Donna Haraway and Italo Rota Receive Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement
131April 10, 2025
The organizers of the NineteenthVenice Architecture Biennalehave awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to American philosopherDonna Haraway, while Italian architect and designerItalo Rota(1953–2024) has been honored with the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam. The pair will be feted at a ceremony to take place May 10 at Ca’ Giustinian, the Biennale’s headquarters.
Born in Denver in 1944, Haraway, who is distinguished professor emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, is renowned for her work centering science, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, science and technology studies, and multispecies worlding. She is best known for envisioning the term “Chthulucene,” an alternative conceptualization of the Anthropocene that considers the histories, existence, and futures of other species besides Homo sapiens and advocates for symbiosis between all living entities. Among the books she has authored areStaying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene(2016);When Species Meet(2008);Simians, Cyborgs, and Women(1991); andPrimate Visions.Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science(1989).
“Donna Haraway is one of the most influential voices in contemporary thought, straddling the social sciences, anthropology, feminist criticism, and the philosophy of technology. Over the past four decades, she has explored, in a multidisciplinary manner and with a constant capacity for linguistic invention, issues such as the impact of technological evolution on our biological nature and the ways in which the environmental context of the Chthulucene redefines the boundaries between human and nonhuman,” said Carlo Ratti, the Biennial’s curator, in a statement. “From whichever route one approaches the convergence of multiple forms of intelligence in shaping our future, the legacy of Donna Haraway will appear.”
Rota, who died last spring, was born in Milan in 1953. His work, conducted over the course of thirty years, was marked by constant and advanced cross-disciplinary research on subjects ranging from contemporary art to robotics, with the goal of developing innovative projects in which humanistic beauty and sustainability were integral and disruptive elements. Among his major accomplishments are interior design of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which he worked on alongside Gae Aulenti and Piero Castiglioni; the Museo del Novecento in Milan; the renovation of the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, again with Aulenti; and the Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020. Rota was also an educator, serving as head of the design school at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belli Arti in Milan and earlier holding professorships at Ecole d’Architecture UP8 Paris-Belleville and IED Istituto Europeo di Design, among other schools.
“Italo Rota was a forerunner,” said Ratti in a statement. “His vision was that of a world in which the relevance of living entities and biology in general, nature in the broadest possible definition, and finally science and applied technology were united in a single breathing entity. Throughout his life, he had the extraordinary ability to traverse the second half of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the new century by flying above the major styles and cultures of design, establishing himself as one of the most original figures in Italian and European architecture.”