Last Sunday, after a few overwhelming days of gatherings, spontaneous encounters, and intense events at the Biennale, we quietly boarded a boat to an unknown island somewhere in the Venice Lagoon. No information —just a meeting point: 2:00 PM.
I joined a group of a few dozen people on a sunlit pier near the Arsenale. We set off aboard a noisy Venetian boat, eventually landing on one of the lagoon’s last remote islands: the secluded island of Sant’Andrea. Once a strategic military site, Sant’Andrea guarded the lagoon’s entrance for centuries with an impressive system of tension cables. Now, it’s a secret retreat for Venetians—and part of it remains inaccessible to the public but belongs to a collective of Venetians activist
@microclima_ that want to preserve it for the next decade - as it is.
It was beautiful to see Venetians as true boat people: spending their Sundays fishing, picnicking, and racing each other in loud boats with even louder music. It suddenly made sense—boats are simply an extension of their daily lives.
From our basecamp on the island, we learned more about the idea behind the gathering, hosted by
@commonsphere @tanitajenderes @danielsundlin and
@jan.bunge . They had curated a Sunday afternoon of meditation
@vivianrosenthal , island walks, #workshops, and communal cooking, with around fifteen guests—mostly non-architects, but all drawn by the spirit of the Biennale. A thoughtful group, brought together around themes of sustainability, community, and nature, sharing hours of conversation, food
@tociavenezia and reflection. It felt like a moment suspended in time.
The event was a kind of prototype—an experiment in slowness. With quiet ambition, the team is imagining gatherings like this at major events around the world. Not to replace the intensity of official festivities, but to gently extend them—offering time and space to deepen human connections, to rest, to listen, and to embrace a form of intentional de-growth amid the speed of cultural programming.
