Teaching Intelligence explores how architectural education must evolve in a world undergoing profound transformation, a conversation that will take place on 20 November 2025 from 11:00 to 12:00 at the Speakers’ Corner of the Arsenale in Venice (Italy), in the context of GENS Public Programme of the Biennale Architettura 2025. New lines of critical thinking in architecture have often emerged from the debate on how we teach and from the enduring divergence between education and practice. Today, this debate demands renewed urgency and collective attention.
The world is changing—it has changed. In Europe and North America, the construction boom is over, it is ending; in much of East an Southeast Asia, the real-estate cycle has ended; in Latin America, West Asia, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, growth continues but seeks equitable and sustainable paths. We have not yet learned how to design for a post-growth world, for cities that regenerate but are shrinking, for neighbourhoods transformed or even replaced by the unbuilt. At the same time, we continue to struggle with how to rebuild sustainably after human and natural disasters and how to confront uncontrolled urbanisation.
Nor have we yet understood how to maintain effective teaching within an ever growing and accelerated AI ecosystem, where knowledge is abundant and accessible yet undervalued, and where student work and evaluation are greatly impacted.
Teaching Intelligence is about sensibility, ethical discernment, adaptive capacity, and collective knowledge.
We have a responsibility as trainers, educators, and innovators in the creation—rather than transmission—of knowledge. The way forward lies in a shared commitment to transformation, inviting educators, policymakers, and professional bodies to rethink systems rather than refine them.
The lineup of speakers includes:
● Regina Gonthier (UIA President)
● Michele Bonino (Dean, Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino)
● Jelena Milosevic (Vice Dean for Teaching and Student Affairs, Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade)
● Çiğdem Canbay Türkyılmaz (Rector, Samarkand State University of Architecture and Construction)
● CHENG Xiaoxi (Vice Dean, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University)
Moderated by Roberto Pagani (Professor of Architectural Technology and Environmental Design, Politecnico di Torino).
The UIA invites professors, architects, and students to rethink how to teach, what to value as knowledge, and how to prepare the future architects to design not for endless expansion, but for adaptation, regeneration, and survival, responding to a future we can only begin to anticipate, yet cannot fully foresee.