lampoonmagazine.com: New Voices in Venice: Azerbaijan, Latvia, Lebanon and more at Biennale 2025

First-time and emerging participants reshape discourse, with Azerbaijan’s “Equilibrium” and Latvia’s border defenses challenging the Arsenale’s traditional Western narrative

2025 Architecture Biennale Review: Out of Focus

With the doors now open on the 2025 Architecture Biennale, it is time to take stock. Curated by Carlo Ratti—the first Italian curator in 25 years—the main show, Intelligence. Natural. Artificial. Collective., reaches for the stars, perhaps too eagerly. More than 750 participants have spilled across Venice, turning the city into the usual exhilarating tangle of architects, artists, curators and journalists. 

Although the word sustainability has been studiously erased, the idea remains central to many pavilions—if only in a frustratingly vague way. Data, meanwhile, plays a starring role: beneath every label sits a neat line reading “summarized by AI.” The aesthetic of the International Exhibition is unmistakably tech-driven, yet—as so often at the Architecture Biennale—the lingering impression is one of spectacle over substance. And maybe that is precisely the point.

Azerbaijan Debuts: “Equilibrium – Patterns of Azerbaijan”

For the first time, Azerbaijan joins the Architecture Biennale. Its show, “Equilibrium. Patterns of Azerbaijan,” unfolds in three chapters—REGENERATE, INNOVATE and PRESERVE—just outside the Arsenale. Highlighted is the Baku White City project, a sweeping redevelopment of a former oil-refining district that seeks to recast the capital’s petroleum-soaked identity through contemporary urbanism.

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