Wetland Designers

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YEAR
2025
FOCUS
wetland restoration / ecological design / collective imagination
LOCATION
Foce dell’Isonzo Nature Reserve, Italy
FORMAT
artscience research / participatory design project
Wetland Designers explores how scientific knowledge, collective imagination and emerging technologies can contribute to envisioning the restoration of a damaged ecosystem, transforming a real wetland restoration process into a participatory experiment in science communication.
> PROJECT

Wetland Designers is an artscience and participatory design project developed around the ecological restoration of approximately ten hectares of former agricultural land within the Foce dell’Isonzo Nature Reserve.

The project invited students and local communities to imagine possible future wetlands through drawing and collective design. These speculative landscapes were then interpreted through a machine-learning system developed with Isonlab AI company, generating visualisations that connected human imagination with the ecological constraints and possibilities of the site.

Satellite imagery, environmental data and scientific research provided a further layer of observation, allowing imagined landscapes to enter into dialogue with the actual transformation of the territory.

Rather than proposing a single vision of restoration, Wetland Designers investigates how science communication can become a participatory process: a space where scientific knowledge, technological tools and collective imagination contribute to thinking about possible ecological futures.

> MY ROLE

Curator and project developer.

I developed the concept and overall framework of Wetland Designers, coordinating the dialogue between ecological research, technological development, artistic practices and participatory activities.

My work focused on designing the project as a science communication process in which scientific knowledge, collective imagination and creative experimentation could inform each other. I curated the different phases of the project, facilitated collaborations between researchers, artists, communicators, developers, teachers and students, and developed the framework for its public presentation.

> RESEARCH LINES

wetlands / ecological restoration / participatory design / machine learning / satellite imagery / environmental data / collective imagination / science communication

> COLLABORATIONS
SUPPORTED BY
Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia
Municipality of Staranzano
Festival dell'Acqua
Liminal Research ETS
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Foce dell’Isonzo Nature Reserve – Isola della Cona
Isonlab srl
Facta.eu
Consorzio di Bonifica della Venezia Giulia
ARTISTIC RESEARCH
Martina Stella – artist in residence
Organic Audio – Emanuele Pertoldi, Camilla Isola, Andrea Peluso
Filippo Gobbato – videomaking
CULTURE + EDUCATION
Institute ISIS BEM of Staranzano
> MEDIA
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