19th Venice Architecture Biennale
Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.

Stepping into the 19th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, one immediately senses the bold ambition of an epochal paradigm shift. The curator, Carlo Ratti, has framed this biennale around the title Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., steering architecture’s discourse toward networked intelligence—always a becoming plurality—and away from the well-trodden eco-crisis narratives of exhibitions around the world in recent years. In his introduction, Ratti notes that decades of focusing on climate mitigation are “no longer enough” and urges architects to “embrace adaptation” by harnessing diverse forms of intelligence. His proposition, therefore, is that a union of nature’s wisdom, technological innovation, and human creativity might just pave a path forward.

The very word intelligens, Latin for intelligence and containing gens (“people”), hints at an inclusive, collective approach beyond today’s narrow focus on AI. This intellectual framework is indeed invigorating and in line with the recent growing influence of posthuman and new-materialist philosophical frameworks in academia and the arts. Its proposal of architecture as a networked “super-organism” of ideas, conceived as a choral response to our era’s challenges rather than a solitary eco-lecture, is timely and essential.