AND Studio at the Venice Architecture Biennale: Explorations across Intelligence, Nature, Innovation, and Collectivity.

The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Carlo Ratti and titled “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective”, approaches climate change not as a threat but as a generative principle—an opportunity to radically rethink the way we inhabit the planet. It is an invitation to transcend traditional dualisms—natural and artificial, human and technological, individual and collective—to arrive at a new paradigm of living, rooted in interconnection, adaptability, and distributed intelligence.

Within this context, the participation of AND Studio Architects in the Italian Pavilion [read article] represents not just a design presence but a true moment of critical and operational reflection for our practice. It is an opportunity for the entire team to engage with the urgencies of our time, marked by climatic instability, energy transitions, and social and technological transformations that demand architecture to redefine its own foundations.

The theme outlined by Carlo Ratti acted as a design compass—a path already present within our studio, which puts biology and technology, matter and intelligence, form and behavior in dialogue. It is not merely about responding to new functional or environmental needs, but about reshaping the forms of urban coexistence through an architectural mindset that is ethical, ecological, and aesthetic all at once.

In response to this curatorial call, the studio has chosen to present four distinct projects, each selected for its ability to embody one of the four conceptual trajectories proposed by the Biennale:

Intelligens — Port of Piombino

The project for the Port of Piombino, exhibited at the Biennale, interprets port transformation not as a mere feat of engineering, but as an act of territorial, environmental, and social regeneration.

Here, intelligence is the ability to read flows—natural, energetic, commercial, and human—and to respond with an adaptive architectural system that connects the coastline to the future.

An infrastructure that does not divide, but stitches together: between sea and city, between labor and landscape.

Natural — Segala Pharmacy

In the project for the new Segala Pharmacy, Nature enters not only as a theme but as a method.

The architecture behaves like an ecosystem, with porous materials, integrated medicinal plants, circadian lighting, and natural ventilation.

It is more an organism than a building, where well-being emerges from the balance between human functions and vegetal presences.

Natural is thus an invitation to a new alliance between science, health, and the environment.

Artificial — Giuntini Atelier

In the project for the new Giuntini Atelier, material innovation drives a radical exploration of the artificial. New biotechnological surfaces, photochromic fabrics, lightweight intelligent structures compose a space where the tradition of "tailor-made" meets robotic modeling.

Here, Artificial is not synonymous with cold or impersonal, but a creative extension of the artisan gesture, a tailoring act within architecture.

Collective — New tertiary hub in Pontedera

In the project for the new tertiary hub in Pontedera, architecture becomes social infrastructure, capable of activating relationships, generating encounters, and building community.

The beating heart of the project is the plaza in front, conceived not as leftover or transitional space, but as an urban device for collectivity: an open threshold between work and city, between individual and group. Permeable pavements, integrated seating, native vegetation, exhibition spaces, and shaded islands turn it into a habitable and porous environment, welcoming both movement and pause, contemplation and dialogue.

Our participation in the Biennale was more than a showcase: it was a fertile confrontation, a call to be actively involved in the global conversation. In an era of technological acceleration and climate fragility, architecture has both the duty and the privilege to rethink the world. Our projects move in this direction: between intelligence and matter, nature and artifice, individual and collectivity.