New Voices in Venice: Azerbaijan, Latvia, Lebanon and more at Biennale 2025

First-time and emerging participants reshape discourse, with Azerbaijan’s “Equilibrium” and Latvia’s border defenses challenging the Arsenale’s traditional Western narrative

2025 Architecture Biennale Review: Out of Focus

With the doors now open on the 2025 Architecture Biennale, it is time to take stock. Curated by Carlo Ratti—the first Italian curator in 25 years—the main show, Intelligence. Natural. Artificial. Collective., reaches for the stars, perhaps too eagerly. More than 750 participants have spilled across Venice, turning the city into the usual exhilarating tangle of architects, artists, curators and journalists. 

Although the word sustainability has been studiously erased, the idea remains central to many pavilions—if only in a frustratingly vague way. Data, meanwhile, plays a starring role: beneath every label sits a neat line reading “summarized by AI.” The aesthetic of the International Exhibition is unmistakably tech-driven, yet—as so often at the Architecture Biennale—the lingering impression is one of spectacle over substance. And maybe that is precisely the point.

Architecture Biennale 2025: Beginning a Global Conversation

At heart, each Biennale is the start of a conversation. Every other year, architects from nearly every corner of the world converge on Venice, bringing their own lenses on the built environment. The result is a layered snapshot of the future we are collectively imagining. In 2025 that future feels blurred, fragmented and paradoxically both over- and under-connected. 

People are conspicuously absent; social awareness hovers near zero. Buildings—often rendered as pristine shells—take center stage, hollowed of the humanity they purport to serve. For all its promising title, this edition feels custom-made by the wealthy, for the wealthy. Still, bright exceptions spark valuable debate, starting with the Golden Lion–winning Kingdom of Bahrain pavilion, praised by judges Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paola Antonelli and Mpho Matsipa for “viable proposals for extreme-heat conditions.”

War and Architecture at the 2025 Biennale

If sustainability fades into the background this year, war steps into the spotlight—curiously detached from overt politics. There is, for instance, not a single project on Gaza’s ravaged urban fabric. Yet conflict resonates throughout the Arsenale. The Ukrainian pavilion, curated by Bogdana Kosmina, Michał Murawski and Kateryna Rusetska, builds on the word Dakh—“roof”—to explore “the most basic form of architecture.” Under full-scale war fought largely above the skyline with drones and missiles, a roof is also the first point of impact.

Lebanon Pavilion – “The Land Remembers”: Confronting Ecocide

Next door, the Lebanese pavilion tackles warfare’s toll on nature. Titled The Land Remembers, the show—curated by Collective for Architecture Lebanon—stands as a solemn monument to landscapes scarred by violence. “Before architecture,” the curators insist, “there is land,” urging architects to adopt a more active, restorative role in their engagement with the environment.

Latvia’s “Landscape of Defence”: Borders Under Pressure

Latvia’s pavilion, Landscape of Defence, interrogates the hardening of borders when the specter of war looms. Latvia—just under two million people spread across 64,594 km² of forest and farmland—plans to spend more than 3.65 percent of GDP on security in 2025, including a 30 km-wide defensive zone on its eastern frontier. The exhibition examines how such policies reshape physical, social and ecological terrains, revealing architecture as both witness and instrument of division.

Azerbaijan Debuts: “Equilibrium – Patterns of Azerbaijan”

For the first time, Azerbaijan joins the Architecture Biennale. Its show, “Equilibrium. Patterns of Azerbaijan,” unfolds in three chapters—REGENERATE, INNOVATE and PRESERVE—just outside the Arsenale. Highlighted is the Baku White City project, a sweeping redevelopment of a former oil-refining district that seeks to recast the capital’s petroleum-soaked identity through contemporary urbanism.

Storage Architecture and Logistics: V&A Applied Arts Project

Inside the Applied Arts Pavilion, London’s Victoria & Albert Museum teams with La Biennale di Venezia for a deep dive into storage architecture—those vast, often invisible buildings that underpin the endless churn of production, consumption and waste. Centered on the V&A’s own forthcoming collections facility, the multi-media installation tracks the life cycle of a humble toothbrush from purchase to disposal, exposing the hidden infrastructures that prop up modern life.

Collateral Art Events: Creative Energy Across Venice

As ever, the Biennale sparks satellite exhibitions citywide. At Gallery 10 & zero uno, John Robinson’s “The Shed” recreates the artist’s backyard shack inside the gallery. Over hours-long performances—tarot readings, childhood-birthday reenactments—Robinson probes trauma, identity and relationships, ultimately translating experience into paint. Disturbing yet relatable, the work underscores art’s cathartic power amid architectural discourse.

Donna Haraway Receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement goes to feminist philosopher Donna Haraway. Curator Carlo Ratti lauds her multidisciplinary exploration of technology’s imprint on biology and the “Chthulucene” environment that blurs human-nonhuman boundaries—a fitting accolade for a Biennale probing collective intelligence.

Venice as Living Laboratory: The City Within the Biennale

Ironically, Venice itself gets scant attention, though the city is a ready-made case study in architectural resilience. The Central Pavilion notes that while the Giardini building undergoes renovation through 2025, Venice—one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable cities—will double as a “living laboratory,” hosting installations and prototypes that spill into neighborhoods beyond the Giardini and Arsenale. In the Austrian pavilion, Italian indie magazine Scomodo examines how physical spaces nurture youth culture and civic life.

Matilde Moro