The Golden Lion at the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture was awarded to Italo Rota

In just a month, the 19th Architectural Biennale will open in Venice, Italy, with the main curator being the Turin architect and engineer Carlo Ratti, who has chosen the common motto for this year's exhibition: "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective." The pair of laureates for the highest honor, the Golden Lion statuette, was announced in advance, with American philosopher Donna Haraway receiving the award and Milanese architect and designer Italo Rota receiving the in-memoriam award. The decision was communicated last Friday by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a board member of the Venetian Biennale. The ceremonial awards presentation will take place at the Ca' Giustinian palace during the opening weekend on Saturday, May 10, 2025. Subsequently, the gates of the Venice Biennale will remain open until Sunday, November 23, 2025.
The commission justified its selection this year with the following words: “Donna Haraway (emeritus professor of the history of social consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz) is one of the most influential voices in contemporary thought, operating at the intersection of social sciences, anthropology, feminist critique, and philosophy of technology. Over the past four decades, she has multi-disciplinarily explored issues such as the impact of technological evolution on our biodiversity and the environmental context of the chthulucene (a neologism created by D. Haraway in critical response to the Anthropocene of H.P. Lovecraft), redefining the boundaries between human-made and other environments. Haraway invented this term to emphasize the urgency of coexistence and symbiosis with other species. Her work and philosophy, which are radically critical yet also optimistic and imaginative, are characterized by a commitment to creating alternative worlds: constructing positive visions in which today's challenges can be overcome or mitigated by creating new myths. Her contributions to understanding science, technology, race, gender, geography, and the environmental history of humanity have left indelible marks. At a time when designers are grappling with a rapidly changing world where nature, technology, and society exhibit different symptoms from the world as we once knew it, the theories of Donna Haraway empower and guide us. The commission appreciates her lifelong visionary work directed toward the future and expresses admiration for her prompts through architecture at this exhibition and in the distant future.”
Chief curator Carlo Ratti has had a long-standing friendship with Italo Rota (they collaborated on the Expo 2030 project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), and he has described his older colleague as “a great inventor and one of those rare designers who are capable not only of providing answers but also of continually asking new questions.” Already in 2023, Ratti began preparations for the exhibition, but this was interrupted by Rota's passing in April 2024. The work of Rota's partner, Swiss scenographer Margherita Palli, will be presented in the spaces of the Venetian Arsenale.

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