Join our digital event live from Venice:

Ocean Space hosts “Making Waves – Designing Regenerative Coastal Futures”, the culminating event of the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails project. This one-day gathering brings together visionary artists, architects, scientists, designers and community leaders from across Europe to celebrate three years of collaborative work exploring how coastal regions can thrive in more regenerative, inclusive and resilient ways.

Click HERE for the event's agenda

Click HERE to join the livestream on YouTube

A PAN-EUROPEAN JOURNEY TOWARD REGENERATIVE COASTAL FUTURES

Since its launch, Bauhaus of the Seas Sails has activated 18 partners across seven pilot locations, weaving together research, artistic experimentation, architecture, local knowledge and community activism. From Venice to Hamburg, Lisbon to Malmö, each region has contributed a unique perspective on how to imagine—and build—coastal futures that restore ecological balance and strengthen social cohesion.

The event features a series of keynote talks and conversations with leading voices such as Laura Tripaldi, Andrea Molina Cuadro and Eduardo Castillo Vinuesa, at the intersections between art, science and our emerging ecological futures.

Laura Tripaldi is a materials scientist and writer whose work bridges nanotechnology, philosophy and art to explore how non-human materials and intelligences shape our world. She invites audiences to rethink design as a more-than-human practice, opening new ways to imagine regenerative relationships between bodies, materials and coastal environments.

Andrea Molina Cuadro is an architect and researcher whose practice combines spatial design with speculative storytelling to support ecological and community-driven transitions. She brings a powerful lens to the project by showing how narratives and participatory design can help coastal communities envision and co-create regenerative futures.

Eduardo Castillo Vinuesa is the director of TBA21–Academy and a transdisciplinary architect and curator known for investigating the infrastructures—food, territory, governance—that underpin contemporary ecological challenges.

The program includes a series of “Cabinet of Curiosities” sessions where each pilot location—Venice, Hamburg, Lisbon, Oeiras, Malmö, Genoa and the Delta—shares its unique journey through ocean-literacy initiatives, regenerative food experiments, living-with-water designs, multispecies encounters and digital storytelling. Alongside these conversations, the event offers interactive exhibition elements that invite attendees to engage directly with prototypes, research artefacts and co-designed tools developed across the pilots. A dedicated Project Constellation showcase highlights the people who shaped the project, traces its storytelling arc and presents toolkits created for future replication. 

WHY THIS EVENT MATTERS

Coastal regions worldwide are on the frontlines of climate change, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss and rapid socio-economic shifts. Making Waves presents a new design paradigm—one that moves beyond adaptation to regeneration, nurturing a revitalised relationship between sea, land and human communities. The event demonstrates how creativity, science and local engagement can converge to shape futures where coastal life not only survives, but flourishes.

BEHIND THE INITIATIVE

The final event is organised by:

TBA21–Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation – cultural partner and pilot leader
 

Magellan Circle – communications leader
 

Interactive Technologies Institute (Instituto Superior Técnico) – project coordination
 

Together with the full consortium of European partners, they bring deep expertise in design research, cultural engagement and technological innovation.

ABOUT BAUHAUS OF THE SEAS SAILS

Bauhaus of the Seas Sails is one of the first six “Lighthouse Demonstrators” of the New European Bauhaus, the European Commission initiative launched in 2020 to accelerate the Green Deal. The project unites 18 partners—from municipalities and universities to cultural institutions—across Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and Germany.

Its mission: to pioneer new transdisciplinary approaches to life in major coastal cities, rooted in ecological care, biodiversity protection and a commitment to building a sustainable, inclusive and beautiful future.

Learn more: bauhaus-seas.eu