Venice Architecture Students Address Urban Greening

The "Archi/Tree/Tecture" symposium is part of the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. It brought together over 80 students from more than 16 European institutions to explore nature-sensitive architectural visions for urban environments. The event was the culmination of a year-long project initiated by Vytautas Magnus University and the Transform4Europe alliance. Participants in the symposium focused on themes such as treating trees as architectural allies and transitioning from "smart cities" to "living ecosystems." The project uses the removal of centuries-old trees for urban development as a starting point to discuss the erasure of natural and historical memory. It advocates for a deeper connection between architecture and urban nature to foster sustainability and resilience. These student-led explorations are particularly urgent in Venice, a city confronting a dual crisis of environmental and social pressures. The city is already experiencing the severe impacts of climate change, with the mean sea level rising approximately 4.9 mm per year over the last three decades. Projections indicate that under worst-case scenarios, sea levels could rise dramatically, threatening to submerge large areas of the lagoon. While the MOSE flood barrier system, consisting of 78 mobile gates, has been successful in preventing major flooding events, it represents a large-scale engineering solution. The project cost an estimated $14 billion and raises concerns about its long-term effectiveness and potential impact on the lagoon's ecosystem by altering water exchange. This highlights the need for complementary, nature-based solutions like the ones being explored by the architecture students. The push for urban greening in Venice also addresses a lack of quality green space, an issue highlighted during the 2020 pandemic. Local initiatives like the "Green Spaces" project are already working to regenerate neglected areas and promote active citizenship in creating a healthier urban environment. Increasing the tree canopy and green infrastructure offers significant benefits for a city like Venice. Beyond absorbing pollutants and providing habitats for wildlife, urban trees can mitigate the "urban heat island effect," where built environments are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. Research shows a 10% increase in green infrastructure can reduce ambient temperatures by 4-5 degrees Celsius. These initiatives align with a broader shift towards "building with nature" in coastal cities, which are on the front lines of climate change. Green infrastructure is increasingly recognized not just as an amenity but as essential for services like coastal protection, water purification, and carbon sequestration. The work of the students at the "Archi/Tree/Tecture" symposium, therefore, represents a critical contribution to a global conversation. It showcases how integrating ecological principles into architecture can help preserve the unique cultural heritage of cities like Venice while adapting them to the realities of a changing climate.