The Italian architect and engineer Carlo Ratti has been appointed curator of the 19th International Architecture Biennale of Venice, which will take place from 24 May to 23 November 2025. Carlo Ratti, Born in Turin in 1971, he is one of the world’s best-known experts in the field of urban planning. He and his office have set themselves the task of making cities smarter by using technology to utilise the constantly growing volumes of data flowing through urban networks. Cities, as Ratti envisions them, should react sensitively to the needs of their citizens. A statement by Ratti on his appointment indicates that the upcoming Architecture Biennale will focus more strongly on data, technologies and their networking than previous editions: “We architects,” says Ratti, “like to think of ourselves as smart, but real intelligence is everywhere. The disembodied ingenuity of evolution, the growing power of computers and the collective wisdom of the masses. To stand up to a world on fire, architecture must harness all the intelligence around us.”
Carlo Ratti studied at the Polytechnic of Turin, the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris and the University of Cambridge in England and completed his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ratti is director of the “Senseable City Lab” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), teaches at the Polytechnic in Milan and is the founder of the studio „CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati“ which is responsible for projects such as the Italian pavilion for Expo 2020 in Dubai and the design of the new cultural centre “AGO Modena Fabbriche Culturali”. Ratti has a wide range of curatorial experience. For example, he co-curated the second “Porto Design Biennale” in 2021 and was responsible for the “Urban Vision” of Manifesta 14 in Prishtina in 2022, where he and his team created an AI-based study of public space, which resulted in a series of interventions in the spirit of participatory urban planning in dialogue with residents.
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