The exhibition brings together works by individuals and groups, both established and emerging, fostering an intergenerational, intercultural, and gender-inclusive dialogue in which past and present are united. It engages designers, scholars, cultural practitioners — as well as young people, poets, artists, research bodies, and third-sector organizations — in rethinking the relationship between land and sea, through the display of completed regeneration projects, contributions specifically created using multidisciplinary and multimodal approaches, and the outcomes of institutional and academic research.

The inclusive embrace of diverse voices — of people, ideas, and expressive forms — seeks to foster the awakening of a collective intelligence capable of inspiring a renewal that begins on Italy’s shores and radiates outward to the world. Often denied, scarred, and exploited, our coastlines remain places of profound encounter between ecosystems, cultures, activities, and religions, where human presence must learn to express itself once again with poetry and reverence. This profound bond found its highest symbolic expression in Venice, with the ancient ritual of the Marriage of the Sea, celebrated each year by the Doge aboard the Bucintoro at the entrance to the port of San Nicolò at the Lido, where, after pouring holy water into the sea, he would cast a blessed ring into the waves, proclaiming: “Desponsamus te, mare nostrum, in signum veri perpetuique dominii” (“We wed you, our sea, as a sign of true and everlasting dominion”).

The issues we are called to reflect upon stem from the need to ensure sustainable management and the environmental and cultural enhancement of coastal and port areas, which is fundamental for the resilience of territories, the conservation of natural heritage, and, more broadly, for fostering a more balanced dialogue between land and sea. Among these issues, some emerge with particular urgency: rethinking the barriers created by port areas, coastal roads, tourist developments, and unauthorized structures that interrupt the continuity between city and sea as well as among natural ecosystems; reinterpreting threshold devices — transitional elements between land and sea such as breakwaters, piers, coastal barriers, lighthouses, and artificial platforms; reimagining waterfronts as part of an urban regeneration process capable of transforming coastal, urban, and non-urban areas into livable, accessible, and sustainable places; rethinking hospitality and port infrastructures to adapt to climate change, reduce hydrogeological risks, and minimize impacts on natural ecosystems; reconverting abandoned industrial, port, and production sites along the coasts; redefining strategies for the active protection of environmental heritage and rediscovering the submerged natural and archaeological heritage.