The Unfrozen crew hit the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale with all the furious energy our 100th episode deserved. A rollicking roundup of robots, pans, picks, porches and pavilions, with special guest interviews: Michele Champagne, Kate Wagner, Marisa Moran Jahn, Bekim Ramku, Rafi Segal, Jeanne Gang, and Mark Cavagnero. And finally, while Rome picked a pontiff, we had our own mini-conclave in Venice and humbly offered up our picks for the 20th Biennale curator. Join us for this extra special centenary episode.

Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure,” by The Cooper Vane

Discussed:

- Olly Wainwright: Can robots make the perfect Aperol spritz? – Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 review | Architecture | The Guardian

- Rowan Moore: Venice Architecture Biennale review: ‘a hot mess of pretension’ | The Observer

- The New York Architecture Review crew: Nicolas, Chloe and Sammy

- International Exhibition in the Arsenale

o Robots, hemp, bio-concrete, 8-point font with AI-assisted summaries

o Kate Crawford and Vladan Joier’s megascale text: Calculating Empires

o Bjarke Ingels Group’s entry: Ancient Future, with Bhutanese carvers paced by an ABB robot

o Christopher Hawthorne’s Speaker’s Corner

o Shades of Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Fundamentals edition

- Kate Wagner’s review: