This edition marks a radical change in how architecture is conceived: no longer just an aesthetic response to the climate crisis, but a transdisciplinary laboratory for imagining how to adapt to a rapidly changing world. “We don’t need to build more, we need to build differently,” says Ratti. The challenge? To experiment, to intertwine knowledge, and to involve new actors. For the first time in the history of the Biennale, more than 750 contributors are participating—not only architects, but also scientists, philosophers, artists, mathematicians, farmers, climatologists, and programmers.

The main exhibition is dense and accessible, thanks to curatorship that strongly emphasizes communication: each installation is accompanied by detailed captions and summaries generated by artificial intelligence (a smart and very useful feature). Among the most impactful works are the artificial floods and hot air vortices created by Sonia Seneviratne and David Bresch, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cittadellarte Onlus and Transsolar, which allow the climate crisis to be literally “breathed.” In The Other Side of the Hill, a team led by Geoffrey West, Roberto Kolter, and Patricia Urquiola explores the impact of demographic decline through visually powerful installations.

Ratti’s approach blends aesthetics and substance: from innovative materials—banana fiber, AI-transformed wood, even elephant dung—to the very concept of collective intelligence. The most spectacular example of this vision is Living Structure, a Japanese project by Kengo Kuma and the University of Tokyo, where artificial intelligence shapes wood into organic structures. But there is also space for energy: on display is a fourth-generation nuclear reactor cooled with liquid lead, created through the collaboration between Newcleo, Pininfarina, and Fincantieri.

Poetic moments are not missing, such as the concluding section Out, where, guided by the brilliant musician Jean-Michel Jarre (who worked with Maria Grazia Mattei, a pioneer of digital innovation in Italy), visitors are immersed, eyes closed, in a sound installation that evokes futuristic and sensory worlds. An experience to try.

This Biennale does not simply exhibit, but provokes, questions, and builds bridges. And it does so with courage, unafraid to challenge the present. In an era marked by environmental and social crises, architecture is called upon to reinvent itself, becoming a concrete proposal for a more sustainable and inclusive future. As Ratti, student of Italo Rota (to whom the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was awarded posthumously), said: “We are living in the age of adaptation. Architecture can no longer be only a response, it must become a proposal. Architecture is survival.”