8 cool projects to catch at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

Ancient Future by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

Where: Arsenale

Human-in-the-loop be damned. Ancient Future could provide a glimpse into the future of craftsmanship, as it puts an AI-controlled robot into a desirable working relationship with human labour. Truly collaborative in nature, this eye-popping installation features a skilled Bhutanese artisan carving out traditional designs on a wooden beam even as his partner-in-crime, an AI-driven robot reimagines the same patterns on a different side of the structure. There’s cautious optimism in the air at the biennale this time, thanks to live demo projects like Ancient Future but as always, it’s accompanied by skepticism. In a way, ‘Ancient Future’ challenges the assumption that automation is disrupting the job market — instead, it proposes a seamless integration between technology and human creativity and craftsmanship. Perhaps, a robot-human combo could prove to be a common sight in our factories and construction sites in the foreseeable future. 

Elephant Chapel by Boonserm Premthada

Where: Arsenale

Visitors meandering in and out of an arch-like structure inside the Corderie section of the Arsenale may not realise that they are literally walking through the comforting embrace of an elephant’s silhouette. A brainchild of the Thailand-based architect Boonserm Premthada, Elephant Chapel not only matches the size and scale of these gentle giants but even the bricks used in its construction comes from elephant dung. The bricks are lightweight as well as durable, a prototype that offers a win-win for all — the bio-based material embodies circular architecture at its organic best and it also symbolises a “gesture of coexistence” between the wise elephants and humans as the architect puts it. What’s more, Premthada whose work champions local culture and self-sustainable communities hopes that the sale of these bricks can help generate income for our pachyderm friends. 

The Atlas of Popular Transport by Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (MIT) and others

Where: Arsenale

Residents of many cities in the global South rely on an informal network of popular transport for their daily commute. Yet, this critical public system remains both elusive and evasive. Through its videos and writings, Popular Transport traces the stories of sixteen cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where people from all walks of life joined forces to map their region’s poorly documented systems. The exhibition makes data fun, with a display of maps and audio-visual scenes that take audiences bang into the heart of these bustling cities and their unconventional transit modes – from Accra’s tro-tro to Lagos’ danfos and from Manila’s jeepneys to the music-blasting matatus of Nairobi. Using local knowledge, human ingenuity and technological tools, Popular Transport proves that it is inhabitants who make a city liveable and empowering the general public can inspire real change in urban planning. A rare gem that closes the loop between functional value, civic utility and academic heft. 

Canal Café by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and WeBuild

Where: Arsenale

Can you make the world’s best espresso using Venetian saltwater? Canal Café delivered on its promise of serving coffee to hundreds of visitors using local canal water. The biennale-goers would have seen this part-landscape installation-part laboratory against the industrial setting of Arsenale — a cluster of former shipyards and armories. A desalination plant was set up on site which purified Venetian canal water while a bio-filtration system helped remove sludge and toxins, producing safe, perfectly distilled water. Remarkably timely, this Golden Lion winner provides meaningful solutions to counter the water crisis while at the same time, it may actually be useful to Venetians who live on water in an increasingly vulnerable lagoon.  

‘Alternative Urbanism: Self-Organising Markets of Lagos by Oshinowo Studio

Where: Arsenale

This multisensory project, which received a special mention, immerses visitors into the circular economy of Nigeria’s bustling Lagos and its three markets — Katangua, Ladipo, and Computer Village — in which creators Oshinowo Studio capture popular systems and practices that encourage reuse, recycle and repair everyday items from clothes to cars rather than let materials go to waste. Through videos, ambient sound recorded on-site and intriguing media-maps stitched from locally sourced, recycled denim and images celebrating the resilient social fabric of Lagos, Alternative Urbanism looks at these informal markets as case studies for what African wisdom, ingenuity and resourcefulness has to teach the world. “We have approached urbanism through a radically distinct lens, because modernity in Lagos, and much of the global South, has taken shape under conditions vastly different from those in the global North. The legacy of extractive capitalism has left these regions with underfunded and weak state infrastructure, yet cities like Lagos continue to urbanise,” explains Tosin Oshinowo, founder of Lagos-based Oshinowo Studio, who has been researching this project since 2023 and feels that African cities like Lagos are anchored in vernacular and informal forms of consumerism which “emerges not out of choice, but necessity, filling the gaps where state governance has fallen short.” 

The Ritual, The Void, The Repair by Limbo Accra

Where: Arsenale

Another African entity, Limbo Accra is a design and research studio from Ghana that sits at the intersection of digital archiving, urban studies and  what it calls ‘speculative interventions.’ They are best known for probing the spatial and philosophical connotations behind ‘unfinished/abandoned architecture’ — often, against the backdrop of the rapidly urbanising African landscape. Their installation, The Ritual, The Void, The Repair, continues their ongoing exploration of architecture’s ability to engage with multiple forms of intelligence in reimagining incomplete building projects in West Africa. This time, their work investigates the unfinished Ndiouga Kébé Palace in Senegal. As the title suggests, it harnesses digital technologies alongside collective memory to reveal how these architectural ‘voids’ function as sites of latent potential, where spatial, social, and political narratives converge. “This project especially moves beyond traditional ideas of completion to embrace incompletion as a state that invites collaboration, reflection, and reinterpretation. It challenges us to reconsider architecture not simply as building, but as an ongoing conversation shaped by multiple voices and intelligences,”says Dominique Petit-Frère, founder of Limbo Accra.

Porch: An Architecture of Generosity at the US Pavilion

Where: Giardini della Biennale

Phrases like the ‘Great American Novel’ and ‘Great American Road Trip’ have long been used in tribute to the cultural power of the United States. Has anyone heard of the ‘Great American Porch?’ This year’s US Pavilion hopes to provide a balm for the troubled times, as it re-envisions the humble, yet ubiquitous porch as a ‘Gotham’ of endless possibilities — inclusivity, communal exchange, learning, imagination, care, critical reflection and democracy. Step inside the pavilion and you are confronted by multi-layered, tactile exhibitions featuring a rich array of vernacular building typologies, home furnishings from American heartlands and other distinct architectural elements that make the porch a quintessentially American civic instrument. “The Porch concept is at once spatial and constructed, social and performative, regional and national, historical and contemporary, literal and metaphorical, hospitable and generous,” the pavalion’s co-commissioner Peter MacKeith tells Elle Decor, explaining that he and his colleagues wanted to exploit architecture and design’s inherent potential for social good.

Building Biospheres at the Belgian Pavilion

Where: Giardini della Biennale

The biennale is not just a cluster of exhibitions, “it is a tool to promote the development of ideas that do not exist yet,” curator Carlo Ratti said in one interview. Curated by neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso and landscape architect Bas Smets, Building Biospheres is one such futuristic prototype that can recalibrate the crucial equilibrium between the built environment and plant intelligence. With hundreds of plants on site, the pavilion recreates a building with its own biosphere. In merging natural systems of intelligence with architectural design — for example, bringing landscaping elements and microclimate into the interior as a living, breathing force — Building Biospheres addresses climate change in the most primordial way possible. For better or worse, modern architecture has become increasingly about visual appeal, aesthetics and grand statements, but as this biennale never tires of pointing out, architecture has always been a direct response to harsh climate and the first primitive huts, in fact, were “an act of shelter.” Today, humans are cut off from their natural surroundings, but as global temperatures continue to rise at record levels, the pavalion’s themes are a reminder that we must reclaim architecture’s original role, including as our primitive ‘survival buddy.’

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 is on view until November 23