Interpreting Narratives of Nature at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale: A Critical Analytical Framework

This thesis examines how the rights of nature are conceptualized and represented by participants in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. Positioned at the intersection of the environmental humanities and contemporary architectural discourse, the research investigates how participating projects perceive nature and translate these perceptions into design narratives and practices. The Natural section was divided into 53 “center” and 67 “wall” installations and compiled into a descriptive database. The “center” projects were examined in greater depth using a custom analytical framework designed to assess their conceptual, spatial, and performative interpretations of nature. The study employs a qualitative methodology that integrates discourse and visual analyses and a structured evaluation system comprising 15 questions that address nature-focused, architecture-focused, and outcome-focused qualities. The findings reveal a persistent tension between progressive ecological rhetoric and the continued dominance of anthropocentric design ideas. Although many projects symbolically position nature as an active agent or co-creator, such gestures often remain speculative or aesthetic rather than constituting material claims to legal, political, or ecological agency. The Biennale nevertheless emerges as a powerful cultural site where environmental values are negotiated, normalized, and contested. This thesis argues that the Venice Architecture Biennale functions not only as a reflector of contemporary ecological concern but also as an influential function in shaping how nature is understood, valued, and designed by architects and planning professionals amid the current climate crisis.