1.

Yet again, the Venice Architecture Biennale is said to be in crisis — a narrative that regularly appears across media headlines, social media, and casual conversations. The tone of these judgments may differ — resignation, anger, exhaustion — but the core message has become quite predictable. The repeated claim of crisis has, at this point, become part of what keeps the event relevant: by questioning it repeatedly, we also demonstrate that it still matters. The critiques usually follow two alternating paths. One argues that the Biennale has shifted too much into the realm of art, favoring metaphors, images, and emotional installations over architecture’s formal, technical, and disciplinary roots. The other offers an opposing view: that the exhibition has become too isolated, repetitive, and focused on models, mock-ups, and architectural displays that are already widely available on digital platforms and magazines. In the first critique, we find the most obvious concern: can architecture keep its disciplinary identity while being close to art? In the second, a reversed worry: can architecture go beyond just being about buildings?

Despite their differences, these positions share a mutual unease. Both express a desire for the Biennale to function as a space for disciplinary clarification — to define, affirm, or perhaps rediscover what architecture truly is. Implicit in this desire lies a deeper assumption: that the Biennale can still offer a collective agenda and a unifying narrative for the field. Yet this expectation now encounters almost insurmountable obstacles. First and foremost, it remains unclear what discourse the Biennale should represent. Should it mirror those formed within academic institutions? And if so, which ones? Should it reflect the spatial realities of global megacities? Should it focus on tectonics and form, or carbon metrics and social equity? On the countryside or machinic architecture? Historicity or the hallucination of futurism? Which to ask: what would be the contemporary discourse on architecture? As philosopher Peter Osborne notes, when we speak of the ‘contemporary,’ we refer to a world that resists systematic organization; what he calls a “disjunctive unity of present times.”1 Within this strange temporality, the Biennale functions less as a space of narration and more as a platform for distributing diversity — diversity that no longer rests on shared foundations, if they ever existed at all. Another consideration is that, by its very nature, the Biennale also addresses a non-specialist audience. And if we are to believe the statistics, attendance continues to grow. In this sense, the Biennale must speak to an extra-disciplinary public — one not necessarily invested in the historicity of the field or its formal debates — thus transforming into a fair of ideas and forms presented in a popularized, at times simplistic, fashion.

It is against the backdrop of these two challenges that each edition of the Biennale restages the same foundational unease, embracing the contradictions and uncertainties of its time. It may reflect them, amplify them, or, at times, bypass them altogether. The 2025 edition is no exception. Early commentary has highlighted several concerns: a conceptual framework seen by some as too vague; an engagement with technology that occasionally veers toward naïve positivism; and a curatorial structure that many find disorienting. Visitors observed both practical and interpretive challenges, ranging from difficulty in identifying authorship to a general sense of fragmentation within the exhibition spaces. Some installations are more successful. Diller & Scofidio’s kiosk, a machinic architecture that cleans the canals’ water to make coffee, works well if the visitor is willing to embrace the suspension of disbelief that every exhibition typically demands. Others are more predictable: Norman Foster’s nostalgic futurism, with its doubly curved silver surfaces, proposing a reinvention of public transport along Venice’s docks. Between these extremes, there is much to experience: research projects from universities experimenting with material prototyping and rethinking the relationship between the built and natural environments — standard practice in research by design — and the HouseEurope! Project, proposing a referendum to shift focus from new construction toward the adaptive reuse of existing structures; Midjourney images, and socially engaged design; the intriguing case of a redesign of an old project by Eric Owen Moss, and several statements about post-anthropocentrism. Overall, as James Taylor-Foster noted, many visitors felt overwhelmed — “a swamping in the name of ‘openness.’”2

2.

Considering this diversity, the bigger question might not be whether this Biennale succeeded or failed by traditional standards. It’s also not the right place here to debate which installations worked and which didn’t, or which ones resonate with one viewer more than another. Instead, it might be more productive to ask whether the Biennale still serves as a forum for architectural reflection. Or, more pointedly: what conception of the world —architectural, cultural, or political — does the Biennale — its curators, its president, its institution — aim to represent?

This question, indeed quite common among those interested in the subject, points beyond the specifics of the 2025 edition and toward a more systemic issue. The challenge may not lie in the structure or content of the exhibition itself, but in the persistence of our expectations. We continue to invest in the Biennale — in Venice, as well as in Chicago, Oslo, Seoul, Istanbul, and São Paulo — hoping that it can still articulate a clear vision, reveal the image of the future, and offer a discourse broad enough to include the present’s diversity. We produce installations and provocations, often spectacular, with the aim of creating new possibilities for architecture. But is there a reception for all this work, sometimes underpaid or even self-sponsored?

All this amounts to believing in the architect’s role as a social actor and author. From this perspective, the more profound crisis may not lie in the institution of the Biennale, per se, but in architecture’s position within today’s world’s economics, politics, and culture. Certainly, architecture continues to be built — indeed, too much. But merely constructing does not ensure cultural, political, or intellectual significance. The most impactful spatial changes today are driven not by architects but by other forces: global finance, climate policy negotiations conducted in technocratic language and economic forecasts. In a sense, this has always been true, but the trend has undeniably intensified in recent years. When architecture intervenes, it often does so after decisions are already made, translating strategic goals into positivistic approaches, performativity, and methods for the justification of social disruption in the name of sustainability. In this environment, even as buildings multiply, the space for architectural reflection shrinks — not because of a lack of willingness from the many interesting practices and thinkers around, but because of a growing disconnect between what is built and what can still be critically thought.

In front of this, and like all institutions under such pressure, the Biennale tends to adopt a strategy of thematic diplomacy, while avoiding the deeper question: can architecture really claim symbolic, political, and cultural relevance? And if it cannot, then what exactly is the Biennale trying to accomplish? The issue here is not just a lack of curatorial strength but a sense of structural confusion. The Biennale — viewed as an institutional structure rather than a single exhibition — struggles to balance roles it cannot fully reconcile: between a museum and the marketplace, between spaces for critical experimentation and platforms for disciplinary self-preservation. Without a clear project — a shared hypothesis or main idea — it risks not only confusion but also the erosion of any purpose.

Indeed, there have been moments when the Biennale succeeded in offering a clear and meaningful position. Beyond personal preferences, and limiting the discussion to the last 20 years: in 2006, the impact of the digital shift was clearly expressed by Aaron Betsky; in 2014, Rem Koolhaas carried out a detailed analysis of architectural elements as the fundamental units of the discipline. In 2023, the political aspect was highlighted: Africa as a critical perspective, shifting the focus away from traditional centers, offering a challenge (more or less successful) to established architectural narratives. Many other editions, however, have faded into memory with indistinct boundaries. Despite different themes, the exhibitions curated by Sejima, Chipperfield, and Aravena resulted in shows that aligned in aesthetic and conceptual aspects, creating a sense of repetition rather than innovation. All the others, more or less the same: a confused cloud of proposals that we tend to remember only if we exhibited in them, or if someone we know did. Although each Biennale announces a theme, only a few manage to leave a lasting impact or ignite ongoing disciplinary discussion. This raises the most challenging question of all — not only about the purpose of the Biennale, but whether the Biennale can still function as a meaningful cultural platform. Or: can we still see this event as a venue capable of presenting architecture as a collective story, as a shared and critical way of exploring the world?

3.

“Right now the biennal system is a very efficient machine for absorbing the desires, talents, and ideas of a global generation of what could be experimental voices, and even the word experimental and the word research get pulverized. That’s probably why there’s so much alcohol drunk at the events—to inoculate us all from the horror of it.”3

Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley describe the state of the Biennale with sharp irony. However, this could be turned on its head in a way: the Venice Biennale may not dictate what architecture should be; it could actually simply stage a display that keeps architecture visible in the world. It persists as a form, even when content and institutional authority fall short. But what does the event truly involve? As many authors point out, a Biennale does more than showcase work — it orchestrates the global imagination.4 It creates a platform for national projection, curatorial authorship, and the ongoing rehearsal of the art-and-architecture machine’s cosmopolitan alliances. In that sense, the Biennale rarely fails. Instead, it succeeds precisely because it fabricates a world — however artificial — stitched together from flags, names, languages, famous critics, and institutions.

This is essential to understanding what is, perhaps, the most interesting tendency in many of the exhibitions at the Biennale, particularly in Venice, the oldest: a logic of self-reference, recursion, and institutional reflexivity. Some of the Biennale’s most compelling experiences no longer cohere around architecture as a discipline, not even the chosen theme, but around the Biennale as an event. This, indeed, may take several forms. The first is self-referentiality. Pavilions echo past editions — this year, for instance, the North Macedonian ‘Strada Brutalissima’. Curators cite one another, and themes spiral inward, responding less to the outside world than to the Biennale’s own accumulated discourse. Not that this, to be clear, is necessarily something negative. If anything, in today’s culture, the opposite: what unfolds is a performance of the Biennale’s capacity to generate content. Or rather: through this process, architects and curators test the Biennale’s ability to be effective.

The second approach to the Biennale’s recursion involves considering its local effects. As Léa-Catherine Szacka asked in 2019: “do people really care about the city when organizing or visiting a biennial or triennial?”5 A fair question. Particularly in Venice, a city that has become a symbol of over-tourism, with its Airbnb-fueled gentrification, and the cloying artificiality of pistachio-flavored brioches. Venice is now, notoriously, a Renaissance Park: a fetishized commodity shaped by centuries of myth-making and decades of frenzied sell-off. Of course, the impact of an Architecture Biennale may be only relative in comparison to that of cruise ships and low-cost flights. Yet, the Biennale can still serve as a space to reflect on these issues, if viewed as an event.

In Venice, the Unfolding Pavilion — a collateral event curated by Davide Tommaso Ferrando and Daniel Tudor Munteanu — merits mention, even if sadly absent this year. Since its first edition in 2016, it has consistently raised questions about the relationship between the Biennale, the city, and architecture: by hosting exhibitions in an Airbnb located in Ignazio Gardella’s ‘Casa delle Zattere’ — one of the city’s modern masterpieces — or inside Gino Valle’s social housing, using the show as an opportunity to reclaim an apartment and provoke a conversation about the future of the city as a living, inhabited, and experienced environment. But even here, everything remains confined within the boundaries of an event, unnoticed by politics. Yet perhaps that is exactly the point: the event provides a space to experiment, rethink the form of installations, and actively explore new possibilities for the exhibition, both in terms of labor and form. In a sense, the alcohol that Wigley and Colomina mention may also be a celebration: a toast to the idea that, despite everything, it is still worth trying something experimental and playful (something they actually acknowledge)—even if it will not have a lasting impact. 

4.

There is no doubt that, for all the reasons outlined above, the Biennale is in crisis. From this perspective, if we follow the logic of disillusion to its natural conclusion, the most consistent action would be closure. A respectful final act. Applause. Or, alternatively, its full commodification. A polished spectacle. Recasting the stage not to challenge the performance, but to streamline it — removing the burden of curatorial ambition in favor of smooth circulation, appealing visuals, and crowd-friendly themes. A fair for entertainment.

But to ask the Biennale to resolve its contradictions would be to misunderstand its nature. The expectation that it might provide a singular key — a thematic, a model, a discourse — assumes that the task of architecture is to find a hegemonic discourse, against today’s plurality and heterogeneity of voices, poetics, and approaches. We should not ask the Biennale to deliver clarity (always only one’s own), but to sustain, at the very least, an architecture of criticality. In this sense, the value of the Biennale might not lie in defining what architecture is or should do, nor in communicating, whatever that means, to creatives worldwide, but in maintaining the possibility for architecture to reflect upon itself through the very medium of the exhibition. To make (produce) sense, the Biennale must not only present architecture, but actively think it — through form, through spaces, through institutional critique and curatorial composition. Jean-François Lyotard once wrote, with characteristic exasperation, not about architecture, but philosophy:

“The weariness with regard to ‘theory,’ and the miserable slackening that goes along with it (new this, new that, post-this, post-that, etc.). The time has come to philosophize.”6

We might paraphrase him — irreverently, but not inaccurately. The exhaustion surrounding the Biennale, the slackening of its discourse, the biennial parade of “new this, post-that”: the time has come not to philosophize, but to propose; to make a project. Not to critique another format, but to imagine one. Of course, this would mean rethinking the very structure of the event — its logistics, economies, rituals, and unspoken agreements. It would require a new kind of project — architectural, political, and curatorial. It would demand an approach that dares to redesign not just the content of the Biennale, but its form and modes of gathering. It would need space: material, institutional, and symbolic. It would require time — not already consumed by deadlines, funding cycles, and curatorial diplomacy. It would ask for too much. For better or worse, the Biennale’s economy (in its broadest sense) remains the structure we must work within — the flawed but persistent stage where we continue to appear, and which should push us to work critically. For now, we remain suspended in an oversaturated landscape of forms, experiences and images, only certain that we will continue to visit the exhibition. To speak, walk, speculate, clash, embrace, meet, or debate. To briefly pretend to be part of a community, if only to have a spritz.