From artificial intelligence and climate adaptation to collective knowledge, this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale offers a glimpse into how the professions shaping cities are changing.

A month into the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, one thing is already clear: this year’s exhibition is about much more than architecture.

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition, curated by architect and engineer Carlo Ratti, opened on 10 May under the theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.

Spread across the Giardini, Arsenale and venues throughout Venice, the Biennale brings together more than 750 participants from architecture, engineering, science, technology, art and many other fields.

For urbanists, that multidisciplinary approach feels particularly relevant.

The challenges shaping cities today, from extreme heat and flooding to housing, mobility, demographic change and artificial intelligence, increasingly sit between traditional professional boundaries.

So what does this year’s Biennale tell us about where urban practice might be heading?

1. AI matters, but it is only one kind of intelligence

Artificial intelligence is inevitably present across the exhibition, but the Biennale takes a much broader view of what “intelligence” means.

Its central theme explores three interconnected forms: natural, artificial and collective intelligence.

That framing feels especially useful for cities.

AI and digital tools can process enormous amounts of information, reveal spatial patterns, model scenarios and automate parts of the design process. But urban environments cannot be understood through data alone.

Cities are also shaped by ecological systems, local knowledge, political choices, social behavior and the everyday experience of the people who inhabit them.

For urban professionals, the real opportunity may therefore lie not in replacing one form of intelligence with another, but in learning how to combine them.

2. Climate adaptation is becoming part of everyday urban practice

Climate is not a separate topic at this year’s Biennale. It runs through much of the conversation.

How can buildings and public spaces respond to rising temperatures? How should cities work with water rather than continuously defend themselves from it? Which materials should we use? And how much of what already exists can be adapted rather than demolished and rebuilt?

These questions are increasingly relevant far beyond experimental architecture.

For planners, designers, policymakers and mobility professionals, climate adaptation is quickly becoming part of everyday decision-making.

The Biennale itself is also confronting the environmental footprint of exhibitions through its Circular Economy Manifesto, encouraging participants to think more carefully about materials, reuse and the life of installations beyond the event.

It points to a larger shift: sustainability is moving from a specialist area of practice towards a basic condition within which urban projects need to operate.

3. Working across disciplines is becoming a core urban skill

One of the most striking aspects of the 2025 edition is the range of people involved.

Architects are working alongside engineers, programmers, climate scientists, artists, mathematicians, researchers and many others.

This reflects what is already happening in urban practice.

A mobility project may require transport modelling, behavioral research, spatial analysis and public engagement. A climate adaptation strategy might bring together landscape architecture, hydrology, GIS, policy and finance. Housing cannot be separated from economics, regulation, infrastructure and social policy.

For professionals, this creates a different kind of career challenge.

You do not necessarily need to become an expert in every adjacent discipline. But the ability to understand different forms of expertise, ask good questions and translate between them is becoming increasingly valuable.

4. Data literacy is becoming difficult to avoid

Another clear thread running through contemporary urban practice is the growing importance of data.

From satellite imagery and environmental sensors to mobility datasets and demographic information, cities are producing and using more spatial information than ever before.

The question is no longer whether urban professionals will encounter data in their work. Most already do.

The more important question is how confidently they can work with it.

Can planners interrogate the evidence behind a development proposal? Can designers identify spatial inequalities rather than relying only on intuition? Can policy professionals communicate complex patterns through maps? Can teams understand the limitations and biases within the datasets they use?

As AI makes sophisticated analytical tools easier to access, these questions will only become more relevant.

5. The role of the urban professional is expanding

Taken together, the Biennale presents an interesting picture of the future urbanist.

It is someone who can move between physical space and digital information, understand environmental systems, collaborate beyond their own profession and work with increasingly powerful technologies without treating technology as the answer to every problem.

In many ways, that is already happening.

The boundaries between urban planning, architecture, mobility, data science, climate work, research and policy are becoming more porous. Career paths are becoming less linear. New tools are changing what small teams and individual professionals can do.

For anyone building a career around cities, this creates both uncertainty and opportunity.

Venice as more than a backdrop

There is perhaps no more appropriate setting for these conversations than Venice itself.

The city makes many of the tensions facing contemporary urbanism unusually visible: climate vulnerability, tourism pressure, heritage preservation, mobility, housing and the challenge of adapting centuries-old urban fabric to changing conditions.

Against this backdrop, the Biennale functions not simply as a showcase of architectural projects, but as a place to test ideas about how we might live, build and make decisions differently.

The most interesting takeaway from the 2025 edition may therefore be a relatively simple one.

The future of cities will not be shaped by architects, planners, technologists or communities independently. It will depend on our ability to combine different forms of intelligence, and on professionals who know how to work between them.