Carlo Ratti, an esteemed architect, engineer, and academic, has been appointed by La Biennale di Venezia to curate Venice’s International Architecture Exhibition in 2025.
Architects and designers from across the globe will convene once again in Venice, Italy, for the 19th edition of the distinguished architecture event, which is set to take place between 24 May and 23 November, with a pre-opening preview scheduled for 22 May and 23 May.
Ratti has co-written more than 750 publications and is now considered as one of the top ten most-cited urban planning scholars in the world. A presenter for TED Talks, he regularly publishes opinion pieces in international media publications, including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, and El Pais.
He presently holds professorial teaching positions at two educational institutions: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Politecnico di Milano. He is the director of the Senseable City Lab, a research initiative at MIT, which explores and anticipates the rapid transformation of the urban environment. Ratti is also the founder of CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, an architecture firm, with offices established in Torino, New York City, and London. He also serves as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
Ratti’s curatorial experience is also extensive and wide-ranging. He was assigned the role of program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, he curated the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, and took on the role of curator at the Future Food District pavilion at Expo 2015 Milan. He 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.
Ratti’s own designs have been exhibited at eminent galleries and museums around the world, including New York City’s MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, the Venice Architecture Biennale (International Architecture Exhibition), the Design Museum in Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome. Three of Ratti’s projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel, and Scribit – have been named in Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year list.
On being appointed curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale, Ratti said, “We architects like to think we are smart, but real intelligence is everywhere. 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.”
The 2023 Biennale was curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect and novelist Lesley Lokko.
