This is the title of the Italian Pavilion exhibition project at the 19th promoted by Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and curated by Guendalina Salimei.
The Italian participation is dedicated to a Mediterranean expanded to nearby oceans: the centrality of the structural relationship between water and land, between natural and artificial, between infrastructure and landscape, between city and coast, affects the identity of the country 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, it imposes the need to rethink the project of the border between land and water as an integrated system of architecture, infrastructure and landscape.
The exhibition will host the works of individuals and groups, both established and emerging, triggering an intergenerational, intercultural and gender-neutral comparison, in which past and present will be brought together, involving designers, scholars and cultural operators - but also young people, poets, artists, research institutions and the third sector - in rethinking the relationship between land and sea, with the exhibition of both completed redevelopment projects and contributions produced. through the use of multidisciplinary and multimodal methods, as well as the results 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 the Italian coasts to expand globally. Often denied, brutalized and abused, our coasts are in reality a meeting place between different ecosystems, cultures, activities and religions, in which human action knows and must also express itself with poetry and respect. A relationship so visceral that it found its highest symbolism in Venice 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 al Lido where, after pouring a vase of holy water, he threw the ring blessed by the Patriarch into the waves while pronouncing the words «Desponsamus te, mare nostrum, in signum veri perpetuique dominii» (We marry you, our sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion).
Themes
The themes on which we are called to reflect derive from the need to ensure sustainable management and environmental and cultural enhancement of coastal and port areas, which is essential for the resilience of territories, the conservation of natural heritage and, in general, a more balanced dialogue between land and sea. Among the issues, some emerge with greater urgency: rethinking the caesuras, determined by port areas, coastal roads, tourist settlements and illegal structures that interrupt the continuity between both city and sea and between natural ecosystems; reinterpreting threshold devices, elements of transition between land and sea such as dams, piers, breakwaters and coastal barriers, lighthouses, artificial platforms; rewriting the waterfront as a process of urban regeneration that can transform coastal areas, urban and otherwise, into liveable, accessible and sustainable places; rethinking the reception and port infrastructures to adapt to climate change by reducing the risk of hydrogeological instability and the impact on the natural ecosystem; reconverting industrial, port and production archaeology, abandoned along the coasts; redefining the active protection strategies of the environmental heritage and rediscovering the submerged, natural and archaeological heritage.
Appointment schedule
The Italian Pavilion, for the entire duration of the exhibition, will be accompanied by a Public Program entitled The Sea of Intelligence. Dialogues, divided into numerous events – seminars, conferences, laboratories, workshops – organized in places dear to Venetian and international culture. The project Terrae Aquae. Italy and the Intelligence of the Sea It is illustrated by a catalogue published by Electa which contains the reflections of experts in the field, the contributions selected following the Call for visions and projects, photographic essays, artistic incursions, research results and other cultural and design suggestions. Divided into three volumes and accompanied by special inserts, the catalogue is conceived as a navigational pilot book capable of orienting the reader in the discovery of collective design experiences. The Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity, belonging to the Department for Cultural Activities of the Ministry of Culture, contributes to the realization of the Italian Pavilion with an amount of 800.000 euros formalized, as usual, with an agreement with the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia. The Italian Pavilion at the 2025 Architecture Biennale is also realized thanks to the support of the sponsors Bank Ifis, OICE – Association of Italian engineering, architecture and technical-economic consultancy organizations e Berengo Foundation and technical sponsors layher e Vibia. Special thanks to the official supplier Arctic Paper Italia.
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