centred mainly on mitigation, i.e. how to reduce environmental impact and emissions, how to design more sustainable buildings. In the 90s Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and many other architects still used to deal with these themes. Today, however, a new element adds to this type of reflection: in addition to mitigation, we must think and develop new ideas about adaptation. Here architecture plays a major role. As far as mitigation is concerned, architecture can work together with other sectors – industry, transport, energy – but in the field of adaptation its role is irreplaceable. In recent years, one of the most significant criticisms made of the Architecture Biennale has been that architecture, in some way, had given up its original role, i.e. the one linked to the built environment, to move towards more open areas, such as art or politics. Well, this 2025 edition is just the opposite: this Biennale gives architecture back its main role in the built environment, calling on all the other disciplines capable of contributing, each in its own way, to developing new ideas in this regard.

A collective call that in this Biennale emerges not only from the involvement of “every discipline”, but which is also addressed to the National Participations, in order that ideas and practices useful to everyone can come from “every place”. How does the One Place, One Solution proposal for the Pavilions fit into this context?
The idea is that each country can share its own solution coming from its local experience which can be useful also elsewhere. In the 2014 Biennial, Rem Koolhaas was the first one to try to bring together the different voices of the Pavilions around a common theme in a top-down mode, proposing modernism as the only theme to follow. This year With One Place, One Solution we have chosen a more collaborative, bottom-up approach, stimulating discussions among national curators to build a common narrative around a main common thread, based on the principle that ideas and solutions can come from all countries of the world, even in the diversity of individual voices.

In your project, Venice itself is transformed into an extraordinary field of potential experimentation, a sort of living laboratory. How was this lagoon laboratory conceived?
Venice is a natural and cultural laboratory in itself, an amazing synthesis of a plurality of intelligence: natural, artificial, collective. Natural, because the lagoon is a dynamic ecosystem that regulates itself. Just think of how waters are renewed and cleaned on a daily basis, considering that Venice is also one of the few cities in the world without a completed sewage system. Nevertheless, the environment of the lagoon and of the Adriatic sea allows the entire ecosystem to be renewed. Venice is also an extraordinary example of artificial intelligence, as the great economist and computer scientist Herbert Simon saw it, that is to say an intelligence that has allowed man to transform the built world. This lagoon, which was born as an uninhabitable system, not suitable to human settlement, has been transformed over time into a marvellous “artifact”, unique in the world and perfectly fit to habitability. The city, moreover, is also the result of a collective intelligence, the result of centuries of human ingenuity, of the work of generations and generations of women and men who have learned from each other how to take it from the waters to create new settlement spaces. What ultimately makes it even more the ideal place to develop and test new solutions is the fact that it is one of the most visible cities and at the same time one of the most in danger because of the climate challenge, a true living laboratory to develop new solutions useful not only for the city itself,  but also for other similar contexts in the world.

This Biennale focuses not only on the idea of “laboratory”, but also on that of “engagement”. In this sense, the GENS program seems to overturn the concept of public program, which does not seem to be just a mere set of events, but a real project made by the audience and in which the audience become actors.
That’s right. If, as we have said, it is no longer just a question of talking exclusively about architecture, but about many other disciplines which are somehow related to architecture, that’s why it’s important to open the discussion to a wider audience than to mere specialists in the field, to architects who talk exclusively to each other. This year we have decided to transform the Biennale into an open platform: instead of organizing a few meetings between experts, we have involved large global institutions such as the World Economic Forum and C40, as well as groups of students or professors who proposed workshops and discussions on various topics. In short, a platform that is meant to speak not only to architects, but also to all those people who are not technicians in this field and wish to know, absorb new ideas and propose solutions on how to live in our world today.

You have spoken on several occasions about open source in relation to architecture. What is the meaning of open source in the context of this Biennale?
If I could start my career again, I would probably study biology, because architecture, like nature, is based on an evolution process made up of trials, mistakes and adaptations. It manages to incorporate multiple inputs to create many feedback loops which then evolve. This principle is the basis of open source: sharing ideas, testing them, modifying and evolving them. Intelligens tries to apply exactly this model: an architecture that speaks more the language of biology and less the language of authorship, opening up to the participation and contribution of multiple actors.

How would you suggest to visit this Biennale? What would you say to the public who are about to visit it?
I would tell them to observe how architecture responds to climate change in terms of “mitigation” or “adaptation” and to consider architecture as a process, a way to design implying change. “Architecture is wrong, life is right” as Le Corbusier used to say to those who pointed out that in his very beautiful ideal village of Pessac the inhabitants ended up fully distorting and transforming what he had left. This Biennale is not only an exhibition to visit as a simple viewer, but a place inviting the audience to participate and interact. The visitor is invited to explore, discuss and play his part. Venice becomes an open arena of experimentation, a shared ground where architecture and society meet.

What would you like your Biennale to be remembered for in the future?
I would like to focus on two main points. The first one can be summarized with the sentence “from mitigation to adaptation”. Architecture plays a major role when we have to adapt to a changing environment, as it’s the case today. The second one is “togetherness”: this process can only happen if we work together. When organizing a Biennale, you can choose whether to make it divisive or inclusive. Considering the challenges we are currently facing, the only possible response is to gather different communities, architects and various disciplines to face a huge problem that needs collective visions.

Finally, a curiosity: in many past projects you have often work together with very famous chefs and also in this Biennale there are projects realized in collaboration with cuisine master chefs. Where does this inclination of yours to connect two such different worlds come from? How would you describe the relationship, the possible similarities between cuisine and architecture?
It’s true, I have met and collaborated with several chefs. The Cerea family of the Da Vittorio restaurant for the Mutti project comes to my mind, or chef Niko Romito for a project at the Dubai Expo. Some friends of mine are chefs as Davide Oldani, who takes part in a project in this Biennale, or Carlo Cracco, even if I have not carried out specific projects with him, or David Barber, the chef of Blue Hill. I like to cook, so I’m very much interested in this world. Thinking about it, I believe there is actually a deep similarity between cuisine and architecture, especially when considering ingredients. The most creative way to cook is not to decide on the dish first and then buy the ingredients, but to understand what we can create by using the ingredients we already have. This is what Massimo Bottura did, for example, when he created his “breadcrumb pesto”. Architecture works exactly in the same way: the most interesting architecture is the one that starts from what is already there and tries to infuse it with a new taste.

Featured image: Carlo Ratti – Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia – Photo Andrea Avezzù