The 19th Biennale of Architecture was curated by Italian Carlo Ratti, a professor at MIT and Politecnico di Milano, in the 2010s program director of the Strelka Institute in Moscow, and author of bestsellers about the cities of the future. One of his most famous projects is an experiment with trash. 3000 chips were attached to various types of waste, from old shoes to banana peels; this way it was found out that things to be recycled do not disappear, but roam around the U.S. for months, lengthening the carbon footprint.
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Ratti views architecture as a collection of data, where even the smallest details are significant. Therefore, rather than focusing on masterpieces of architecture and the work of individual architects, his exhibition is about the search for a new living environment through numbers and facts. The exhibition is titled “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective”. ‘Intelligens’ is a play on words that combines the Latin gens (‘nation’) and the Greek gen (‘born’ or ‘produced’). In Ratti’s opinion, intelligence is not limited to the minds of individuals; it also encompasses algorithms, collective consciousness and the “wisdom” of nature.
Will we be able to create buildings as intelligent as trees? This is the question Ratti poses to Biennale visitors in his curatorial text.
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As in previous years, the main exhibition spaces are located in two places: the Giardini Gardens and the Arsenale. The Arsenale houses the Latvian pavilion. Lithuania and Estonia, along with some other countries, have their own separate pavilions in close proximity. In all three pavilions, the focus is on addressing the needs of ordinary people.
Exhibitions at the Venice Biennale are open until 23 November. Standard one-day tickets cost 25.50 euros and can be purchased online.
Estonia: criticism of renovation
Project
“Let Me Warm You” project is about the renovation of modernist mass housing built during the Soviet period. The pavilion team managed to obtain permission to clad the facade of a typical Venetian palazzo on the waterfront with white panels. Inside, the exhibition is complemented by entertaining stories about the challenges of the inhabitants of these houses.
Authors
A curatorial trio comprising Keiti Lige, Elina Liiva and Helena Männa, are young architects, researchers and educators from Tallinn. Their work focuses on sustainable renovation, community-oriented housing and design. They lecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) and are involved in renovations as part of the LIFE IP BuildEST project. Alongside their architectural work, they also run ÕU Osteria, a bar in Tallinn’s Old Town which is a popular meeting place for young architects and creative workers.
Meaning
The authors sharply criticise the programme to ‘wrap’ mass housing in clumsy external insulation with an energy efficiency level of at least class C, which, according to the authorities’ plans, should see 14 thousand houses renovated in this way by 2050 in order to achieve climate neutrality. However, while this may look good on paper, it does not actually improve quality of life and merely acts as a ‘crutch’.
From the project description:
In Estonia where a significant portion of buildings are Soviet-era structures—insulation risks becoming a mere quick fix, a ‘bandage’ rather than a meaningful upgrade in quality of life. Given the high costs and long-term impact of these renovations, the real challenge is finding a balance between ambitious climate policies and the everyday needs of the people who live in these spaces.
Latvia: border territories
Project
“The Landscape of Defence” is a space with defense objects made of rubberized material in bright yellow color and a film about people living in the Latvian border areas. The installation is complemented by a stand with specifications of various objects: among them are fences, anti-tank “hedges” and ditches, concrete “dragon’s teeth”, as well as a photographic collage with pictures of fortifications and vernacular architecture in these lands.
Authors
The pavilion has two curators. One of them is Liene Jākobsone, an architect and the founding partner of the SAMPLING studio in Riga. She is also a senior researcher and the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture (LMDA) at the Latvian Academy of Arts. The second is Ilka Ruby, a Berlin-based curator and co-founder of the architectural publishing house Ruby Press. She has organised exhibitions such as Druot, Lacaton & Vassal – Tour Bois le Prêtre at the German Architecture Museum (DAM) and Together! The New Architecture of the Collective at the Vitra Design Museum. The exhibition was designed by the Latvian studios SAMPLING and NOMAD.
Meaning
According to NATO’s current strategy, the Baltic States must repeatedly reinforce their borders with Russia and Belarus. In Latvia, as a result, a strip of land with an area of 9,817 square kilometers (about 15% of the country) has turned into a giant fortress. The authors of the exhibition want to emphasize the “special conditions” of Latvia’s geographical location and the constant threat of attack on the country, as well as to draw attention to how defense measures affect people and the landscape.
In the catalogue, the curators emphasise that the Latvian pavilion does not offer solutions, but rather reveals the complexity of defence infrastructure design. While fences and barriers are necessary, they raise ethical, environmental, and aesthetic concerns. In a fold-out set of leporello postcards, Jākobsone writes:
A whole landscape of defence has been created along with imposing fortifications. The border itself […] marks the end of the country and, in this case, of a much wider region — that of Europe. […] These postcards from the very edge of Europe…
Lithuania: trees among the Venetian Renaissance
Project
The ‘Archi/Tree/Tecture’ exhibition at the Church of Ospedaletto explores the relationship between architecture and nature in urban environments. Starting with an uprooted tree stump and an audiovisual installation projected onto a white cube, the exhibition features architectural models inspired by nature from the late 20th and 21th centuries. Examples include the summer reading room of the Lithuanian National Library, named after Martynas Mažvydas and featuring a century-old oak tree at its centre, and the ‘Kupeta’ exhibition pavilion, which has pine trees in its courtyard. The space will host public events, including an architectural symposium from 22 to 28 September.
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Authors
The project was organized by the Lithuanian Association of Architects. The curator is Gintaras Balčytis, a Lithuanian architect and winner of the National Award for Culture and Art. Since 1994 he is the head of the Dviejų grupė bureau. The bus station he designed in Vilkaviškis (its model can also be seen at the exhibition) was awarded the title of the most environmentally friendly building in the Baltics in 2024.
Meaning
At the beginning of the exhibition, the tree acts as an emotional trigger, literally representing the loss of roots and Genius Loci (‘spirit of a place’ from Latin) resulting from the rapid transformation of cities. The audiovisual installation mediates between architecture, nature, and the human environment. According to Balčytis, he sought to rethink existing ways of understanding architecture and society and discover new ones.
Architecture takes its place in this composition as an interpretive medium for the multi-layered symphony, and our cities thus become reflections of the energies that inhabit them. The “urban memory” accumulated over time now finds its roots, in an extended sense, where fields and trees once stood. The urban ecosystem evolved into a new, complex, hybrid entity.
