AIDA — International Water Academy
CORE Venice Lab · Venice
A field academy on water. One week, on the water, in the Venice lagoon — where the lagoon is the classroom and the people who run it are the teachers.
Why Venice
Venice is not a monument with a water problem. It is a 1,200-year-old experiment in living with water that never stopped running — and is now being rewritten by sea-level rise, mass tourism, depopulation and a mobile barrier system that has been closing the lagoon since it entered operation.
We take small groups inside that experiment for a week. We teach what worked and what did not, because both are still visible from the boat.
What is included, and what is not
CORE Venice Lab APS develops educational programmes of 1, 3, 7 and 14 days in Venice and its lagoon: teaching, meetings with experts, workshops and field activities.
Accommodation, meals, transfers and insurance are not included in the educational proposal. They are booked and paid directly by the participants or by the client institution to the respective providers. CORE can facilitate contacts with local operators.
Who teaches
Giovanni Cecconi — Course leader
Forty years on the Venice lagoon as a hydraulic and environmental engineer. He directed the control room of the mobile barrier system at Consorzio Venezia Nuova, where the decision to close the lagoon is prepared, taken and lived with. Author of Venice: Living with Water, Learning with Nature (2017). Founder of CORE Venice Lab.
He teaches days 1, 2 and 7 of every programme. The rest of the week is taught by practitioners who do the job every day, not by visiting lecturers.