The Monocle Companion – Fifty Ideas on Architecture, Design, and Building Better

The exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale showcase the ingenuity and ongoing reinvention shaping the world’s built environment. It’s fitting, then, that the fifth instalment in Monocle’s Companion series uses this event as a springboard for 50 new essays, interviews and ideas from both 2025’s Biennale exhibitors and the wider Monocle community. Highlights include: lessons designers can take from artists; dispatches from a space architect; why all cities ought to be swimmable; and why lava is an underrated building material. There’s even a debut photo essay reflecting on how the Floating City has transformed through the lens of a Venetian-born photographer. The Monocle Companion’s Venice Architecture Biennale Special leaves no stone unturned.