06-05-2025
During the Venice Biennale, You Can Buy Coffee Made With the Lagoon
This article is part of our Design special section about how food inspires designers to make and do surprising things.
In Venice, beauty and decay have always flowed side by side, borne on waters that are as treacherous as they are alluring. The lagoon makes itself felt as a living presence, through the briny smell that seeps into city squares and alleyways.
An unorthodox project at this year's Architecture Biennale invites visitors to imbibe Venice in the form of espresso brewed from the lagoon itself — a symbolically rich and scientifically advanced act of transformation and trust.
Conceived by the New York studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Canal Café involved two engineering firms, Natural Systems Utilities of the United States and SODAI of Italy, which oversaw the design, testing and monitoring of the water purification system. Aaron Betsky, a critic of art, architecture and design, advised the project.
Canal Café flirts with the language of alchemy — transforming brackish, untrusted water into a warm, fragrant cup of coffee. If it all sounds fantastical, that's by design.
