Cultural Identity and Global Dialogues between Technology and Nature of Architecture, Taiwan Pavilion of Biennale Architettura 2025: NON-Belief: Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity

Organized by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA), NON-Belief: Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity, curated by National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, will be exhibited at Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice, Italy, from May 10 to November 23, 2025. 

The title of Biennale Architettura 2025 is “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.” Curator Carlo Ratti uses the term “Intelligens”, highlighting the last syllable, “gens”, which means “people” in Latin, to discuss three types of intelligence—natural, artificial, and collective—and their role in architectural design amidst contemporary environmental and climate challenges. Inspired by the theme of the Biennale Architettura 2025 and Robert Smithson’s theory of ‘non-sites’, “NON-Belief: Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity” examines Taiwan’s ‘non’-beliefs on TSMC chips, high-speed, and the relentless pursuit of efficiency and control—forces that are reshaping the world’s operations in a geopolitically precarious, globalized landscape. Taiwan offers a model of embodied intelligens in its architecture, showcasing how life adapts and transforms to create a resilient, self-sustaining island republic in our collectively uncertain and fragile future. 

Taiwan’s historical role as a contact zone is not only a region of political instability or ecological vulnerability created between two massive tectonic plates, but also the geographical, ecological, and cultural spaces deeply reflect a state of tension between openness and closure. It is also a contact zone between various diasporic inhabitants, nations, and corporations, generating layered and juxtaposed practices and intelligens. Featuring projects by teams of researchers, architects, designers, and a documentary director, the exhibition presents Taiwan’s built environment as comprising localized assemblages of digitally connected, democratically paradoxical contact zones. “Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity” positions these assembled worlds as a frontline in planetary resistance against authoritarian autocracy and as an adaptive response to climate change at the Venice Biennale. 

Binary Dialectics on Three Main Topics: Efficiency, Technology, Control

Taiwan’s spatial governance and development strategy are heavily influenced by belief and [non]- belief. Taiwanese people can turn anything into a belief, yet we can also believe in nothing at all. The belief built upon fictional realities has enabled our societies to organize and collaborate throughout historical evolution. Under Taiwan’s rapid technological and urban development, TSMC chips symbolize the contemporary “beliefs” upheld by Taiwan’s collective dedication, prompting deep reflection on the environmental, water resource, and energy costs embedded within these beliefs.

The exhibition seeks to identify and construct a grey area within the binary dialectic of “belief” and “non-belief” unique to Taiwan, uncovering various expressions of “Intelligens” and its impact on spatial governance. The exploration will focus on three aspects:

1. Efficiency: NON-Belief in High-Speed explores the global trend of pursuing efficiency and high-speed development. Using Taiwan High Speed Rail as the case study, the exhibition proposes a reflection on the urban ecology within the metropolitan areas constructed by the high-speed railway and amidst Taiwan’s rural-urban gap. 
2. Technology: NON-Belief in Chips explores the beliefs in the two polarized and contradictory mythologies of the ‘tech island’ and the ‘eco island’, as well as the hidden costs of green energy under the shade of solar panels, reflecting on research into climate justice and new energy-driven typologies. 
3. Control: NON-Belief in Sensory-Motor explores the various subtle relationships in our everyday lives, reviewing the different kinds of ecological, cultural, and social conflicts within the extended context, encompassing non-belief in hegemonic empires, and flourishing through tactics of the in-between, based on understanding the city as a human sensori-motor system.

Roaming in the “Lagoon – Island – Archipelago – Peninsula” Exhibition Space

The concept of ‘Island’ is adopted for the design of the exhibition space, presenting the tensions between ‘Belief’ and ‘Non-Belief’ through the relationship between ‘lagoon – island – archipelago – peninsula’, and reexamining the complex relationship between technology, environment, and social space. “Island” installation is at the center supported by metal stands adopted from the traditional banquet table as piles on the uneven sunken flooring. 

Multiple orthographic sectional slices illustrate a compressed cross-section of Taiwan’s precarious geological conditions, with coastal conurbations nestled in the mountainous shadow of the west-tilting fault block. Taiwan lies along a north-south fault line between the Japanese and Philippine archipelagos. The high-speed rail (HSR) line, became an embodied sensorimotor extension, cutting through these strata as a spatial/ temporal measuring tool of island landscape.

Dim light filtering through the paper slowly flows over the terrain, which is encircled by the ‘Tech Island,’ continuously flashing images of Taiwan’s landscapes on fragments of electronic paper collectively. The contrast between lightness and the heaviness of the ancient Venice Prison Palace underscores the impact of the semiconductor industry on Taiwan’s landscapes, shifting of urban heat island and environmental justice, water and energy distribution, and the tension between technology and ecology. Accompanied by 17 research projects, the installation aims to generate awareness and foster discourse on the architecture of the resilient and self-sustaining island.

The Taiwanese exhibition also showcases 12 research and operative models arranged in an encircling archipelago configuration around the rooms. The research reflects contemporary architectural challenges and ideas, inviting visitors to engage with Taiwan’s transformation in a precarious world. Upon entering the exhibition space, an exterior-facing window frames a view of a Renaissance church across the Grand Canal, while positioned perpendicular to the interactive and spiritual installation at the other end of the hall, a large installation composed of densely packed circuit boards replicates a common ‘Votive Lamp Wall’ found in local Taiwanese temples, serving as a visual and spiritual spectacle that reflects Taiwan’s unique non-belief intelligens. 

NON-Belief: Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity is curated by a team from the NCKU Department of Architecture, led by curator and department chairman Cheng-Luen Hsueh, with co-curators Ping-Sheng Wu, Sung-Chang Leo Chiang, and Meng-Tsun Su. The team includes advisor Wei Tseng and international advisor and joint researcher Professor Brian McGrath from Parsons School of Design in New York. The exhibition is created in collaboration with, and partially sponsored by, E Ink Corporation, HongSen Intelligent Technology, and Xxentria Technology Materials.

During the pre-opening on May 8th and 9th, the exhibition will feature international forums addressing five key themes: architectural education, the future of living, architecture and curation, “Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity,” and spatial intelligence within geopolitical narratives. These forums will convene international architecture scholars and experts, creating a platform for cross-cultural exchange and exploring Taiwan’s position within today’s precarious global landscape. Following the Biennale Architettura 2025, the Department of Architecture of NCKU will host the Venice Architecture Summer Workshop in July. This workshop will offer students an immersive experience, delving into the exhibition’s themes while fostering discussions on architectural education, innovation, and Taiwan’s evolving role in global architectural discourse. For more information on related exhibitions and activities, please visit the NTMoFA website and the official Facebook and Instagram accounts.