The 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia recently announced the recipients of this year’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam. The respective honours have been conferred on American philosopher Donna Haraway and the late Italian architect Italo Rota upon recommendation by Carlo Ratti, curator of this year’s International Architecture Exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., set to open to the public from May 10 – November 23, 2025.

Haraway, who has been awarded the prize for her trailblazing legacy in the field of critical and posthumanist theory, is perhaps best known for her conceptualisation of the Chtulucene—a multispecies way of being and thinking with the world. Now retired, she is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). Some of her illuminating and thoroughly groundbreaking (in terms of matter and language) books include Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016), The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991) and Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989); alongside numerous essays, documentaries and lectures where she argues for ways of being and becoming with/in the world that are collaborative and not individualistic. As Ratti notes in an official release, Haraway is one of the most influential thinkers of our contemporary condition, offering valuable insights into critically evaluating the impact of technological evolution on biological nature through a feminist lens and redefining the boundaries between human and nonhuman, a necessary strand for the architectural discipline to explore today.

Staying with the trouble

Ratti’s decision to honour Haraway certainly stems from the overarching themes he is exploring with his exhibition, which will look at the intersections of architecture with the more intangible scientific fields. His curatorial approach pursues adaptation as a design strategy for issues such as the climate crisis and resource deficiency. In this respect, Haraway’s pedagogy, which hopes to challenge human exceptionalism by reconfiguring our relationships with the more-than-human to tackle a world defined by profound ecological crisis, aligns with Ratti’s assertions. As Haraway’s philosophy makes abundantly clear, Western modes of thinking, which in turn influenced modern architectural knowledge systems, have for millennia perpetuated the division between human and non-human realms, thus turning organic life into neutral ‘information’ or ‘resource’. This perspective has led to the crisis of the Anthropocene by systems that continue to unquestionably extract from the earth and designate minorities as forms of cheap labour. What other ways can we collectively construct the future, Haraway asks?

It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with…It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories. – Donna Haraway in Staying With the Trouble

Her critique of the Anthropocene (or the Capitalocene or Plantationocene) explores how humans are entangled with the rest of the world, elaborating on the vital relationships and networks between the social, technical and material realms. Full of hope in its message, her work has been an exploration of alternative modes of knowledge through science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation and string figures. These playful provocations offer ways to construct teeming lifeworlds to imagine otherwise. Haraway advocates for affirmative futures where humans and non-humans together work towards and stay with the trouble.

The book Staying With the Trouble offers the most insight into the kind of interdisciplinary thinking that might allow designers a lens through which to interact with the material world. Her call to stay offers a position underscoring an ethical responsibility towards the planetary. Moreover, it reconceives design as a relational—rather than autonomous—practice. This mode of working is, seemingly, what Ratti hopes to champion during the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 while ironically resorting to an understanding of science as an exceptional instrument of human consciousness (something Haraway critiques). While for Ratti, it is the outcome of design and its reliance on technological solutions that will create an inclusive world, Haraway's real task in negotiating a more generous future is to constantly trouble what is known. In today’s age, where we see the intensified effects of capitalistic extraction, Haraway asks her readers “to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”

Make kin, not babies

Speaking about his choice to honour Haraway, Ratti mentions in an official release, “From whichever route one approaches the convergence of multiple forms of intelligence in shaping our future, the legacy of Donna Haraway will appear.” Drawing a parallel to his showcase’s theme of working with and finding tandems between natural, artificial and collective intelligences, Ratti observes, “As designers grapple with a rapidly transforming present in which nature, technology, and society all present symptoms of divergence from the world as we know it, Haraway’s theory empowers us and her observations guide us. With gratitude, we recognise the lifetime of visionary literature she endows to the future, and we applaud her inspirations to architecture expressed in this exhibition and far beyond.” Haraway offers a perspective from which to reconceive design as processes of becoming.

However, Haraway’s legacy—that Ratti attributes to her revolutionising the field of culture by insisting that the human and more-than-human are intrinsically linked together—lies in her generous capacity for and insistence on the revolutionary nature of storytelling. As she writes in Staying with the Trouble (her most indispensable text), “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” For contemporary architects and designers, the emphasis on the power of stories—not as intangible ideas but as very material ways of interacting with the world—is crucial. It foregrounds practices that engage critically with local communities, natural landscapes and our ‘companion species’. “Make kin, not babies,” Haraway insists. In fact, the idea of kinships in architecture, be that with the terrain or the critters that inhabit the earth, could become a vital strand to unravelling the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale. Instead of looking at design as a singular practice that speaks for the future, designers must speak with and listen to those around us. It is our kinships that shape the world.

While Haraway’s nomination belies Ratti’s fascination with architecture’s interaction with the scientific discipline, his selection of Italo Rota for the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam is crucial for understanding contemporary Italian architecture and its evolution, while at the same time being decidedly sentimental. The late Rota’s work, which spanned over 30 years, was focused on constant and advanced cross-disciplinary research, from contemporary art to robotics. To work out ways through which sustainability and humanistic beauty could become integral to the design profession, he developed various projects in Italy and around the world in his Milan-based studio. Some of his notable works include the renovation of the Civic Museums in Reggio Emilia, the new Elatech Robot Factory in Brembilla, the great Teatro dei Bambini in Maciachini in Milan, and the new Noosphere Laboratory Pavilion at the Triennale di Milano.

Rota began a fruitful collaboration with Ratti’s studio through the design for the Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, which lasted for many other works till the Italian architect passed away last year. Apart from widely influencing Italian architecture and its reception worldwide, Rota served as the scientific director of the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan, as a professor at Shanghai Wusong International Art City Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and as an advisor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. His other noteworthy design awards included the Gold Medal of Italian Architecture for public spaces, the Gold Medal of Italian Architecture for culture and leisure, the Landmark Conservancy Prize in New York and the Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme in Paris.

“A man of boundless culture, a passionate collector and researcher of both Wunderkammer objects and technological devices and a generous teacher, he has contributed to the creation of some of the most influential cultural venues in Europe in recent decades,” Ratti noted, citing the reasons for Rota’s nomination. He added, “The adventure of the Biennale Architettura 2025 began together with Italo Rota at the end of 2023. It was tragically interrupted with his passing a year ago, on April 6, 2024. This is why I am particularly pleased that the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia accepted my proposal to award Italo with the high honour of the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam.”

Previously, the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam of the Biennale Architettura was awarded to Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi in 2021 and to the Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara in 2010. Previous recipients of the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement include Nigerian architect Demas Nwoko in 2023, Vittorio Gregotti in 2020 and British architect, critic and educator Kenneth Frampton in 2018.