Venice Biennale 2025

George Guida and I (AtchiTAG), with Daniel Escobar, Giovanna Pillaca, and Carlos Navarro are exhibiting Designing a Zero-Carbon Future: AI and the Power of Collective Imagination at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Carlo Ratti.

Zero-Carbon Futures introduces an AI-powered, community-driven design platform that empowers citizens to reimagine urban spaces through participatory planning and real-time feedback. Users interact with digitized 3D models of existing neighborhoods, applying generative AI to explore radical adaptive reuse strategies supported by AI agents that evaluate carbon footprint and livability metrics. Challenging traditional bottom-up planning models, the platform fosters an AI-augmented, collaborative approach to sustainable and resilient urban design.

As autonomous vehicles, ride-sharing, and evolving modes of transportation disrupt traditional car ownership, car-centric typologies like parking garages will become obsolete and often represent vast sources of embodied carbon. Rather than resorting to demolition, the platform proposes transforming these underused concrete structures into mixed-use housing, public spaces, and climate-resilient green areas—addressing decarbonization goals alongside urgent housing and social needs.

Technically, the platform integrates multiple AI algorithms to visualize, extract, classify, and analyze architecture and materiality. Users generate redevelopment scenarios using text prompts, while AI agents offer expert, site-specific assessments. Each LLM-powered agent analyzes metrics of walkability, greenness, safety, beauty, and monotony—representing the input of public and urban stakeholders.

A pilot project at the Quincy Adams Station Parking Garage in Boston demonstrates this scalable, AI-aided process. It reveals how communities, supported by intelligent systems, can co-design more walkable, low-carbon, and livable urban futures—where carbon-heavy infrastructures can become catalysts for sustainable transformation.