From May 10 to November 23, 2025, at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale in Venice, the architectural, scientific and cultural reflections on the sea will be the stars of Terrae Aquae. Italy and the Intelligence of the Sea, title of the Padiglione Italia exhibition project at the 19th. International Exhibition of Architecture – La Biennale di Venezia, promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and curated by Guendalina Salimei.

The Italian participation is dedicated to a Mediterranean extended to the neighboring oceans: the centrality of the relationship structural relationship between water and land, between natural and artificial, between infrastructure and landscape, between city and coast, affects on the country’s identity and the delicate balances between environment, man, culture and economy that must be both protected in their integrity and re-designed for that essential adaptation to a future pervaded by new pressing needs. Looking at Italy from the sea implies a change of perspective, imposes the need to rethink the design of the border between land and water as an integrated system of architecture, infrastructure and landscape.

The exhibition welcome the works of individuals and groups, both established and emerging, triggering a confrontation intergenerational, cross-cultural and gender-neutral, in which past and present will be brought together, involving designers, scholars and cultural workers – as well as young people, poets, artists, research organizations and the third sector – in rethinking the relationship between land and sea, with the exhibition of both redevelopment projects realized, as well as of contributions produced ad hoc through the use of multidisciplinary and multimodal methods, and of the outcomes of institutional and academic research. Listening to different voices, welcomed according to an inclusive spirit of people, ideas and means of expression, aims to stimulate the awakening of a collective intelligence capable of triggering a renewal that starts from Italian shores and expands globally. Often denied, brutalized and abused, our coasts are actually a place where different ecosystems, cultures, activities and religions meet, where human action can and must also express itself with poetry and respect. A relationship so visceral that precisely in Venice had found its highest symbolism with the rite of the marriage of the sea, celebrated every year by the Doge aboard the Bucintoro at the mouth of the port of San Niccolò on the Lido where, after pouring a jar of holy water, he threw into the waves the ring blessed by the Patriarch, pronouncing the words “Desponsamus te, mare nostrum, in signum veri per perpetuique dominii» (We marry you, our sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion).

The issues we are being asked to reflect on stem from the need to ensure sustainable management and environmental and cultural enhancement of coastal and port areas, which is fundamental for the resilience of the territories, the conservation of natural heritage and, in general, a more balanced dialogue between land and sea. Among the issues, some emerge most urgently: rethinking the caesuras, determined by port areas, roads coastlines, tourist settlements and illegal structures that interrupt the continuity both between city and sea and between natural ecosystems; reinterpret threshold devices, transitional elements between land and sea as dikes, piers, breakwaters and coastal barriers, lighthouses, artificial platforms; rewriting waterfronts as a process of urban regeneration that can transform coastal areas, urban and non-urban, into livable, accessible and sustainable; rethinking accommodation and port infrastructure to adapt to climate change by reducing the risk of hydrogeological disruption and impact on the natural ecosystem; reconvert industrial archaeology, port and manufacturing, abandoned along the coasts; redefine strategies for active protection of heritage environment and rediscover the underwater, natural and archaeological heritage.

The Italian Pavilion, for the duration of the exhibition, will be accompanied by a Public Program entitled The Sea of Intelligence. Dialogues, articulated in numerous events – seminars, lectures, workshops, workshops – organized in places dear to Venetian and international culture. The project Terrae Aquae. Italy and the Intelligence of the Sea is illustrated by a catalog published by Electa that contains the reflections of experts in the field, the contributions selected following the Call for visions and projects, photographic essays, artistic forays, research outcomes and other cultural and design suggestions. Divided into three volumes and accompanied by special inserts, the catalog is conceived as a navigational pilot book capable of orient the reader in the discovery of collective design experiences.