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Carlo Ratti appointed curator of Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
Italy Architecture News - Dec 21, 2023 - 15:29 996 views
Italian architect and engineer Carlo Ratti has been appointed as the Curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.
Announced today, 21 December, by the Board of Directors of Venice Architecture Biennale, Carlo Ratti will curate the 19th International Architecture Exhibition which will take place from 25 May to Sunday 23 November in 2025.
Ratti's appointment was recommended by President Roberto Cicutto, in agreement with Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, President of La Biennale di Venezia for the four-year term March 2024-2027.
Trained as an architect and engineer, Carlo Ratti is currently holding teaching positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the Politecnico di Milano.
Ratti is the director of the Senseable City Lab at the MIT and a founding partner of the architecture and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati based in Torino, New York City, and London.
He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later carried out his MPhil and PhD work at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He completed his PhD thesis as a Fulbright Scholar at MIT.
Carlo Ratti is known for his technology and artificial intelligence-focused designs and approaches. As can be understood from his statement, the exhibition in 2025 will be structured within a similar framework.
"We architects like to think we are smart, but real intelligence is everywhere," said Carlo Ratti.
"The disembodied ingenuity of evolution, the growing power of computers, and the collective wisdom of the crowd."
"To face a burning world, architecture must harness all the intelligence around us. I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to curate the Biennale Architettura 2025," Ratti added.
Image courtesy of CRA
Recognized as one of the top ten most-cited scholars in urban planning, he co-authored over 750 publications, including the recent Atlas of the Senseable City, published by Yale University Press, with Antoine Picon.
A presenter at TED, his opinion essays were featured in international media, including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, and El Pais.
He serves as Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization. His curatorial experience spans projects in different countries such as he serves as a program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, a curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, and a curator of the Future Food District pavilion at Expo 2015 Milan.
Ratti was the chief curator of the 8th Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen (UABB) in 2019, a co-curator of the second Porto Design Biennale in 2021, and the Creative Mediator responsible for the award-winning Urban Vision at the European Nomadic Biennale Manifesta 14 Prishtina in 2022.
Image courtesy of CRA
His works exhibited at various venues including New York City's MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, La Biennale di Venezia (International Architecture Exhibitions), the Design Museum in Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome.
Three of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel, and Scribit – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the "Best Inventions of the Year".
Fast Company magazine hailed Carlo as one of the “Most Influential Designers in America,” and Blueprint Magazine listed him as one of its “People Who Will Change the World of Design.” Bloomberg dubbed him the “Sensory City Philosopher.”
Ratti will follow on Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Professor Lesley Lokko, as the curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, which concluded 26 November.
Top image: Carlo Ratti © Sara Magni.