As spring emerges in Venice, Italy, so too does the 2025 Architecture Biennale, also known as the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, opening to the public on May 10. Curated by Italian architect/engineer Carlo Ratti and titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., this prestigious event showcases design solutions to climatic adaptation, transcending disciplinary boundaries to address this urgent global issue. The exhibition includes installations, National Pavilions, workshops, and related programs staged throughout the Giardini, Arsenale, and other Venetian locations. The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is well represented, with more than 80 affiliates—faculty, alumni, and students—taking part in the grand exhibition.
The 2025 Biennale begins with a clear premise: adaptation. As the climate shifts, so must the spaces we inhabit. Architecture is no longer a question of appearance—it is a matter of resilience. Meeting this reality means reimagining not just our cities, but also our methods, tools, and modes of collaboration.
Academic institutions are central to this transformation. Their capacity to nurture diverse forms of intelligence—natural, artificial, and collective—is essential, especially in an era marked by new forms of obscurantism.
We are proud of the GSD’s strong presence in this year’s exhibition, not just as participants either. The GSD’s Anna Lyman is directing our public program, and Master of Design (MDes) student Dana Barale is public program assistant for our curatorial team. I hope the exhibition inspires students—present and future—to see design as both a responsibility and an opportunity. Architecture still matters, but only if we allow it to evolve.
–Carlo Ratti, curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition
FACULTY AND CURRENT STUDENTS
Martin Bechthold—Kumagai Professor of Architectural Technology and academic dean—with Marina Sartori, Maroula Zacharias, and Juan Pablo Ugarte Urzúa present Material Perceptions: Ceramics in the European Cultural Centre’s Time Space Existence exhibition. The project draws on research conducted by the Material Processes and Systems (MaP+S) group at the GSD, which Bechthold leads. Material Perceptions creates unexpected encounters with ceramic tiles, including prototypes of dry-pressed flat tiles designed as hyper-realistic imitations of other materials. Floor mounted installations use the tiles as “cairns,” demonstrating that these products, once removed from walls or floors, can attain unique structural and spatial design qualities.
Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti, assistant professor in practice of architecture, has contributed Continuously Becoming Home: Design at the Intersection of Climate Crisis and AI to Time Space Existence. The title Continuously Becoming Home refers to the emerging reality that the nature of our mundane domestic activities, and the simple solidity of the home as a shelter that holds them, is changing due to continuous streams of invisible information that flow through our environments. The installation imagines the emerging 21st-century domestic landscape through the lens of eight small vignettes that explore the disposition of the home as a living, systems-linked architecture defined by a choreography of friction and cooperation. HouseZero®—the living laboratory and headquarters for the Harvard Center for Green Building and Cities—is featured in Christoforetti’s installation, showcasing its data-driven infrastructure and innovations in adaptive design. Christoforetti, who is principal investigator for the Laboratory for Values in the Built Environment (ViBE Lab) at the GSD and founding principal of Supernormal, is also speaking and hosting a workshop as part of the GENS Public Programme.
Gareth Doherty, associate professor of landscape architecture and affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies, and Washington Fajardo (LF ’19), former secretary of urban planning and president of the Pereira Passos Institute for Urbanism in Rio de Janeiro, are part of a team presenting Data Clouds. Developed in collaboration with the MIT Senseable City Lab, Data Clouds uses LiDAR scanning and digital twin technologies to map informal settlements. Centered on Vidigal, a favela in Rio de Janeiro, the installation fuses physical and digital representations to immerse visitors in the complexity of this urban landscape. Through high-resolution 3D visualizations and an immersive LiDAR experience, the project explores how emerging technologies can document, analyze, and inform interventions in informal settlements, advocating for bottom-up, data-driven strategies to advance more inclusive and climate-resilient urban development.
Craig Douglas, assistant professor of landscape architecture; Max Piana, visiting lecturer in landscape architecture; and Kate Orff (MLA ’97) of SCAPE Landscape Architecture worked with Marco Scano to create Cool Forest, a project exploring themes of urban heat, adaptation, and biodiversity. As a window into Venice’s future climate, Cool Forest is an interactive journey through a lush, planted microenvironment. The plants are future visitors, foreshadowing the species that will eventually join the current ecosystem as the climate of Venice shifts. As visitors walk along the promenade, they learn about the biodiversity of the forest, engage with urban cooling methods, and consider our climate-changed future. Embedded sensors track the growth and change of tree species within the installation, while other sensors monitor microclimate conditions within and around the installation. Collectively, the installation presents a digital repository of heat data, harnessing the power of technology to understand our changing climate.
Studio Gang, founded by professor in practice of architecture Jeanne Gang (MArch ’93), presents The Living Orders of Venice, a site-specific installation that explores how architecture can foster urban biodiversity by supporting wildlife and people. The installation features three animal nesting structures created for important species in Venice. Designed in conversation with biologists and fabricated in collaboration with a ceramic artist, the structures are designed to be integrated into human architecture, while supporting the specific conditions that each species needs to thrive. In addition, the project launches the Biennale Bioblitz, a crowd-sourced field study of the biennale grounds. Studio Gang’s work also appears in the national pavilions of the United States, France, and Albania.
Chuck Hoberman, Pierce Anderson Lecturer in Design Engineering, and Hanif Kara, professor in practice of architectural technology, collaborated with CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati on Teatro Verde.
Eric Höweler, professor of architecture and director of the Master of Architecture I Program, and J. Meejin Yoon (MAUD ’02) have developed AquaPraça, a traveling floating platform that serves as a meeting place for conversations about the climate crisis’s challenges. The designers’ Boston-based firm Höweler + Yoon worked with CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati to develop to the 400-square-meter floating plaza for the biennale. The structure levels with the tidal buoyancy system that operates by siphoning water into basins. As its adaptive design responds to tides in real time, the platform rises and falls in sync with the water system’s ebb and flow. Conceived as a global public space to reflect on climate, AquaPraça will travel to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, following the biennale.
Daniel Ibáñez, design critic in architecture, worked with Carla Ferrer (MDes ’17) and photographer María Azkarate on a section within the Spanish Pavilion, which has been curated by Manuel Bouzas (MDes ’24) and Roi Salgueiro (MDes ’14) [see below]. Ibáñez and his collaborators focused on the role of materials in the decarbonization of architecture. Their research analyzes the value chains of natural and regenerative materials in the Cantabrian coast, from forestry practices to the wood industry.
Christopher Hawthorne, Florencia Rodriguez (LF ’14), and GSD design critics Sharon Johnston (MArch ’95) and Mark Lee (MArch ’95), who comprise the firm Johnston Marklee, devised the Speakers’ Corner, one of the biennale’s featured Curator’s Special Projects. The project takes the form of a grandstand with seating for more than 50 and hosts talks, panels, and other public events during the exhibition, most prominently “Restaging Criticism,” a discussion series organized by Hawthorne and Rodriguez on the future of architecture criticism. The structure’s base contains a small, soundproofed room that can act, variously, as the setting for more intimate talks and interviews, an archive of earlier Speakers’ Corner events, a curated library, and a space of respite. In ways more implicit than explicit, the Speakers’ Corner positions itself in dialogue with the inaugural Architecture Biennale in 1980. For that exhibition Paolo Portoghesi invited Charles Jencks, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Vincent Scully to participate in a Mostra dei critici, or Critics’ Exhibition.
Tosin Oshinowo (LF ’25) presents Alternative Urbanism: The Self-Organized Markets of Lagos, an immersive experience of three specialist markets from Lagos, Nigeria, as part of a broader research project on what we can learn from the city. These markets operate as factories processing “waste” or “end-of-life” items from industrialized economies and showcase the principle of circularity prevalent in African cities through the ingeniousness of iterative self-organizing initiatives. The markets tend to be foreign to their host environments and not structured by the state. Yet, they coexist with and, in some cases, re-appropriate these urban fabrics, speaking to the realities that enable the African city to function in modernity. These markets resonate with the theme of communal intelligence, highlighting an alternative urbanism that contributes sparingly to our global carbon challenge while offering an optimist conversation on circularity. The International Jury awarded Alternative Urbanism with a special mention.
Marina Otero, lecturer in architecture and 2022 Wheelwright Prize winner, has multiple projects on view in Venice this year. The video installation Building for Quantum, created with Manuel Correa, Emil Nygard Olsen, and Manu Sancho Sánchez, documents the construction of a building designed to house one of the world’s only quantum computers. Wetland Enmeshments. Water Cables and Data in Quilicura, Chile, with Serena Dambrosio and Nicolas Diaz, focuses on the community impacts of data center construction. Otero is also the curator of the Holy See Pavilion. The presentation, titled Opera Aperta, features the work of Tatiana Bilbao Studio and MAIO Architects, including Anna Puigjaner, 2016 Wheelwright Prize winner. The International Jury awarded the Holy See Pavilion with a special mention for National Participation. In addition, Otero served on the scientific advisory committee for Chile’s national pavilion.
Antoine Picon—G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, director of Doctoral Programs, and director of the PhD Program—contributed an essay titled “Learning Differently from Nature” to the catalogue for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition and serves as an advisor to composer Jean-Michel Jarre who created the Oxyville 360 sonic structure.
Shweta Ranpura (DDes ’26) presents Tracing the Voids: Adapting the Ordinary. Produced under the auspices of Ranpura’s Mumbai-based firm replace architecture urbanism, the project traces the absences and gaps between a century-old house and trees, their canopies and roots. By allowing the voids to shape the architectural forms of the vaults and arches, the design accommodates uncertainty, negotiates absences, and transforms the ordinary through deeply connections to its environments. As historical traces, the vaults and arches reminiscent of past construction techniques reveal to the present spaces that address the current climate crisis. In so doing, they trace the voids of knowing, doing, and being in a time marked by realities that redefine architecture as adaptation. Ranpura collaborated with technical advisor Raaj Ranpura, client Harshal Parekh, and master masons Azad Singh and Mohan Pateliya.
Emma Sheffer (MArch ’27) and team including alumni Charles Kim (MArch ’21), Stephanie Rae Lloyd (MArch ’22), Sam Sheffer (MArch ’22), Emily Ezquerro, and Jero Ezquerro, have developed SpaceSuits.US: A Case for Ultra Thin Adjustments. The project, which features a 1:4 scale fragment of a typical American timber framed house and a tailored “Space Suit,” rethinks how we can improve building and insulation techniques for existing housing stock. Drawing parallels between astronauts in extreme environments and urban dwellers facing extreme environmental shifts, the project explores how heat reflection, thermal insulation, and ultra-thin adjustments to existing buildings can provide an architectural solution for impending climatic emergencies.
On May 12, Sheffer and collaborators will deliver a GENS Public Programme workshop titled “Soft Tactics: Tailored Assemblies.” The session addresses how soft knowledges can be leveraged against architectural technologies to produce tailored assemblies for social and environmental pressures.
Bas Smets, professor in practice of landscape architecture, and biologist Stefano Mancuso have transformed the Belgian Pavilion with the installation of Building Biospheres. Initiated by the Flemish government and the Flanders Architecture Institute, this thought-provoking exhibit explores architecture through the lens of plant intelligence. Building Biospheres imagines a future where buildings are redefined as dynamic microclimates, with plants taking on a central role in purifying air and regulating temperatures. This vision of architecture positions nature not as a passive element but as an active and intelligent partner in urban spaces. Drawing from the latest research into plant behavior and intelligence, the project proposes a world where nature and built environments seamlessly integrate to create healthier, more sustainable, and more habitable cities.
Andrew Witt (MDes ’02, MArch ’07), associate professor in practice of architecture and co-director of the Master in Design Engineering program, and Tobias Nolte of Certain Measures have developed the installation Machine View of the City.
ALUMNI
Celina Chinyere Abba (MLA ’23) and Enrique Cavelier (MLA ’23) have created Plantation Futures, an experimental video installation that envisions the future of Louisiana’s “Plantation Country.” The intertwined legacies of chattel slavery and ecological degradation in the lower Mississippi region have long marginalized the voices of the enslaved, their descendants, and the land itself. This video, which draws on their thesis research at the GSD, challenges colonial narratives and proposes an alternative future for the region that recognises suppressed histories and non-human entities as essential forms of natural intelligence. A new version of Abba and Cavelier’s thesis project is included in the Time Space Existence exhibition staged at the Palazzo Mora, organized by the European Centre of Culture.
Anthony Acciavatti (MArch ’09) of Somatic Collaborative, presents Grounded Growth: Groundwater’s Blueprint for Intelligent Urban Form, an exhibition focused on one of the world’s largest distributed freshwater reserves: aquifers. Today, hydrologists estimate that nearly half of the global population drinks groundwater daily and more than half of the world’s irrigated crops rely on it. As population increases and demand for food grows, aquifers are declining, cities are sinking, and the agricultural workforce is shrinking. Using two of the most over-pumped landscapes in the world, the Indo-Gangetic Plains and Sonoran Desert, Acciavatti designed new agrarian communities in each region. Drawing on lessons learned from Venice’s system of cisterns and South Asia’s stepwells, the models and drawings foreground aquifers as a shared commons that can collectively shape farms and cities.
Frank Barkow (MArch ’90) and Regine Leibinger (March ’91) of Barkow Leibinger have created Map of Glass, which rescales the urban island fragments that comprise Venice as an abstracted topographical model of incremental densities, shapes, and sizes. This three-dimensional map, composed of cement blocks containing waste glass fragments from Murano-based artisans and located in the sunken garden adjacent to the Austrian Pavilion in the Giardini, acts as a self-referential installation and a reference to the city beyond the site. The reproduction offers a gestalt view of the city as a complex and yet comprehensible entity, while offering a landscaped space for play, leisure, and rest. At the end of the biennale, the map can be disassembled and the individual pieces can be recycled or sold singularly or in groups.
Manuel Bouzas (MDes ’24) and Roi Salgueiro (MDes ’14) have co-curated the 2025 Spanish Pavilion, Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium. The project explores how architecture can (and should) respond to the environmental externalities associated with production processes to advance the decarbonization of the built environment. Internalities highlights the work of a new generation of Spanish architects—including contributor Carla Ferrer (MDes ’17)—that rigorously and radically examine how the practice of construction can balance ecologies with economies.
Armando Carbonell (LF ’93) will moderate “The Relevance of Land in an Era of Adaptation: A conversation with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy,” a GENS Public Programme workshop, on May 11.
The 2025 United States Pavilion, organized by co-commissioners Susan Chin (LF ’99), Peter MacKeith, and Rod Bigelow, is called Porch: An Architecture of Generosity. As the project’s website notes, “The porch is an unheralded American icon of architectural character, an American architectural place-construct persisting across scales, geographies, communities, construction methods, and histories.” This iteration of the US Pavilion “spotlight[s] the American porch’s multi-layered character, value, and contemporary purpose through the exhibition of contemporary projects from across the nation, accomplished by practices of distinction, inventiveness, and diversity.” GSD-affiliated participants include Julie Bargmann (MLA ’87), Stephen Burks (LF ’19), James Carpenter (LF ’90), Andrew Freear (LF ’18), Walter Hood (2021 Senior Loeb Fellow), Susan Jones (MArch ’88), James Leng (MArch ’13) and Jennifer Ly (MArch ’14) of Figure, Matthew Mazzotta (LF ’18), David Perkes (LF ’04), Dan Pitera (LF ’05), James Shen (LF ’18, also participating in the China Pavilion), and Jennifer Yoos (LF ’03).
Tatjana Crossley (MArch ’15) and George Guida (MArch ’22) in collaboration with Daniel Escobar and Giovanna Elizabeth Pillaca present Designing Zero-Carbon Future: AI and the Power of Collective Imagination, an AI-powered design platform that reimagines urban spaces through dynamic data visualizations. Users transform digitized 3D neighborhoods with generative AI, while AI agents assess environmental and carbon metrics. Challenging traditional bottom-up construction methods, the platform fosters a participatory, AI-augmented approach to sustainable and resilient urban design.
Natalia Dopazo (LF ’23) presents a conversation about “My Grandfather’s House,” part of the GENS Public Programme on Monday, May 12th.
Alex Felson (MLA ’01) and a cross-disciplinary team from biosciences, landscape architecture, engineering, and fine arts at the University of Melbourne have developed Song of the Cricket, a performative research exhibition that introduces the public to an endangered species of cricket while instituting a long-term cricket translocation and habitat rehabilitation program for the Venice Lagoon. The biennale exhibition includes a breeding population of crickets, a cricket sound garden, mobile breeding population life rafts to support future cricket generations, and landscape elements that foster public education. The project uses art and science to promote wetland conservation and recognition of the cricket song as an indicator for wetland health.
The Perimeter of Architecture: Amid the Elements, a project curated by Sylvia Lavin in the James Stirling Pavilion, hosts an array of GSD alumni participants including Rania Ghosn (DDes ’10) and El Hadi Jazairy (DDes ’10) of DESIGN EARTH, Andrew Atwood (MArch ’07) and Anna Neimark of First Office, Michael Meredith (MArch ’00) and Hilary Sample of MOS, and DK Osseo-Asare (MArch ’09).
ChengHe Guan (DDes ’16) and Ying Li have developed AI for Climate Resilient Urban Planning: Making of Meta Park and Community. This project explores an emerging climate narrative centered on physical and virtual human perception, envisioning China’s concept of “urban climate park and community” not simply as green infrastructure, but as a spatial and strategic response to climate challenges. By integrating AI-powered urban sensing, the project reimagines parks and communities as adaptive environments responsive to contextualized socioecological systems, foregrounding six case studies that demonstrate unique approaches to localism, inclusiveness, ecological endowments, and social structures.
Julia Hedges (MLA ’24) has created the project Keep on Truckin’.
Olivia Heung (MArch ’97) and Scott March Smith (MArch ’97) present Extant Leaves. Digital imaging and archiving produce massive databases of ecological data, open-access yet inaccessible without specialized technical training. Extant Leaves excavates archives of fossilized leaves, buried under complicated search queries and cryptic cataloging. Through the archives’ re-animation, ancient intelligence and resilience inscribed in the geology of the Earth becomes tangible for everyone.
Jeffrey Huang (DDes ’97), Frederick Chando Kim (MArch ’16), Mikhael Johanes, and Muriel Waldvogel (GSD ’88) have developed Planet Brain, an urgent call to action against the escalating climate crisis. The installation confronts the paradox of a world inundated with data yet paralyzed by inaction, increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to interpret signs of planetary distress. Sixteen rotating orbs evoke the “overview effect,” a cognitive shift akin to that felt by astronauts when beholding Earth’s vulnerability from space. Despite decades of accumulating satellite imagery, sensor data, and global surveys, synthesizing this vast information into actionable insights remains a challenge. By leveraging big data and Urban GPTs to analyze complex geospatial datasets, Planet Brain traces the patterns of resource extraction and environmental collapse, bringing attention to vulnerable cities poised on the brink of ecological crises.
Mitchell Joachim (MAUD ’02) of Terreform ONE, Wendy W. Fok (DDes ’17), Peder Anker (PhD ’99) with Melanie Fessel and Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky) present Coding Plants: An Artificial Reef and Living Kelp Archive. This project proposes a living archive embedded within a synthetic kelp reef: an architectural ecosystem that stores design intelligence—blueprints for homes, civic structures, and ecological infrastructure—within the DNA of engineered vegetation, enabling future generations of plants to grow pre-configured structures attuned to environmental conditions. Within translucent vitrines, visitors encounter suspended fragments of this reef, hybrid organisms in which botanical life merges with coded information. These active archives, capable of regeneration, mutation, and adaptation, offer a glimpse into an architecture that eats, breathes, and remembers. Rather than resisting nature, Coding Plants proposes a system where urbanism is symbiotic—an evolution of the built environment toward a coauthored future with the living world.
On May 14, Joachim will participate in a GENS Public Programme titled “Manifesto for the Rights of the Venice Lagoon,” which explores how spatial disciplines can respond to “more-than-human” realities.
Eliyahu Keller (MDes ’16), Mark Jarzombek, and Eytan Mann as the Augmented Historiography Collaborative have created Venice in Conversation, an AI-driven “seminar” that orchestrates a conversation between avatars of historical and contemporary figures about real and generated Venices. Employing archival and manipulated images, the project aims to soften the boundary between fact and fiction to enrich and confuse the historiography of a place like Venice. With each changing image, Venice appears as both fantastical and realistic, and forever elusive.
Areti Kotsoni (MDes ’23) presents Born of the Land: The Typology of the Cretan House. The Cretan house typology emerged in direct response to the land and available raw materials. Shaped by local techniques, its form and articulation are defined by simplicity, adaptability, and modular growth. Inherently sustainable, it offers insights into how architecture once harmonized with the environment, serving as a lesson for contemporary design.
Thandi Loewenson, 2024 Wheelwright Prize winner, has contributed to the Great Britain Pavilion, GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair. The International Jury awarded this pavilion a special mention for National Participation.
Mpho Matsipa (LF ’22), South African architect, teacher, curator, and associate professor at the Barlett School of Architecture, with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Paola Antonelli comprise the International Jury of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Tomohisa Miyauchi (MArch ’04) is part of the multidisciplinary team behind T-an, the Art of Utushi, an installation that highlights the art of Utsushi, or reverent reconstruction of medieval teahouses, maintaining their integral character while reconfiguring them to suit present circumstances. Emphasizing the teahouse’s material and spiritual qualities, the project offers insights into long-established building methods that can inform current discourse, demonstrating how traditional intelligence can be reinterpreted and redesigned to suit contemporary contexts in an open, inclusive process. The resulting environment welcomes everyone, promoting a collective heritage as a solid basis for adaptability and resilience in an ever-evolving world. T-an, the Art of Utushi aims to demonstrate the timeless qualities of an ancient teahouse’s aesthetic balance, reinterpreting the use of materials, contemplative interaction within small spaces, and spiritual profundity as timeless wisdom shared across generations.
Eric Owen Moss (MArch ’72) has contributed an installation called 708/02.
Andreas Nikolovgenis (MArch ’15), who with Costis Paniyiris (MArch ’92) co-curated the Greek Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2023, this year presents Cultivating in Shallow Waters: The Messolonghi Saltworks Production Landscape. This project explores how production landscapes like the Messolonghi saltworks in Greece shape the countryside. Since 1500 AD, locals have managed a shallow lagoon with intricate water circulation to produce salt. This collective process relies on simple yet sophisticated systems, passed down through generations, reflecting urban patterns in a rural context.
Mary Anne Ocampo (MAUD ’10), Laura Fregolent, Rebecca Ocampo, Sabrina Meneghello, and Cale Wagner have created BeLieving in the Mountains, a project examining the intersection of climate change, depopulation, and heritage within the Dolomite municipality of Cibiana di Cadore. Developed as an interdisciplinary research collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Università Iuav di Venezia, Comune di Cibiana di Cadore, and Studio RO, the urban design and planning project draws from community interviews, field observations, and workshops. Through film, drone mapping, and data analytics the exhibition translates larger themes of socioecological systems, abandonment, and adaptation into Alpine alternatives for collective living.
Robert Gerard Pietrusko (MArch ’12), Space Caviar, and Ersilia Vaudo present A Satellite Symphony. A reflection on space-based technologies, the installation operates as an experimental, immersive documentary in which data science and remote sensing play equal roles. Inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s 1977 film Powers of Ten, the project takes the Veneto region—in particular Venice and its lagoon—as the starting point for an exploration that traverses multiple scales, from the Earth’s core to its orbit. Along the way, Veneto and the Venice Lagoon serve as compelling case studies for the capabilities of space-based Earth observation. Built from storm-felled wood, the installation supports local reuse efforts while linking physical materiality to data visualizations of the effects of extreme weather events, highlighting the intersection of digital analysis and sustainable design in addressing climate crises. More broadly, the project exposes visitors to the wealth of data provided by the numerous orbital observation stations that have been developed and deployed since the 1970s.
Alan Ricks (MArch ’10) and Nadia Perlepe (MArch ’16) of MASS Design Group are part of the team behind the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA), a climate-positive campus in Bugesera, Rwanda, built with local materials and craftsmanship. On view at the biennale, RICA leverages a unique agricultural model, sustainably sourced materials, and off-grid power sources to restore native biodiversity and train future generations of leaders in conservation agriculture. Partnering with the RICA to envision, design, and build their new campus, MASS led the master planning, architecture, landscape, engineering, and construction for the new campus. The project was conceived and funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and supported by the Government of Rwanda.
Sonia Sobrino Ralston (MLA ’23) presents Uncommon Knowledge: Plants as Sensors, a series of drawings that explore the informational capacity of plants as a counter to extractive computing infrastructure that harm water-stressed communities. Responding to Google’s water-hungry data center on the Columbia River, data is expanded into a speculative landscape where digital hardware and plant wetware intertwine. In these new drawings that build on her MLA thesis research, plants are represented as naturally intelligent, low tech components of a collectively managed informational system. Ralston will be expanding on this work of representing bioindicator plant life and death as the incoming 2025–2026 Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellow in Landscape Architecture.
Kotchakorn Voraakhom (MLA ’06) and Watcharapon Nimwattanagul of LANDPROCESS are responsible for Thammasat Urban Rooftop Farm.
Are you a GSD affiliate with a project in Venice that’s not included here? Please email [email protected].