Veneta Cucine at the Venice Biennal
19th International Architecture Exhibition Intelligent. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
Veneta Cucine is present as a Donor at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition organized by the Venice Biennale. The Exhibition, entitled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective, curated by Carlo Ratti, will be open to the public from Saturday 10 May to Sunday 23 November at the Giardini, the Arsenale and Forte Marghera.
Pierangelo Buttafuoco, President of the Biennale, presents the 2025 edition in this way.
«Intelligently building the world, listening to the intelligence of the earth. This is Intelli/Gens, and it is what Carlo Ratti is building with his visionary Exhibition, its title already presenting itself as a founding reflection for the near future, a subject of study and debate for the scientific and artistic community and for the public that will visit it.»
«Carlo Ratti’s project and thought is indeed the future. His special vision transcends the contemporary—which is the time of divestment— to make architecture, our shelter since the dawn of time, a capacity to dwell in the world.
In the dialectical arena of various disciplines, filled with algorithms that resemble prophecies, Ratti deciphers what we are and what we will become—as individuals and as a society—in the digital flow that shapes our future, the time of us, the Gens, endowed with Intelligence. And if intelligence is the foundation of the individual’s evolutionary process, in the noblest sense of being a civis (a third-declension noun, therefore both masculine and feminine), architecture is the space in which it can unfold, in a constant negotiation with the territory. Through functions, symbols and relationships, intelligence generates architectures guided by ethical, aesthetic and ecological principles. It is no coincidence that the Greek word oikos means both “house” to inhabit and “environment” to immerse oneself in.»
This year’s Exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., invites different types of intelligence to work together to rethink the built environment. The title, a neologism whose final syllable, “gens,” is Latin for “people,” is an invitation to experiment with intelligence beyond today’s limited focus on AI and digital technologies.
In times of adaptation, architecture needs to draw on multiple forms of intelligence: natural, artificial, and collective. In times of adaptation, architecture needs to reach out across generations and across disciplines, from the hard sciences to the arts. In times of adaptation, architecture must rethink authorship and become more inclusive. Architecture must become as flexible and dynamic as the world we are now designing for.»
THE EXHIBITION
Veneta Cucine is also present as a supporter of the installation The Other Side of The Hill in the Corderie.
The Exhibition begins in the Corderie with a stark confrontation: global temperatures rise while global populations fall. This is the reality architects must face in times of adaptation. From here, visitors traverse through three thematic worlds, which each in their own way put forward experiments in adaptation: Natural Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, and Collective Intelligence.
The Other Side of the Hill draws on the striking similarity of microbial and human populations to rethink our shared future. It confronts visitors with the vertiginous hill shaped by the exponential growth of the human population, which will reach 10 billion in a few more decades, and after which the population is projected to decline just as fast. The hidden, other side of the hill is where humanity is headed, along with countless other species that shape the world. The installation appears as a grotto laboratory where the similarities between biofilms and human built cities is explored. The diverse ways in which microbes collaboratively adjust themselves and their architectures in the face of resource crisis become a model for how human architecture might adjust itself. Led by physicist Geoffrey West, biologist Roberto Kolter, and architectural theorists Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, the project asks us to rethink the fundamental principles of life on Earth. Designer Patricia Urquiola translates this vision into space, fusing mathematics and design.
At the Speakers’ Corner, scientists, artists, activists, students, politicians and practitioners all come together to showcase the breadth of human approaches to adaptation.This programme unfolds on an almost daily basis, inviting visitors to engage with evolving conversations throughout the 19th International Architecture Exhibition.
