Meet Carlo Ratti, the architect curating the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale

Architect Carlo Ratti's passion for cities and architecture is palpable – and contagious. The Italian founder of Carlo Ratti Associati is big on innovation and design that pushes the boundaries of conventional architecture, applying his experiments and research findings on every scale, from installation to buildings and the wider urban setting. He also enjoys looking to nature for inspiration.

Ratti was announced as the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 curator in December 2023. With the event kicking off in early May, he has been hard at work putting together the world's leading festival for the built environment ever since – delving into the architectural zeitgeist and introducing the biennale's first-ever open call for submissions. We met with Ratti before the launch to learn more about his work, motivations, and fascinations, and we offer you a glimpse into the mind of the man set to dominate the headlines come spring.

An introduction to architect Carlo Ratti

Wallpaper*: What fascinates you and drives your practice?

Carlo Ratti: If you look at the work of [Marc-Antoine] Laugier in 18th-century France, he talked about this concept of the 'primitive hut' to explain the origins of architecture. His idea was that architecture starts when the climate is against us. If the climate is not against us, if the weather is perfect, there's almost no need for architecture. Today, the climate is certainly becoming more extreme, and when this happens adaptation in architecture is the only hope.

This search is also about looking at different answers. There's a lot of literature that looks at the world of cities and buildings evolving in a manner that's not that different from the natural world. So we can try things, we see what works and what doesn't. It's almost this kind of evolutionary system, a trial-and-error kind of approach.

W*: What's missing from architecture today?

Carlo Ratti: Somehow this leads into the themes of the biennale ['Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective.'], as I would say one of the key things to look at today is how architecture can bridge the natural and the artificial. Linking the two worlds is, I think, something that's particularly important today.

W*: Is the answer in mimicking and mirroring nature, or working with it in a symbiotic, collaborative way?

CR: It's a beautiful question. People talk a lot about biomimicry, which is when you're copying nature, but here, it's more than copying nature per se. It is about copying the logic of nature. Nature has this kind of trial-and-error system, which can be the core of the way we design.

W*: Where do you think are unexplored opportunities in today's architecture world?

CR: Opportunities lie in working more collaboratively. Traditionally, architects have always been this inspired, singular professional. I am thinking of a Fountainhead persona, this architect alone, being able to solve problems. But I think we need to work more collaboratively. I always try to have teams of different disciplines working together. I call this approach the 'choral' architect. For example, through my work at MIT [where Ratti teaches, directing the Senseable City Lab], I do research where we have people coming from design, architecture, and planning but also a lot of computer scientists, economists and so on, all working together.

W*: How do you see these elements informing your curation for the biennale?

CR: I try to do the same with my curation and the biennale projects [more will be revealed later this month]. At the office, it is a bit more focused, as you work differently when you need to deliver a building or a master plan, but certainly, we're trying to apply the same thinking in both places. Ultimately, the idea of 'disciplines' is something artificial. There's a beautiful book by Edward O Wilson, which talks about the unity of knowledge. The disciplines had to be divided and separated because of the difficulty of managing all of the growing body of human knowledge at once. But we are trying to reintegrate them and look at the whole.

W*: Which projects do you consider landmark for your practice, and why?

CR: I think these would be two projects I had at the very beginning of my practice in 2008. They both explored this mixing of the natural and the artificial. One was the digital water pavilion in Saragossa, a building completely made of water but controlled digitally so that it creates an architecture made of droplets; and the other one was a building in the centre of Milan, an extension for the Trussardi fashion house. It was the first project in Italy with Patrick Blanc, the French botanist. Both of them explored boundaries in different ways.

W*: There is a lot to be excited about. What within our environment makes you smile?

CR: I will go back to what Carlo Scarpa said, that 'between a tree and a house, choose the tree'. My answer is the amazing complexity of nature, and what an incredible designer nature is. Any tree you might look at, it's an incredible system: it gets energy from the sun, all the materials are created locally, and when everything is over, it all goes back to the environment in a circular way.

carloratti.com

The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale will run 10 May till 23 November 2025