unEarthed / Second Nature / PolliNATION

Our Mission

Carlo Ratti, curator of the Biennale Architettura 2025, describes the exhibition as positioning architects as “mutagens”. Our mission is to not only reestablish a positive coexistence between humans and nature, but to establish a foundation for a future that nurtures. We have created an onsite project that will achieve our goals by utilizing the organic agents of pollination and mutation – an exchange that, through interspecies architecture, will promote fertility that births innovation.

Transdisciplinary Approach

The Virginia Tech Honors College is a leader in transdisciplinary education, with a focus on building collectiv intelligence across disciplines and experiences through team projects that unEarth new ideas and approaches.

Meaning of unEarthed

unEarthed is a metaphor for dynamic excavation, revealing the hidden processes, collaborations, and transformative learning that drives multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects. Rooted in the work of the VT Honors College, th theme seeks to reveal the layers of discovery that shape game-changing solutions for communities and individuals.

Interspecies Architecture

The interdisciplinary studio of Cloud 9 in Barcelona leads a green agenda that explores pilot projects for global warming scenarios. The ephemeral architecture we showcase at the Biennale Architettura 2025 is considered a form of interspecies architecture, creating an exhibition space that isn’t human-centered, but pollinator-centered.

Meaning of Second Nature

Second Nature is a play on words representing two main objectives we hope to achieve. One, that the introduction of more than 60 types of plants and over 10 pollinators during the exhibition will promote the growth and flourishing of the garden space, creating a “Second Nature” in the city of Venice.

Honors College Students and Faculty Projects

For “Second Nature”, students engage the Biennale Architettura 2025 themes and highlight pollinator importance in the Venetian ecosystem, building from a history of wetland and harbor apiculture. Students in “Sustainability and Environmental Justice Frameworks” addressed stakeholders in justice issues around nuclear energy production and food security to create action-focused and community-engaged projects. “Cities and Social Change” created a series of analytical and graphic posters engaging important issues in urban development, such as design districts.

SuperStudio produced a children’s novel focused on the healthcare system and the “Green New Deal”, a “Community Wealth Building” (CWB) project in partnership with the Universities at Shady Grove to help scaffold implementation of CWB based on a handbook created from institutional goals, and “Culture Sculptures”, focused on student representations of their own cultures and relationships between their conceptions of culture.

In CHDP, “Knowledge Unchained” engages the Virginia prison system aiming to provide grant-supported higher education access to incarcerated individuals while providing support for universities facing enrollment declines, while “Farms of the Future- Cobots” proposes a solution to promote silvopasture, enabling healthier farm environments and reduced farmer workloads using a mobile monitoring system, and “Hypnos” is exploring the effects of sleep deprivation on astronauts in space and developing a sleep module, Selene, which cromprises five individual sleep capsules. “Chairs in the air” created adaptable chairs and wheelchair spaces in airplane cabins to minimize airline revenue loss while protecting user safety and dignity.

In the structure at Giardini della Marinaressa and inside the Palazzo Bembo, there will also be displayed the following Cloud 9 projects: ME WE, Figueres (Spain), Villa Accretion, Malibu (United States of America), El Teatre dels Somnis, Caldetes (Spain), CaixaForum Valencia (Spain), DaeSang Park, Changwon, (South Korea), H108 project, Taipei (Taiwan), El Bulli Foundation, Cap de Creus (Spain), Untitled, Cala Canyelles (Spain) and The Watermill Center, New York (United States of America).

This project has received support from industry partners as USM Modular Furniture, Blumer Lehmann, Seele, iGuzzini, Clear Creek Water Works, Valley Landscaping, Cricursa, Nagami and Miele del Doge.

Meaning of PolliNATION

We hope that through our work at the Biennale Architettura 2025, our ideas of preservation and restoration will spread like pollen, creating a vast community with a collective environmental consciousness. This community is the PolliNATION.

Symposium

To start the conversation about unEarthed, Second Nature, PolliNATION, Cloud 9 Architecture has invited Aaron Betsky to be the moderator of a symposium, where the relationship between architecture, nature, and science will lead to speculations on what truly organic architecture might be. A dozen participants from around the world will bring their own perspective and experience with creating work that intertwines architecture with both human made and natural systems to a series of hour-long discussions.

Speakers: Carlo Ratti, curator of the Biennale Architettura 2025; Kevin Jones, VT Honors College; Elizabeth Diller, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Vicente Guallart, Urbanitree; Summer Islam, Material Cultures; Olalekan Jeyifous, Brooklyn- based Artist/Designer; Mitchell Joachim, Terreform 1; Maria Lisogorskaya, Assemble; Ferdinand Ludwig, Baubotanik; Mireia Luzarraga, TAKK; Qingyun Ma, Mada s.p.a.m.; Claudia Pasquero, Ecologic Studio; and, Enric Ruiz Geli, Cloud 9 Architecture. Registration required here. Enric Ruiz Geli Enric Ruiz Geli is Professor of Practice in Collaborative Discovery and Design at the Honors College of Virginia Tech and visiting faculty at SCI_ Arc in Los Angeles. Currently, he is developing his PHD dissertation “It’s All About Particles” with RMIT Europe. He is an architect by Barcelona’s School ETSAB-UPC and the Founder of Cloud 9 Studio. His work is fertile with an interdisciplinary approach to architecture including multiple collaborations with theater director Robert Wilson, theorist and philosopher Paul Virilio, visual artist Frederic Amat, ceramist Toni Cumella, designer and educator Simon Taylor, artist Inma Femenía, performer Pep Bou, soundscape’s musicians Rioji Ikeda, architect Frei Otto, landscape architect Margie Ruddick, physicist Josep Perelló and Neil Gershenfeld, fashion designers Bless, photographers Daniel Riera and Iwan Baan, economist Jeremy Rifkin, and most recently with El Bulli’s chef Ferran Adrià.

Anne-Lise Velez

Anne-Lise Velez (United States), M.Arch., Phd and Collegiate Associate Professor & Studio Lead Honors College Affiliated Faculty, School of Public and International Affairs, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and Honors College at Virginia Tech where she conducts transdisciplinary research primarily on public and nonprofit management, scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as courses focused on environmental policy and transdisciplinary research methods.

Virginia Tech Honors College

Virginia Tech Honors College is an academic institution that offers an exceptional undergraduate education to highly motivated students. Its focus is on transdisciplinary collaboration, experiential learning, and innovation. Students have the opportunity to participate in real-world projects alongside partners from diverse industries, nonprofit organizations, and government entities.

Cloud 9

The interdisciplinary team of Cloud 9 in Barcelona works at the interface between architecture and art, digital processes and technological material development. The most important projects of Enric Ruiz Geli / Cloud 9 include the Villa Nurbs, elBulliFoundation for the chef Ferran Adrià; and the Media-TIC building in Barcelona that has been awarded as Best Building of the World by WAF 2011. C9 Projects belong to the collection of MoMA in New York, CCA in Montreal, FRAC Centre Collection in Orleans, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Empordà Museum in Figueres and Design Hub in Barcelona. He has published in the New York Times, Wired, Domus, El Pais, La Vanguardia, AD, The Wall Street Journal, among others.