Bartlett Alumni Exhibit 'Blue Garden: The Architecture of Emergence' at Venice Biennale
Combining concrete with waste seashells, the project creates a hybrid garden for humans and seaweed, showcasing innovative bio-integrated design at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Bartlett alumni Rita Morais (Bio-Integrated Design MArch), Tanvi Khurmi (Architecture MArch) and Alexa Cam (Bio-Integrated Design MSc) will exhibit their installation, Blue Garden: The Architecture of Emergence, at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. The project will be showcased at the historic Arsenale venue from 10 May to 23 November 2025 as part of the Biennale College Architettura programme.
Combining concrete with waste seashells, the project creates a hybrid garden designed for both humans and seaweed.
Blue Garden is a response to the growing disconnection between humans and the natural world, an invitation to pause, observe, and reconnect with nature. As an artist and designer, I‘m interested in exploring how spaces can transcend sterile environments to become dynamic, living participants in ecological cycles.
As cities grow, they often push nature to the margins. Blue Garden imagines a different path, where urban environments not only make space for nature but actively nurture it, acting as a symbiotic space that welcomes both humans and marine life.
Central to the installation is a modular tile system designed to promote macroalgae growth, an often overlooked yet vital organism. Seaweed are among the planet's most adaptable and prolific life forms, producing approximately half of the Earth's atmospheric oxygen. They also absorb carbon dioxide, purify water and support entire ecosystems. Blue Garden's tiles are informed by the growth conditions of seaweed and other marine organisms, creating a foundation for life to flourish.
It is an incredible honour to be included among such inspiring projects at this year’s Biennale. Blue Garden is both a proposal and a provocation - asking a simple yet radical question: what if urban and coastal interfaces could host marine ecosystems instead of displacing them? In an era of accelerating environmental degradation, Blue Garden invites us to imagine urban futures that are regenerative, not extractive.
Crafted with a custom concrete that incorporates upcycled seashells from the seafood industry, the tiles demonstrate how waste can be transformed into an architectural material. Merging science, computational design and advanced manufacturing, Blue Garden creates a model for living architecture: one that shifts with the tides, interacts with light and nutrients and grows alongside the life it supports.
The project was initially conceived at The Bartlett's Bio-ID Lab and further developed through the Biennale College Architettura 2024-25 programme with the support of B-made (The Bartlett Manufacturing and Design Exchange).
Read more about The Bartlett's participation in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale
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