AND Studio at the Venice Biennale

The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale has just come to a close. It was one of the richest and most significant editions in recent years, highlighting the transformations of coastal landscapes, the relationship between cities and water, and the need to rethink infrastructure as public spaces. The Biennale offered a unique perspective on the future of border areas—quays, ports, waterfronts, transit zones—and the role that architecture can play in transforming these once “marginal” places into vital systems for urban quality.

In this international context, AND Studio Architects participated with the Piombino waterfront redevelopment project, presented as a concrete example of contemporary regeneration. The firm's presence at the Biennale gave voice to a reflection that runs through many of the installations and pavilions on display: how to transform ports into new urban centers that are sustainable, welcoming, and integrated into the daily life of cities.

The Piombino project was born precisely from this vision. The port, a strategic and symbolic infrastructure, is at the center of a renovation process that aims to reconnect the historic center with the port area, offering new public spaces, clear connections, and a new aesthetic and functional identity.

The project comprises several key elements:– landscaping of the outer piers, designed to restore the environmental and visual quality of the port's surroundings;– the new pilots' tower, designed as a contemporary landmark capable of reshaping the port's skyline; – the redevelopment of the ferry terminal, transformed into a welcoming and social space, a physical and symbolic bridge between the city and the sea.

These three project themes directly address the main themes of the 2025 Biennale: sustainability, urban resilience, infrastructure as civic spaces, and architecture's ability to shape new relationships between people, territory, and landscape.

Participating in the Biennale represented significant recognition for AND Studio and provided an opportunity to exchange ideas with similar international projects. Above all, it confirmed the visionary strength of the Piombino project: a waterfront that does not focus solely on functionality, but imagines a new way of inhabiting the boundary between land and sea, making it a driving force for the city's identity, beauty, and future.