The rhythm

Mornings begin with direct observation on the water. Afternoons turn observations into measurements, maps or design choices. Three evenings bring in a guest, a film or an open conversation. Roughly half the week is outdoors, and each day closes by recording the evidence in the Knowledge Garden.

Time	Daily block
08:00	Breakfast aboard
08:45	Question briefing on deck — 45 min
09:30	Navigation, field observation or hands-on work
13:00	Lunch aboard
14:30	Second field block, measurement or lab
17:30	Studio — notes, data, drawings, sprint work
19:30	Dinner
20:45	Evening session, three nights

Day by day

Day 1 — Enter the living system

Board at Certosa and navigate across the northern basin. Read the lagoon as one connected system: tide, wind, channels, islands, barriers, boats and people. At dusk the cohort sets its question — what does it take to keep alive a city that should not exist? Each person states what they came to understand. The answers are recorded and reopened on day 7.

Water 3h · course leader

Day 2 — The barriers and the decision room

Approach the mobile barrier inlets at Lido and Malamocco from the water, then work through the operational chain: forecasts, thresholds, uncertainty, closure, reopening, and the consequences for the lagoon. The focus is not how the barriers were designed, but how people decide when the model and the sea disagree. Afternoon studio: reconstruct one real decision, from forecast to outcome.

Water 5h · specialist in barrier operations · evening guest

Day 3 — Stone, tide and the living edge

Move from lagoon morphology to the marble waterlines of the city. At authorised sites, set a non-invasive baseline on the living edge where stone meets tide: repeatable photographs with a scale, height relative to the nearest tidal reference, width of the wet–dry belt, visible cover, and the organisms that colonise it. Water level, temperature, salinity, exposure and orientation are recorded so that another cohort can repeat the same observation months later.

In the afternoon, compare the present edge with Canaletto’s views of the same waterlines. The paintings are historical evidence and good questions — not instruments. The measurement is what makes the comparison honest.

Water and city edge 4h · specialists in morphology, ecology and heritage observation

Day 4 — The city and the people

Row at Punta San Giuliano, then bring residents, technicians and administrators around the same square kilometre. Follow the water from lagoon scale to street level: depopulation, tourism, craft, maintenance, and the right to decide what gets protected. Afternoon studio: map where technical evidence and lived knowledge agree, and where they do not.

Water 4h including rowing · specialist in participation and governance · evening film

Day 5 — Measure so somebody else can repeat it

Install and read a hydrographic rod; connect it by GPS and levelling to a permanent benchmark; run a short bathymetric transect. Return to the stone baseline of day 3 and repeat the images and counts, to test whether the protocol survives being handed to someone else.

The week does not claim to measure biological growth in two days. What leaves with you is the protocol: repeat the same images and counts over weeks or months, and the change becomes readable.

Water 5h · specialists in geomatics and lagoon ecology

Day 6 — Build the intervention

No navigation. Teams turn the week’s evidence into one usable thing: a monitoring sheet, an educational route, a decision protocol, a small nature-based intervention or a twinning plan. Two critique rounds test whether it is safe, repeatable, and useful to somebody who was not there.

Water 0 · one external practitioner · evening guest

Day 7 — Handover, not conclusion

Finish and present the work. Reopen the day-1 question against what was actually observed. Hand over the protocol, the baseline images, the coordinates, the permissions and the next observation date to a named custodian. Archive the material so the next cohort begins where this one stopped.

Water 2h, return navigation · course leader