When we speak of intelligence at the 2025 Venice Biennale, the main exhibition broadly categorizes it into three domains: natural, artificial, and collective. While much attention has been drawn to robotic performances, future-forward material experiments—such as Boonserm Premthada's elephant dung bricks, or Canada's display of mesmerizing picoplankton, one often overlooked yet critical form of collective intelligence lies in the act of archiving.
Several national pavilions showcase this collective intelligence through beautifully curated exhibitions—the Spanish Pavilion's witty play on scale, for instance, features meticulously crafted models that invite close reading and delight. These curated collections offer a snapshot of the present, and in some cases, gestures toward the future. But without critically engaging with the past, without documenting and making sense of our shared spatial and architectural knowledge, the potential of collective intelligence remains incomplete. Archiving is not simply an act of preservation; it is a generative tool for projecting new futures.
Building on our earlier Q&A with the curators of the Hong Kong Pavilion, this article explores how architectural archiving can serve as a vital method for informing and expanding our understanding of collective intelligence—and why it may be more relevant to the future of architecture than we think.
The Archive as Tool: From Preservation to Provocation
A well-curated archive—anchored by a clear theme and a broad selection of works—does more than preserve the past. It reinterprets it. Drawing unexpected comparisons and reframing familiar ideas offers not just meaning, but inspiration. Archiving architecture allows us to revisit past projects and methodologies, not simply to showcase them, but to re-scale, recontextualize, and re-present them through a contemporary lens. This process can reveal connections between projects that might never have been considered side by side, offering fresh insight into how architecture has been made—and how it might be made differently.
Through models, drawings, diagrams, sketches, videos, and even reconstructed structures, the archive becomes a tool for critical reflection. When assembled collectively, these materials form a body of knowledge that invites both practitioners and the public to re-engage with architectural history from new perspectives. In doing so, we might begin to see architecture not only as a record of past intentions, but as a living system of ideas—one that evolves through reinterpretation. Could shifting how we view architecture in this way unlock new forms of collective intelligence?
A noteworthy exhibition in Venice by AMO/OMA in the Fondazione in Paris - while not required to respond directly to Carlo Ratti's theme of Intelligence - does precisely this. Titled "DIAGRAMS: A project by AMO/OMA", the exhibition provides an impressive database for a reinterpretation and a regeneration of knowledge surrounding diagrams. A thoroughly researched and precisely curated show, where diagrams from different generations, about different topics, with different locality, are grouped, ungrouped, and placed next to each other, formulating a dialogue of the collective wisdom of the past on diagrams. Not only does this then is re-presented to the audience and be engaged with a clear topic of diagrams and how they have evolved, it also serves as a tremendously inspiring database for researchers, students, and practitioners alike - to find ways to use the diagram differently by learning from such vast information from the past.
Modeling the Existing: Capturing How Buildings Are Lived In
We often build models during the design process as a means of testing and visualizing potential outcomes for a building, just as we use scale drawings to explore and communicate different architectural ideas and executions. What we might begin to consider more intentionally, however, is the practice of building models of the existing architecture. Could this active mode of observation and documentation offer an equally important, or perhaps even more insightful, way of understanding architecture, space, and design? Rather than placing emphasis solely on originality and 'newness,' a deeper sensitivity toward interpretation, documentation, and analysis should be encouraged as a valid and enriching method of architectural study.
This is not unlike how architecture schools often teach through the study of precedents, where students are asked to reconstruct models of exemplary buildings. However, instead of focusing only on remaking design concepts or exploring the original design intent through varied modeling and drawing techniques, what if we shifted our focus? What if we prioritized recreating the design through a synthesis of on-site observational data and existing documentation, capturing how a building has aged, how it is currently used, how it has been modified, and even how it has deteriorated over time? This alternative approach may offer a more layered, nuanced understanding of architecture as a lived and evolving reality.
Equally important is the documentation of stories, patterns of use, and the lived experience of space. In the case of the Hong Kong archive, drawings go beyond the realm of technical representation to become records of human activity, captured through careful observation and photography. This approach shifts the focus from purely technical aspects such as structure, form, and materiality to include the more intangible dimensions of architecture: how spaces are inhabited, adapted, and improvised over time. These improvised uses—shaped not only by designers but also by the everyday practices of local communities—reveal a richer, more layered understanding of architecture as a social and cultural construct, not just a physical one.
Curating the Future: How Archives Shape Architectural Continuity
A future shaped by a more curated, sensitive, and selectively interpreted past raises important questions about the role of the archive in architectural intelligence. If we approach the archive not merely as a passive repository but as an active, evolving instrument of curation—one grounded in accuracy, precision, and care—might it serve as a vital framework for producing future knowledge? The effectiveness of such an archive depends not only on the meticulous selection and representation of its contents but also on its ability to sense and respond to the perspectives of those who engage with it: the exhibitors, the viewers, the researchers, and the broader public. It is through this relational sensitivity that the archive transcends its conventional role, becoming a medium through which knowledge is not just stored, but reactivated and reinterpreted over time.
In such a model, the question is no longer only what we preserve, but how we present it, and to whom. Can these archives serve as tools to ensure that critical forms of knowledge, especially those embedded in specific material cultures, craft techniques, and ways of building, are not lost? Can they bridge the generational and industrial gaps that often threaten the continuity of architectural intelligence? This requires more than documentation—it demands a culture of transmission, where learning remains an ongoing desire, and where individuals and institutions alike are committed to passing on nuanced understandings of building traditions, techniques, and lived spatial practices. The future archive, then, is not just about preservation—it is about engagement, activation, and the will to learn and reimagine, again and again.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: What Is Future Intelligence?, proudly presented by Gendo, an AI co-pilot for Architects.
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