Carlo Ratti as Curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., invited Transsolar to participate in the Biennale Architettura 2025 with the Special Project Terms and Conditions:
In climate-controlled buildings worldwide, the true costs of comfort are often overlooked, and our climate future is continually postponed. Adjusting the thermostat may seem trivial, but it has profound implications. What have we truly signed up for? Did we read the fine print?
Outside, air conditioning systems hum and drip, working tirelessly off electrical grids still predominantly powered by fossil fuels. These cooling systems sustain sealed, optimized interiors but contribute to a planetary infrastructure that emits greenhouse gases, accelerates global warming, and raises sea levels. This vicious cycle – cooling to maintain comfort while heating the planet – becomes the unnoticed background hum for the privileged, who often tune out its dissonance.
This anteroom Terms and Conditions brings the outside world inside – air conditioners surround you, dispersing waste heat from cooled exhibition spaces. The passage becomes a spatial metaphor for the growing global thermal inequality: who benefits from comfort, for how long, and at what cost? On one side: cool, predictable, normed, and contained. On the other: hot, noisy, damp, unpredictable, and precarious. These conditions reflect how luxury lifestyles impose thermal burdens on vulnerable populations and future generations...
Carlo Ratti has asked us to create a realistic future scenario that can be experienced in this exhibition space. The common goal is to do everything we can to avert this future.
Climate engineering: Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH
Climate experience: TU of Munich
Climate science: ETH
Design: Bilge Kobas; Daniel A. Barber, Dehlia Hannah, Alexandra Auer
Technical Collaborators: Massimo Ferranti, ABC Produzioni e Allestimenti (production and installation); Klaus Feith, boost (production)
Supporters: DGNB (German Sustainable Building Council); Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH
Exhibition May 10th – November 23rd, 2025
Special Preview May 7th, 2025 (for participants only)
Official Pre-Opening May 8th – 9th, 2025