A month after the opening of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, we've invited three critics to come on the show to help make sense of what was arguably one of the most content overloaded, and curitorially ambiguous biennales in recent memory.

Since its inception in 1980, The Venice architecture biennale has set the tone for global discourse on contemporary design and urbanism, and yet the agenda of this year’s exhibition, curated by the MIT professor and recent guest of this podcast, Carlo Ratti, seemed surprisingly muted and anodyne, calling for architects to marshal the quote intelligence of the natural, artificial and collective”

Still there are more complex although perhaps unintended themes to the biennale this year, including the emerging relationship between unaccountable technologies and authoritarianism, quantatitve expansion as a proxy for genuine inclusivity, and perhaps most importantly, the exchange of an independent curatorial vision for an apparent new ideal of algorithmically determined experience. 

Furter reading:

• Emily Conklin: We Will Rest: Seeking Resistance and Recovery During Carlo Ratti’s Venice Biennale in the Brooklyn Rail
• Fabrizio Gallanti: "Fakery and deception is everywhere at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025" in Dezeen
• Phin Harper: Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 Review: A Tech Bro Fever Dream in Art Review and La Biennale Architettura: A Beginner’s Guide on The Fence.

Emily Conklin is the former managing editor of the Architect's Newspaper and is an editor and critic based in New York City. She is trained as a historic preservationist and is the founder of Tiny Cutlery studio. 

Fabrizio Gallanti is an architect, writer and curator, and directs Arc en Rêve, an architectural center in Bordeaux.

Phin Harper is a critic, curator, and sculptor and former Chief Executive of Open City.

Correction: the list of Swiss Pavilion curators mentioned in this episode mistakenly omitted Myriam Uzor, who led the project alongside Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins amd Axelle Stiefel.

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