BREAKING NEWS! Elizabeth Diller (1981 Affiliated Fellow) and her team at Diller Scofidio + Renfro win Gold Lions for their project “Canal Cafe.”
The American Academy in Rome is making an outsized impact on the world’s most prestigious stage for architectural ideas, the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens on May 10, 2025. Nearly three dozen architects, designers, thinkers, and scholars who belong to the Academy’s extended community—including Elizabeth Diller, Jeanne Gang, Christopher Hawthorne, and J. Meejin Yoon—are creating a presence that is unprecedented in its depth and range.
From national pavilions and official selections to collateral events and public programming, Academy Fellows, Residents, Advisors, and others are shaping the global conversation on how architecture can respond to a warming climate, accelerating technologies, and social change.
What can groundwater teach us about urban form? How does a bookstore become an act of public architecture? Can the surface of the sea be reimagined as civic space? These are some of the questions they pose in presentations in the Arsenale, Giardini, and other sites across the city.
The Biennale’s nineteenth edition, titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. and curated by MIT professor Carlo Ratti, invites us to rethink how we design, build, and live together in the face of profound planetary shifts. Visitors can find AAR’s influence, especially from those who have passed through our gates within the last ten years, in the following platforms.
At the US Pavilion: A Culture of Generosity
This year’s US Pavilion, titled PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, highlights how architectural design can create space for openness, interaction, and care. The presentation is organized by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, with DesignConnects and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
The design team includes Ross Altheimer (2013 Fellow) of Ten x Ten, Jeanne Gang (2015 Resident) of Studio Gang, and Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi (2019 Residents) of Weiss/Manfredi. AAR’s influence extends to the jury and leadership: Julie Bargmann (2025 Resident) and Marlon Blackwell (2019 Resident) served as jurors.
“PORCH is an open invitation to gather, to exchange, and to experience the power of architecture and design as a connector,” said Susan Chin, the founding principal of DesignConnects who will be an AAR Resident this fall. “Through its spatial presence, curated educational components, and multidisciplinary expression, our exhibition celebrates community and creativity in all their forms.”
Official Selections
A range of official Venice Biennale projects spotlight the breadth of AAR’s community in architecture, landscape architecture, and design:
- Anthony Acciavatti (2025 Fellow) presents Grounded Growth: Groundwater’s Blueprint for Intelligent Urban Form (read his Fellows in Focus interview)
- Erin Besler (2019 Fellow) and Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith (2023 Fellows) are among nine group contributing to The Perimeter of Architecture: Amid the Elements
- David Costanza (2025 Fellow), with Fabiola Guzman, Luisel Zayas, and Cornell’s Building Construction Lab, are Leaning into Balance: Ocean Plastics at Play (read his Fellows in Focus interview)
- Kate Crawford, a recent speaker at AAR’s Galileo Week, presents Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500 with Vladan Joler
- Craig Douglas (2023 Affiliated Fellow) joins forces with Kate Orff, Marco Scano, and Max Piana on Cool Forest
- Laura Kurgan (2022 Resident) is one of five researchers investigating The Curse of Dimensionality
- John Ochsendorf (2008 Fellow, former AAR Director) is part of an MIT Morningside Academy for Design team behind VAMO
- Robert Gerard Pietrusko (2021 Fellow) contributes to A Satellite Symphony with Space Caviar and Ersilia Vaudo
- Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi (2019 Residents) return with Surface/Subsurface: The Contours of Changing Climates
- J. Meejin Yoon (2006 Fellow, 2020 Resident) and Eric Höweler of Höweler + Yoon unveil AquaPraça, coordinated by Carlo Ratti Associati
Collateral Events
Beyond the official program, AAR fellows and residents are curating some of the Biennale’s most ambitious satellite exhibitions. Nicholas de Monchaux (2014 Fellow), with Benjamin Bratton and Ana Miljacki, is organizing The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology at Palazzo Diedo for Berggruen Arts & Culture. The sprawling show examines our planet as a “megastructure” through immersive installations, historical artifacts, and forty future-facing faculty projects from MIT.
In the public-programming space known as Speakers’ Corner, Christopher Hawthorne (2016 Resident), Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (2017 Residents), and Florencia Rodriguez are shaping conversations on design, criticism, and emerging voices. Their Restaging Criticism series will unpack how architectural discourse is evolving.
Elsewhere in the Giardini, Elizabeth Diller (1981 Affiliated Fellow) and her team at Diller Scofidio + Renfro have realized La Libreria, a temporary bookstore installation that plays with light, structure, and public reading. (AAR honored Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro with its 2013 Centennial Medal for their exceptional contributions to the worlds of architecture and the visual arts.)
Transatlantic Exchange: Italian Voices at the Forefront
Reflecting the Academy’s enduring commitment to cultural exchange, the Academy’s Italian Fellows and Advisors are playing a vital role in this year’s Biennale. Participants include Alessio Battistella (2022), Ila Bêka (2019), Francesca Berni (2021), Fosco Lucarelli (2018), Valerio Morabito (2022), Sabrina Morreale (2024), Alessandro Mulazzani (2023), and Giovanna Silva (2020). Advisors Maria Clara Ghia, Paolo Mezzalama, and Paola Viganò further enrich this presence, underscoring the Academy’s role as a platform for cross-cultural dialogue.