Canal Café, designed by the team led by the architectural firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has received the Golden Lion for best entry at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective."

Located on the edge of the canals, Canal Café draws water from the lagoon in the Arsenale area to create Italy's finest espresso with a distinctive Venetian flavour. The installation was designed to be part laboratory and part café bar, offering coffee to Biennale visitors.

The award went to Canal Café, a project created by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, teaming with Natural Systems Utilities, SODAI, Aaron Betsky, and Davide Oldani. The installation uses natural filtration systems to purify water from the city's canals and transform it into a coffee that Arsenal visitors can enjoy.

The water is split into two interdependent streams: one flows through a natural membrane bioreactor, a “micro-wetland” where salt-tolerant halophytes facilitate purification but retain minerals; the other undergoes artificial filtration, reverse osmosis, and UV disinfection to produce distilled water.

"Café is a demonstration of how the city of Venice can be a laboratory to speculate how to live on the water, while contributing to the public space of Venice. It also invites future speculation about the lagoon and other lagoons. It also represents an important parallel track in DS+R’s practice since the start, one rich in transdisciplinary experimentation. We also acknowledge the extraordinary persistence of the Canal Cafè project, which started almost 20 years ago. It’s an example that the Biennale can be a long-duration project and go far beyond the event."

Jury Statement and Motivation.

The International Jury of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia was composed of Hans Ulrich Obrist (President, Switzerland), Paola Antonelli (Italy), and Mpho Matsipa (South Africa).

Canal Cafè Bar, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photograph by Iwan Baan

Canal Cafè Bar, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photograph by Iwan Baan.

Canal Cafè Bar, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photograph by Iwan Baan.  Canal Cafè Bar, por Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Fotografía por Iwan Baan.

Canal Cafè Bar, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photograph by Iwan Baan.

Project description by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

While the canals and lagoon are the source of the city’s historical wealth and beauty, they also elicit fears of contamination and flooding—concerns that are heightened in an era of mass tourism and climate change. Canal Café reaches beneath the photogenic surface of the city by converting these brackish waters into the comforting scent and taste of espresso—the irreducible Italian pleasure. The public will drink Venice.

Canal Café is part espresso bar, part laboratory. A hybrid natural-artificial purification system accelerates the cleansing effects of tidal wetlands, rendering canal water potable. A transparent pipe draws water from the lagoon, channeling it through a bio-filtration system that removes sludge and toxins. The water is split into two interdependent streams: one flows through a natural membrane bioreactor, a “micro-wetland” where salt-tolerant halophytes facilitate purification but retain minerals; the other undergoes artificial filtration, reverse osmosis, and UV disinfection to produce distilled water. The streams are then mixed, steamed, and forced through coffee grounds to produce espresso. Unused purified water irrigates an adjacent landscape installation.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has worked in collaboration with the US based water systems engineers Natural Systems Utilities, and the Italian based environmental engineering and water engineering company Sodai. 

More information

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Architects / Curators
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Diller Scofidio + Renfro (Concept and Design).
Collaborating Curator.- Aaron Betsky.
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Project team
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Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, David Allin, Sean Gallagher, Bryce Suite, Alex Knezo, Tom Collins, and Alfred Wei.

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Collaborators
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Chef.- Davide Oldani.
Water System Design and Operation.- Natural Systems Utilities, SODAI.
Water system design support.- Nijhuis Saur Industries.
Structural Engineering.- Knippers Helbig.
Lighting Design.- Tillotson Design Associates.

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Dates
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10.05 > 11.11.2025.

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Venue Location
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Arsenale. Venice, Italy.

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Photography
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Diller Scofidio + Renfro Studio. Founded in 1981, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) is a design studio whose practice spans the fields of architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print. With a focus on cultural and civic projects, DS+R’s work addresses the changing role of institutions and the future of cities. The studio is based in New York and is comprised of over 100 architects, designers, artists and researchers, led by four partners--Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro and Benjamin Gilmartin.

DS+R completed two of the largest architecture and planning initiatives in New York City’s recent history: the adaptive reuse of an obsolete, industrial rail infrastructure into the High Line, a 1.5 mile-long public park, and the transformation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ half-century-old campus. The studio is currently engaged in two more projects significant to New York, scheduled to open in 2019: The Shed, the first multi-arts center designed to commission, produce, and present all types of performing arts, visual arts, and popular culture, and the renovation and expansion of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Most recently, the studio was also selected to design: Adelaide Contemporary, a new gallery and public sculpture park in South Australia; the Centre for Music, which will be a permanent home for the London Symphony Orchestra; and a new collection and research centre for the V&A in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Recent projects include the 35-acre Zaryadye Park adjacent to the Kremlin in Moscow; the Museum of Image & Sound on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; The Broad, a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley; the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University in New York; and The Juilliard School in Tianjin, China.

DS+R’s independent work includes the Blur Building, a pavilion made of fog on Lake Neuchâtel for the Swiss Expo; Exit, an immersive data-driven installation about human migration at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Arbores Laetae, an animated micro-park for the Liverpool Biennial; Musings on a Glass Box at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris; and Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design at the Jewish Museum in New York. A major retrospective of DS+R’s work was mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Most recently, the studio designed two site-specific installations at the 2018 Venice Biennale and the Costume Institute’s Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. DS+R also directed and produced The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock, a free, choral performance featuring 1,000 singers atop the High Line, co-created with David Lang.

DS+R has authored several books: The High Line (Phaidon Press, 2015), Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account (Damiani, 2013), Flesh: Architectural Probes (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), Blur: The Making of Nothing (Harry N. Abrams, 2002), and Back to the Front: Tourisms of War (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).

DS+R has been distinguished with the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture, Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential" list, the Smithsonian Institution's 2005 National Design Award, the Medal of Honor and the President's Award from AIA New York, and Wall Street Journal Magazine's 2017 Architecture Innovator of the Year Award. Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller are fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and are International Fellows at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
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Published on: May 10, 2025
Cite:
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
"The public will drink Venice. Canal Cafè Bar, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/public-will-drink-venice-canal-cafe-bar-diller-scofidio-renfro> ISSN 1139-6415
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