To walk into the main exhibition at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale is to plunge into disorienting darkness, oppressive tropical humidity and haunting music over the throb of air-conditioning units. A disturbing — if visually arresting — vision of Venice in 100 years. And an admonition on the consequences of the overuse of A.C.
Passing into a much cooler space, a concave wall of white bricks rises sharply. Dates on the side mark the exponential growth of the world population since 3,000 B.C., with an uptick starting in 1804 that is expected to peak soon, and then fall.
The two installations go to the heart of the issues that inform the 19th Architecture Biennale, which runs through Nov. 23: climate and population. Titled “Intelligens: Natural, Artificial and Collective,” the show explores “how architecture can be at the center of adaptation, adapting to a changing planet,” its curator, Carlo Ratti, said during a walk-through last week.
He paused to read out one of the introductory wall panels: “The future of architecture lies not in control of nature, but in partnership with it,” he said.
He continued reading: “In this new era we must ask: Can we design a building as smart as a tree?”
The answer isn’t always overtly apparent in the 300 projects from about 750 international contributors — far more than previous exhibitions — packed into the Arsenale, a historic Venice shipyard. Some are invited submissions, but the majority were selected after an open call, officially called a “space for ideas,” a first in the history of the Biennale, which opened the door to younger, fresher voices “on the other side of the world” that might normally not have been heard, Ratti said.
Ratti described the exhibition as a “dynamic laboratory” and a “collision between different disciplines.” Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the president of the foundation that organizes the Biennale, described the show in the catalog as a “nursery of complexities.”
More so than the Art Biennale, the architecture exhibition is generally tailored to specialists schooled in the language, concepts and tools of the trade. Ratti had said in an interview before the show opened that he hoped to reach non-architects, including by using Artificial Intelligence, to broaden the exhibition’s appeal.
The main drawback, said Marlene Herz, a graphic design student from Germany, was that you need considerable time “to really grasp the complexity and how much there is to explore here.” Herz was visiting the Giardini, the other Biennale site scattered with national pavilions. But it was “really interesting to see the different approaches,” she said.
Originally, Ratti had envisaged working with architects to come up with shorter explanatory panels to their projects, but some balked at having their voices clipped. The compromise was to let architects write the texts they wanted (which can be full of jargon and a struggle to parse), and to let A.I. produce shorter, plainer summaries, which are displayed alongside.
“We wanted things to be very accessible,” Ratti said. “We knew that there’s more density than usual.”
Axel Pott, from Aachen, Germany, who works as a contractor for computer companies and is a regular Architecture Biennale habitué, said that from the point of view of “an interested person,” the Biennale was “amazing,” even if it left him exhausted. “We are always, at the end, dead, after some hours walking around,” he said: It was simply “too much information.”
The show includes a jumbled — if artfully displayed — hodgepodge of videos, panels, humanoid robots, architectural models and sundry installations, including an archway made with reinforced elephant dung.
“Daunting, dense and diverse,” was the verdict of one architectural magazine.
That is not always a good thing, other critics sniped, with one objecting to the “sheer scale of the cacophony,” pointing out that a visitor would only have 72 seconds to devote to each participant: “an impossible feat, like trying to complete the internet.”
During the exhibition walk-through, Ratti stood by his vision.
“A Biennale should stimulate people to talk, to say what they think — then it’s successful, because, with conversation, you get feedback,” Ratti said. “If that doesn’t happen, I think it’s not a good one.”
In addition to the Artificial Intelligence-generated labels, Ratti tasked the German architecture studio Sub to develop an A.I.-powered app called Spatial Intelligens to give visitors a more tailored experience. But six weeks after the opening, discussions continue over how best to present the material. The app is “still under development, and should be available soon,” said Christopher Blohm, the company’s digital director.
So visitors were left to navigate the vast exhibition the old-fashioned way with panels, pamphlets and catalogs. Many said they knew ahead of time that the exhibition would be impossible to fully digest.
ShihHwa Hung, an architect from Taipei who regularly attends the Biennale, said visitors “don’t have to absorb everything at once,” and described it as an eye-catching and intriguing “one-stop” exhibition on tackling global issues through creativity and research, with “fresh ideas on display.”
As well as the central exhibition, the Biennale also features 66 national presentations, which are organized separately. These are split between 26 pavilions in the Giardini, a public garden, and other sites around Venice, including the Arsenale.
The Golden Lion, awarded to the best national presentation, went this year to “Heatwave,” Bahrain’s contribution, a simple but sophisticated modular system for outdoor spaces that combines traditional Bahrani cooling techniques with contemporary materials and environmental research, and invites visitors to lounge on oversized pillows.
The Ukraine Pavilion presented “Vernacular Hardcore,” on the reuse of war-destroyed materials in rebuilding. The theme was also developed in one part of the British Pavilion, which won a special mention from the jury awarding the Golden Lion. The Vatican’s “Opera Aperta,” showcasing the restoration of a former convent, received the same distinction. (Another prizewinner, a project that invited visitors to imbibe Venice in the form of espresso brewed with lagoon water, was on hold because the local health authorities still hadn’t signed off on it.)
For all the lofty discussion on how architecture can address climate change, overpopulation, Venice sinking, or the environmental impact of A.I., those themes were also occasionally explored in a humorous vein.
The Polish pavilion took the serious topic of security in architecture and used it to poke fun at human anxieties by playing on the sense of safety given by local practices and rituals meant to ensure good fortune and protect against ill. One display featured a modern take on a Holy Corner, a small altar to a patron saint found in parts of Easter Europe, with the caption: “Used to bring a home under the saints’ protection.”
Visitors tended to come out of the pavilion with a smile, said Alexandra Vaman, a guide there “The most frequent comment,” she said, “was, ‘Finally, something light.’”
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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