Intelligent Venice
The oldest city of the future
Special Project by the Venice Sustainability Foundation (VSF)
for the Biennale Architettura 2025
May 10 > November 23, 2025
Tesa dell’Isolotto, Darsena Grande dell’Arsenale, Venice
A living laboratory of innovation and adaptation, Venice is the complex result of multiple intelligences. The exhibition narrates an extraordinary millennia-old project, a history of medieval inventions and contemporary technologies, interventions in nature and human settlement, and survival and resilience strategies through which the city has, for centuries, succeeded in thriving in a hostile environment, through the constant exercise of intelligence.
The “Intelligent Venice” exhibition occupies the Tesa dell’Isolotto, located on the Darsena Grande of the Arsenale. It is the only surviving building of eighteen 14th-century boatyards, demolished in 1880. The installation covers an area of 500 square meters and is designed with a series of apses, vertical panels, and a central spine represented by a long table. It includes over 5,000 archive images, over 1,000 historical maps from the most authoritative databases, over three hours of video projections, and five interactive multimedia panels.
Inside the pavilion, an architectural basilica interior with wooden trusses, five “Apses of intelligences” offer an immersive journey into the history and management of the lagoon and the city: “Millenary Time”, “Regulated Lagoon”, “Anthropized Nature”, “Venice of the People”, “Urban Form” will allow the public to explore the “intelligent” evolution of the city and its lagoon – which, for a long time, acted as its walls – along with the inventions and strategies developed for its use, and for the protection and enhancement of its cultural heritage, through immersive projections and interactive multimedia stations, offering an experience that combines science, technology, and visual storytelling.
The Venetian Abacus table, which extends 30 meters along the central axis of the Tesa, is dedicated to Ingenuities and represents the objects, tools, mechanisms, and technologies with which Venetians turned an uninhabitable place into one of the most important testimonies of global urban history.
The “Actors of today and tomorrow” section animates the connecting walls between the Apses of Intelligences. It presents visions and projects of various public and private actors operating in the city.
Organizations and institutions working to preserve and design the future of Venice and its lagoon have contributed to building this vision: Almaviva, Assicurazioni Generali, Autorità di Sistema Portuale del Mare Adriatico Settentrionale – Porti di Venezia e Chioggia, Autorità per la Laguna di Venezia, Comune di Venezia, Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia, Consorzio Venezia Nuova, CORILA – Consorzio per il Coordinamento delle Ricerche inerenti al sistema lagunare di Venezia, Enfinity Global, Eni, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, Fincantieri, Fondazione Diabete Ricerca onlus, Istituto di Scienze Marine del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISMAR-CNR), Mare Technopark, Microsoft, Procuratoria di San Marco, Regione del Veneto, TIM, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice International University.
The initiative also benefits from the support of Alilaguna, Camera di Commercio Venezia Rovigo, Fondazione di Venezia.
Curated by Benno Albrecht (Università Iuav di Venezia), Renato Brunetta (VSF e CNEL), Pierpaolo Campostrini (CORILA), Paolo Costa (C+3C Sistemi e Strategie)
Scientific coordination: Pierpaolo Campostrini
Organizers and collaborators: Alessandro Costa, Jacopo Galli, Marco Marino, Tania Schiavon, Eleonora Pagan, Francesco Marcello Falcieri, Elisabetta Russo, Emilia Siffredi Duranti, Alessandra Aureli, Alessandro De Sanctis, Alessandro Spezzamonte
Exhibition design: Benno Albrecht, Jacopo Galli, Marco Marino, con Nicolò Genovese, Marco Turcato, Pietro Zandonella Maiucco
Visual identity: Stefano Mandato
Video content of the Apses “Millenary time”, “Regulated lagoon” and “Anthropized nature”: Carmelo Marabello, Luka Bagnoli, Elisa La Boria
Immersive installation “Urban Form” by Ludovica Galeazzo, responsabile scientifica del progetto ERC “Venice’s Nissology. Reframing the Lagoon City as an Archipelago”, realised with the contribution of studio camerAnebbia di Milano e con il supporto del Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale e di Venice International University (VIU)
L’iniziativa beneficia anche del supporto di Alilaguna, Camera di Commercio Venezia Rovigo, Fondazione di Venezia.
To visit the exhibition, the ENTRANCE TICKET to the Biennale Architettura 2025 is REQUIRED: https://labiennale.vivaticket.it/it/tour/la-biennale-di-venezia-architettura/653
Visit the website intelligentvenice.it
