Tec project selected for 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale

A Tecnológico de Monterrey School of Architecture, Art, and Design (EAAD) project has been selected to be part of the architecture exhibition at the 2025 Venice Biennale.

Under the curatorship of Carlo Ratti, the nineteenth edition of this international Art and Architecture exhibition will include a presentation of a national EAAD project entitled Fostering Care Ecologies: Tech-Community Driven Living Labs.

Alfredo Hidalgo, EAAD’s interim national dean, and Maximillian Nowotka, EAAD’s national communications leader, teamed up to present their proposal for the Biennale’s first open call in 2024, serving as curator and curatorial assistant respectively.

Since this is a collaborative effort at national level, the team benefited from the work of research professors such as Emanuele Giorgi, from the Chihuahua campus, María Elena De la Torre, from the Guadalajara campus, and Carlos Cobreros, from the Querétaro campus.

“We didn’t just want a proposal that could be selected, we wanted one that spoke of the School and that wasn’t just an isolated case but a representation of the efforts of these initiatives in all its communities,” Hidalgo shared.

The team also received contributions from:

• Alessandra Cireddu, National Architecture Program Manager
• Edgar Egurrola, Observatory of Cities Coordinator
• Jesús Corona, Data Visualization Specialist at EAAD in Guadalajara
• Rubén Segovia, Director of the Master’s Program in Architecture and Urban Design
• Jorge León Contreras, Architecture student at the Querétaro campus
• Pablo Pacheco, former exchange student (from Chile) on the Regenerative Design concentration at the Guadalajara campus

The first open call selects EAAD for Venice

According to Hidalgo, this is not only the first official participation by EAAD in the architecture exhibition at the Venice Biennale, but also the first time that the Biennale decided to have an open call to entries worldwide.

“This participation arises from the first open call by the official Biennale exhibition. The Biennale, which is held every two years, appoints a curator, and the curator decides the main theme of that edition and its pavilions,” he explained.

“The curator, who this year is Carlo Ratti, decided to have an open call to look for proposals linked to the theme he proposed around natural, artificial, and collective intelligence as a mechanism to build and take care of the planet,” he added.

With Nowotka identifying and leading coordination of EAAD’s proposal, the Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collectiveexhibition will feature the work of the Tec community as part of its 280 selected projects.

For the curator and curatorial assistant, the opportunity was not only to represent the School at one of the most important international architecture forums in the world, but also to showcase the talent of its professors and students.

“The idea was to put projects that we’ve been working on with many points in common under the same umbrella, (...) María Elena and I worked under the umbrella of the concentration in regenerative design in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere,” said Cobreros.

“We’ve been accumulating these work experiences under this vision of education that transforms communities (...) They weren’t just academic exercises but projects that were involved, responsible, and consistent in seeking a positive change,” he added.

Thus, along with 750 multidisciplinary participants, Fostering Care Ecologies: Tech-Community Driven Living Labswill be on display to the public at the Corderie del Arsenale from May 10 to November 23.

EAAD’s ‘living’ labs arrive in Italy

The proposal selected for this year’s Biennale, Fostering Care Ecologies: Tech-Community Driven Living Labs, is described by De la Torre as a set of projects united by themes such as regenerative design methodology and a common narrative.

“Regenerative design enables us to systematically connect with territories and communities and remain engaged with them for several semesters (...) Emanuele’s integration made it easy to align this with the concept of intelligences,” she said.

In this case, Cobreros contributed based on his experience at the Natural Rural Lab in Querétaro, De la Torre from the C+LAB in Guadalajara, and Giorgi as leader of the Design For Vulnerables – Technology Challenge project in Chihuahua.

“These are projects in which we had seen tension with the communities, with the territories, where we focused on the key to future sustainability and regenerating these territories and the life within them,” Giorgi reflected.

“Where there is concern within the territories, we need to generate trust in the communities. After that, these pilot projects emerge, which we can articulate into living labs,” María Elena added.

In order to create a concrete proposal, Giorgi highlighted the common objective of improving the quality of life of vulnerable populations in the country through regenerative design processes while creating or reading intelligences in these populations.

De la Torre also explained how the final methodology of the proposal integrates the identification of vulnerabilities in reading the territory with the purpose of finding what makes it unique, collaborating with its local stakeholders, as well as its potential for future evolution.

“(In the joint proposal) we shifted our focus away from problems or problem solving and instead aimed to allow the full potential of the location to inspire the projects,” she explained.

Inclusion, intelligence, and change at the 2025 Biennale

According to Cobreros, the call for entries for this edition of the Architecture Biennale featured not only an openness to participation by new actors but also an emphasis on inclusion and generating change.

“Carlo Ratti has mentioned this a lot, that he wanted the exhibition to be more inclusive, that is, not just talking about Architecture as an end or a final product, but as part of a series of processes for change,” the researcher highlighted.

“It’s about being more inclusive of other processes of Architecture, recognizing that this is part of a broader change, a contribution to it. What we’re saying is that it’s the small seed that serves as a foundation to encourage that transformation,” he added.

In this way, the team agreed that beyond the texts, photographs, and graphics that have been generated, the value of the proposal –and therefore of EEAD’s participation– lies in how vulnerability is approached from a different perspective.

“It’s a collection of tools for how to face the future in situations as complex and vulnerable as those of some of these territories (...) It’s about being able to look at the future in a different way,” said Nowotka about what will be shown at the exhibition.

As such, the curatorial team for this proposal points to the presence of an ongoing dialogue with Ratti’s team, stressing the need to prevent the exhibition from being merely limited to an architectural display and instead evolving into a living lab.

“It’s putting into practice this manifesto of creating a dynamic laboratory that is nurtured by the 280 projects and the conversation being generated in subsequent discussions,” the curatorial assistant stressed.

EAAD at the Venice Biennale

Hidalgo said that although this is the first occasion EAAD has been invited –thanks to its proposal– to the Venice Biennale architecture exhibition, the community had already participated in two previous years at Biennale side events.

“The Biennale is a space that we’ve already used in some way to showcase the work and talent of our students,” Hidalgo shared.

Thus, along with the project created for the official exhibition, the national leader also says that EAAD will also have an exhibition at the European Cultural Centre this year to mark the occasion, along with a book whose publication date is still to be determined.

Through a national call, with 280 students and almost 90 projects participating, 19 projects were selected to be presented in Venice.

As part of the team’s reflections two months before their departure for the Biennale, De la Torre points out that the EAAD community has also been part of the process beyond their own proposals, maintaining the essence of a living classroom or lab.

“The aim is to take the findings to these living classrooms, where we combine the capabilities of students, teachers, and syllabuses to make an impact on the territories, to have living ecosystems, and to develop capabilities in the communities,” she said.

“With the use of technologies and intelligence in its various forms, the project seeks in the end to deepen community knowledge and awareness, which are as important as academic research,” Carlos said.

Finally, both Giorgi and Hidalgo shared their satisfaction not only at formally participating in the Biennale, but also at having had the opportunity to reflect on intelligence as part of this milestone in EAAD’s history.

“Intelligence is the concept that unites these projects as one (...) We explore intelligences as people’s capabilities, how to interact with the territory, with nature, and with technology, and the importance of understanding them in all their aspects,” stressed Giorgi.

“Being on such an important stage as the Biennale speaks not only of what the numbers have to say about our rankings, but also of positioning, of how we display ourselves on such an important stage and open ourselves up to a relevant and current conversation,” Hidalgo said.

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