DCC-CR, DCO Connecting People and Ocean & CMCC at Venice Biennale Architettura 2025

The DCC-CR, together with the Decade Coordination Office Connecting People and Ocean (DCO) and CMCC (Centro Euro Mediterraneo per I Cambiamenti Climatici), is pleased to announce its participation in the two-day workshop “Resilient Shores: Coastal Futures Through Natural, Artificial, and Collective Intelligence”, taking place on 28–29 October 2025 in Venice, within the framework of the Biennale Architettura 2025.

The workshop will address how coastlines can serve as living laboratories for adaptation in the face of rising seas and accelerating climate extremes. It will explore how nature-based solutions (natural intelligence), AI and digital technologies (artificial intelligence), and community knowledge and creativity (collective intelligence) can converge to reimagine resilient coastal habitats.

This collaborative event brings together three institutions whose missions and expertise complement each other. The DCC-CR focuses on bridging science and technology developed under the UN Ocean Decade with coastal stakeholders through co-design and innovation. The CMCC Foundation is a leading research centre in climate and ocean science. The DCO “Connecting People and Ocean” coordinates the implementation of Challenge 10 of the Ocean Decade, strengthening connections between people and the ocean through education and engagement.

The program will feature keynote addresses from Tim Beatley (University of Virginia), Francesco Musco (IUAV), and Salvatore Causio (CMCC) and Nadia Pinardi (DCC-CR) as well as case study presentations focused on marine citizen science, coastal outdoor education, and architecture and planning for resilient shores. A special contribution from Carlo Ratti Associati will highlight the Biennale’s curatorial theme “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.”

A central component of the workshop will be the development of the Coastal Resilience ECOPs Worldwide (CREW) project — a new Ocean Decade initiative already submitted by DCC-CR. CREW aims to establish a global network of Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOPs) focused on Ocean Literacy and Citizen Science across more than 130 GlobalCoast Pilot Sites. Its objectives include:

• Fostering broad community engagement in addressing local coastal resilience challenges;
• Compiling a toolkit of Ocean Literacy and Citizen Science activities tailored for community engagement in five key coastal change aspects (social-environmental, morphological, seawater, biodiversity, atmospheric);
• Supporting intergenerational mentorship among senior scientists, ECOPs, and students to sustain action toward coastal resilience worldwide.

The final day of the workshop, 29 October, will be devoted to further developing the CREW proposal, with contributions from ECOP representatives and core writing team members. Moderated by Naka Kondo (The Economist), this session will shape the project’s next implementation phase, reinforcing its strategic role within the Ocean Decade framework.

The event will conclude with remarks from UNESCO-IOC, CMCC, and DCC-CR, emphasizing the importance of cross-sector collaboration to advance innovative coastal resilience solutions at the interface of ocean, climate, and architecture.