In the essay After Comfort (2019), architectural historian Daniel A. Barber posits that we live in the age of the Comfortocene – times wherein comfort is demanded as a right by the privileged, no matter its planetary cost. The commodity of comfort is unevenly distributed, often seen as a symbol of economic success, notwithstanding incumbent geographies, global resource inequalities and colonial histories, allowing a fraction of humanity to evade facing the consequences for its collective actions. As Barber argues, we cling to comfort to manufacture our built environments, and yet, this very control feeds the unpredictability of our future. This evasive attitude is deeply embedded in our everyday lives, as we prioritise a good night’s sleep over long-term survival, losing sight of the embedded dichotomy therein: what makes us comfortable also makes us vulnerable. The storms strike harder, the rising waters engulf lands and the air grows ever more searing against the skin. While some of us hide from this chaos in our air-conditioned snares, the not-so-privileged populace and, ultimately, entire ecosystems bear the costs. This is just another example of the many tacit agreements that define the so-called global order.

Nowhere does this unilateral agreement contrast more starkly than in Venice. Built over a saltwater lagoon in an era of predictable waters, Italy’s ‘city of canals’ has long since been in a symbiotic relationship with the tides through embankments and dredged canals, with the city now ‘sinking’ at an alarming rate. To now combat the lagoon’s impending fate and its own, the city attempts new measures against intense floods every year. By confronting the price of its seemingly comfortable existence, the city becomes a fitting site to probe the global crisis, with the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 a suited stage for this reckoning. Embodying this year’s theme, Intelligens.Natural. Artificial. Collective., the curator’s exhibition at the Corderie dell'Arsenale opens with four multimodal displays and installations: Architecton, The Third Paradise Perspective, Terms and Conditions and The Other Side of the Hill—collectively dubbed Intro—in pursuit of mobilising available intelligentsia  to combat climate change and its most immediate apparitions around the world.

Setting the tone for the architecture exhibition is Architecton, a film by Victor Kossakovsky that explores the evolution of architecture and what one might learn from it. Showcasing visuals from Lebanon’s ancient temple remnants to the submerged piles of Venice, and featuring an appearance from architect and designer Michele De Lucchi, the exhibit underlines the importance of developing adaptable ecosystems through collective action. Moving further into the Arsenale, a darkened hall sets the stage for a disarming exhibit, delivering a stunning, perhaps polarising display, right at the beginning. Driving viewers and visitors into silence and willful submission, one finds The Third Paradise Perspective by Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte—a cluster of pools filled to the brim reflecting the alarming rise in ocean levels, nearly flooding the dimly lit pathways one navigates through—as a poignant reminder of collective responsibility.. As one tries to make sense of the reflections in the brimming water, deafening whirrs draw one’s attention upwards, towards Terms and Conditions.

Air conditioning units hang from the ceiling by thin cables, their threatening assemblage and quantum instilling concern among the visitors. The immersive installation conjures a miniature urban pocket of sorts, characterised by an onslaught of oblivious aircon units, deemed a universal fixture in the narratives of our built environments. The heavy units spew heat into the dark hall, some actively exhaling mechanical exhaust while the others contributing to the thermal illusion that lingers in the air and seems to scorch the skin. The stifling, jarring display amidst the unbearable heat and humidity lays bare the privilege one enjoys from their cool, air-conditioned rooms, placing the visitors on the other end of the uneasy agreement that is thermal inequity. The tangled mess of chains, cables and wires above the units further adds to the unease reminiscent of our urban landscapes. “We are at the edge, temporally and geographically displaced—but only just, only for now—from the overwhelming experience of non-compensable heat, sweaty nights and thermal stress that we cannot come back from. These are the Terms and Conditions we have agreed to,” states the official release.

While the installations urge finding solutions with collective responsibility and intelligence, traversing the powerful display will make visitors ponder that it will be no easy feat, for we have increasingly and continually misused technology and architecture for climate-avoidant practices. The intense spatial design hints that the damage might be near irreparable, unless we stop commodifying comfort, acknowledge its grave ramifications on the planet and actively make better choices as makers and users of architecture.

A special commission by curator Carlo Ratti, the installation is a collaboration between Transsolar’s climate engineers Thomas Auer and Jochen Lam, design lead Bilge Kobas, a climate science consultant team from ETH comprising Sonia Seneviratne, David N. Bresch and Lorenzo Pierini, along with a design team led by Barber, including philosopher Dehlia Hannah, data governance specialist Alexandra Auer and architect Sebastian C. Koth. The conceptual design as well as the theoretical spine of the project stems from Barber’s 2019 essay After Comfort, a part of the online essay collection After Comfort: A User’s Guide, edited by Barber, Auer and others. The collective discomfort staged by the sonic and thermal elements compels one to reconsider their choices and question the incumbent global order. The only tangible narrative is designing for discomfort, as Barber argues in his essay, “making discomfort desirable”. A thoughtful regulation of discomfort could thus potentially alter the warped expectations of ‘comfortable’ living that people have developed in recent decades.

Building upon the discomfort of Terms and Conditions, The Other Side of the Hill strikes the visitors with a visage of harsh urban realities, wherein a large sculptural hill depicts the human population chart of the last 50 centuries. Observing the sudden, exponential population growth over the past few centuries, one is met with the shocking realisation of considerable population decline within a single generation due to falling fertility rates. Is there a future beyond this relentless growth? What are our lives and cities capable of looking like in the face of this uncertainty? The installation attempts to find answers to these inquiries through the interdisciplinary lens of microbiology, theoretical physics, design and architectural history and theory.

Beatriz Colomina, Roberto Kolter, Patricia Urquiola, Geoffrey West and Mark Wigley draw on their collective expertise and present bacteria as potential guides towards an adaptive, regenerative future that centres a cross-species approach. The foundation of the hill is made using Cimento® modular bricks, formed of a composite material comprising hydraulic binders, mineral aggregates, recycled glass and spirulina algae, transforming the hill into a living, breathing symbol of interdependence. The mix also includes marsh reeds, shells, fishing nets and algae filaments from the Venetian lagoon, intentionally weaving the historical city into its narrative.

Beyond the sharp, steep hill, organic forms compose a grotto-like space that invites visitors to examine its elements closely and attentively. Overtaken by bacteria-catalysed germinating mosses, the multimedia installation evokes a laboratory with enlarged petri-dishes, elevated as observation tables. Featuring ’biofilms’, a multimedia assemblage, the exhibits reflect upon the behaviours of ‘microbial cities’ that ideally adapt to changing environments. The virtual soundscape speculates about architecture of the future relying on microbial systems, hinting towards a paradigm shift that considers other life forms as equally capable—at times even superior—authors of a collaborative alliance.

From glancing at the evolution of architecture to revealing the terrifying realities and presenting a hopeful alternative future, the immersive experience acts as a mirror to our neglect and indifference in the face of global warming, along with serving to be a fitting introduction to the displays at the Biennale. The installations remind us that if the Comfortocene taught us to build walls against discomfort, it will take explicit agreements—transdisciplinary, trans-scalar and trans-species—to dismantle them, preventing the chaos from further creeping in through the cracks of the cold walls. The projects presented, collectively as well as individually, serve to be a wake-up call, hinting that our current, parasitic paradigms of existence, are bound to render a future sans humans. Perhaps, in place of the tangled mess of cables, discomfort must reclaim our cities and lives, cultivating like moss on the grotto.

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is open to the public from May 10 to November 23, 2025. Follow STIR’s coverage of Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 (Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective) as we traverse the most radical pavilions and projects at this year’s showcase in Venice.