On the occasion of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (May 10 – November 23, 2025), Electa is the publisher of the catalog for the Italian Pavilion, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and curated by Guendalina Salimei.

The editorial project Terræ Aquæ is divided into three distinct yet complementary volumes, each conceived as a stage in a knowledgeable and sensitive journey. It is designed as a contemporary portolano, inspired by ancient medieval nautical charts that, with skillful and imaginative strokes, represented the complexity of the known world at the time.

The project is dedicated to an expanded Mediterranean, including neighboring oceans: the centrality of the structural relationship between water and land, between the natural and the artificial, between infrastructure and landscape, between city and coast, impacts the identity of the country and the delicate balances between environment, man, culture, and economy that must be both preserved in their integrity and re-imagined for the essential adaptation to a future shaped by new, pressing demands. Viewing Italy from the sea implies a shift in perspective, requiring a rethinking of the boundary project between land and water as an integrated system of architecture, infrastructure, and landscape.

The catalog tells the story, through the voices of designers, scholars, and cultural operators – as well as young people, poets, artists, research institutions, and organizations from the third sector – of the rethinking of the relationship between land and sea, born from the need to ensure sustainable management and environmental and cultural enhancement of coastal and port areas. This is essential for the resilience of territories, the conservation of natural heritage, and, more broadly, for a more balanced dialogue between land and sea.

The first volume gathers theoretical essays and critical reflections, accompanied by authorial photographic narratives that engage with the themes of the exhibition, suggesting interpretive and conceptual routes. The second volume offers a mapping of the plurality of languages and practices that inhabit the Padiglione Italia, through an exhibition design made up of display machines that work with universal archetypes, wunderkammers capable of welcoming the visitor on a journey through memory and landscape, visions, research, and projects of a possible Italy, the result of the country’s collective intelligence. The third volume collects contributions from the public program and further visual stories from the workshops, events, and debates that arose inside and around the Padiglione Italia, live testimonies of an open dialogue with the present. Together, the three volumes form an intellectual and emotional map, a critical device to navigate through the “currents of the sea” of contemporary times.