This May, Venice has once again been swarmed with architects, curators and critics for the opening of the , running through to the end of November. The 2025 curator, Carlo Ratti, has brought together over 720 participants making 300 contributions under his theme of Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. The result is as intense as it sounds, bringing an arsenal rammed with exhibits ranging from the technologically speculative to the materially explorative – with little consideration for access requirements.
Notably, from this deluge, the Golden Lion Jury highlighted Australian researcher Kate Crawford and her collaborator Vladan Joler’s fascinating installation Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500. Meanwhile, the Australian Pavilion, , has also been widely praised for its powerful presence that invites tactile engagement.
Here are a few more highlights, focused primarily on the national pavilions, offering a glimpse into the current global architectural conversations.
Canal Café
Amidst a Biennale full of speculation, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and their collaborators prove that their ingenious idea to turn canal water into coffee can be a captivating reality. They have designed a striking apparatus that stands on the edge of the Venice lagoon, drawing its brackish waters up transparent tubes and through raised, hybrid natural-artificial purification systems – including a ‘micro-wetland’ with grasses spraying from its top. Once cleaned, the water is steamed and feeds an espresso machine that sits in a circular light-weight structure to deliver a much-needed (and tasty) coffee to Biennale visitors.
Build of Site
Danish Pavilion
The curator of the Danish Pavilion, architect Søren Pihlmann, has taken the need to update the 1950s pavilion and transformed it into an opportunity. Building sites have a seductive appeal for many – they reveal the unseen and offer aesthetic and textural richness. This one tells a story and proposes a shift: to reject disposability and embrace the existing. It acknowledges the environmental toll of construction and exposes the vast resources it consumes.
Through partial dismantling, materials have been studied, measured, assessed, categorised and documented to explore their potential for reuse. The exhibition demonstrates innovative ways to repurpose surplus materials, urging us to rethink what we create and contribute to the world.
Unravelling New Spaces
Pavilion of the Republic of Serbia
In a poetic and lyrical installation, a lofty wool structure will gradually unravel over the six-month course of the Biennale. Powered by more than 150 solar-driven wall-mounted motors, the yarn will be returned to its original ball form leaving the space empty. Designed and created by a collaborative team of architects, textile designers and electrical engineers, the stunning, dynamic knitted form draws inspiration from both traditional cultural practices and the ‘Belgrade Hand’ (1963), the world’s first artificial bionic hand. The installation celebrates the tactile nature of creation while integrating machine learning, advocating for circularity in architecture and challenging us to continually reinvent and evolve.
Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium
Spanish Pavilion
While a relatively traditional presentation of architecture, the Spanish Pavilion is well-curated and beautifully displayed. It explores the use of local, regenerative and low-carbon materials to advance the decarbonisation of architecture. A central room, titled Balance, presents 16 intriguing architectural projects, each shown with images and two models on a set of scales – one a construction detail, the other the buildings territorial placement.
In five surrounding rooms are cases studies that look at regional ecologies of resources under the themes of materials, energy, trades, waste and emissions. It is a collection of great projects that offer food for thought.
Great Britain
GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair
The Brits have bravely addressed their colonial legacy with a British-Nigerian curatorial team including Cave_bureau. They ambitiously suggest a future that positions architecture as a non-extractive practice geared towards repair, restitution and renewal. Taking an axis from Britain via the Great Rift Valley to Kenya, it includes a series of installations that redress the broken connections between people, ecology and land.
The neo-classical building has been covered in a veil of clay and glass beads, while, Cave_bureau has taken 3D scans of caves used as slave-holding chambers and recreated them in woven rattan, reclaiming them as spaces of healing. There is also one of the only contributions on Gaza by Palestine Regeneration Team, called Objects of Repair, that reappropriates rubble turning the ruin into an active architectural skin.
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Assembly
Pavilion of Ireland
Cotter & Naessens Architects have curated a poetic and polemic installation that underscores architecture as an act of assembly, through both congregation and construction. Inspired by Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly – established in 2016, they gather 99 demographically representative residents to develop collective recommendations on issues like marriage equality and biodiversity loss – the installation offers a space for reflection and dialogue. It features a beautifully crafted, circular timber modular structure, accompanied by an ephemeral soundscape, creating an environment conducive to contemplation and consensus-building. This speculative prototype envisions a space that can be deployed in local community contexts, fostering civic debate and connection.
Venice Architecture Biennale
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