Biennale Architettura 2025
Image: Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Italian Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai, ©Michele Nastasi. Museum of Novecento at Piazza del Duomo, Milano. Feeling the Energy Park, Carlo Ratti Associati + Italo Rota, Milan Design Week 2022, ©Marco Beck Peccoz.
ARCHITECTURE
Italo Rota
Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam
Italian architect and designer Italo Rota (1953 – 2024) has been awarded the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia - Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. For over thirty years Italo Rota's work was centred on constant and advanced cross-disciplinary research, from contemporary art to robotics, to develop innovative projects in which humanistic beauty and sustainability became integral and disruptive elements.
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to the American philosopher Donna Haraway. On the decision, Carlo Ratti stated: "Donna Haraway is one of the most influential voices in contemporary thought, straddling the social sciences, anthropology, feminist criticism, and the philosophy of technology."
About the Biennale Architettura
Salone del Mobile.Milano 2025
Image: SUPER RAT, Utsuwa-Juhi Series, vases and containers, Trachycarpus fortunei bark.
DESIGN
SUPER RAT
SaloneSatellite First Prize
SUPER RAT received First Prize in the SaloneSatellite Award 2025, which recognizes the talent and creativity of young designers at the Salone del Mobile.Milano. SUPER RAT is a design studio founded in 2024 by Tokyo-based designer Kazuki Nagasawa, which explores the essential power of culture and the environment. His award-winnning Utsuwa-Juhi Seriesof soft yet strong and uniquely translucent vessels is made from Trachycarpus fortunei bark, a material that has been treasured since before the Edo period as a substitute for nylon and vinyl, and widely used in various traditional crafts.
About the Salone del Mobile.Milano
Sam Gilliam Award 2025
Image: Sheela Gowda, Of All People, 2011. Installation view, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, 2013.
© Sheela Gowda. Photo: Peter Cox
ART
Sheela Gowda
Sam Gilliam Award
Bangalore-based artist Sheela Gowda was awarded the 2025 Sam Gilliam Award for her decades-long work exploring ritual and resilience. Her evocative, process-oriented practice blends painting, sculpture and installation, often incorporating everyday and organic materials imbued with cultural and political significance. Rooted in her observations of urban and rural life in South India, Gowda’s practice investigates issues of labor, gender and the sociopolitical conditions that shape contemporary society. Through her poetic yet politically charged installations, she transforms humble materials into powerful reflections on resilience, ritual and the interconnectedness of human experience.
miart 2025
Image: Victor Fotso Nyie, installation view Les présages du printemps, Renaissance (2023), P420 gallery, miart 2025. © NGS
ART
Victor Fotso Nyie
Rotary Prize
At miart 2025, the Rotary Prize was awarded to Victor Fotso Nyie represented by P420. The gallery presented Les présages du printemps, a solo project dedicated to the artist. This project evokes the natural cycle of transformation while symbolizing a human and cultural process of reclamation and reappropriation of identity, inviting viewers to step into a liminal space, a suspended ‘elsewhere’ poised between past and future, the spiritual and the earthly. Fotso Nyie’s sculptures take shape as symbolic ‘omens’ of a return to ancestral memory.
2025 Taoyuan International Art Award
Image: Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Kasamaponn Saengsuratham, Arjin Thongyuukong, Krongpong Langkhapin, Red Eagle Sangmorakot: No More Hero In His Story, 2025, 3-channel video installation.
ART
Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Kasamaponn Saengsuratham,
Arjin Thongyuukong and Krongpong Langkhapin
Grand Prize
At the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA) the Grand Prize was awarded to the four-person Thai collective Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Kasamaponn Saengsuratham, Arjin Thongyuukong and Krongpong Langkhapin. Their work Red Eagle Sangmorakot: No More Hero In His Story uses the traditional sport of Muay Thai as a vehicle to unveil the influence of Cold War politics and nationalism in shaping society while also examining the construction of the ‘hero’ figure within Thailand's broader cultural trends and its gradual internalization as an ideology.
About the Taoyuan International Art Award
FRUTESCENS 2025
Image: © Elliott Verdier
PHOTOGRAPHY
Maxime Guédaly
Constantin Schlachter
Sixtine de Thé
Elliott Verdier
FRUTESCENS program
The FRUTESCENS program, launched in 2022 by the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie, aims to support young French photographic creation. For this 2025 edition, four new laureates have been chosen to benefit from professional support from the institution's team before joining FUTURES, a European network that pools resources and programs dedicated to young photography from cultural institutions across Europe to support contemporary creation. This year's four winners are Maxime Guédaly, Constantin Schlachter, Sixtine de Thé and Elliott Verdier.
ArchDaily China Building of the Year Awards 2025
Image: reMIX studio, FUTIAN High-School Campus, Shenzhen, China, 2023. © Kangyu Hu
ARCHITECTURE
FUTIAN High-School Campus
First Place
FUTIAN High-School Campus, designed by reMIX studio, won First Place at this year's ArchDaily China Building of the Year Awards. In the heart of Shenzhen, its uniqueness comes from multiple factors: a context of extreme urban conditions, a very high density and a program layout that allows most facilities to be shared with the neighbors, making FUTIAN Campus a prototype of ‘a new city within the city’. FUTIAN High-School Campus subverts the traditional convention of separating campuses from cities, breaking down boundaries and sharing resources between cities and schools.
