Found Nigel Coates Architectural Assocation BiennaleVenice2025

Margherissima at Forte Marghera

John Hill | 7. May 2025

All photos by John Hill/World-Architects

Four days ahead of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition opening to the public, the Venice Architecture Biennale opened Margherissima, a Special Project at Forte Marghera in Mestre. The project, designed by Nigel Coates and students from the Architectural Association in London, imagines a postindustrial future for Marghera, an industrial area on the edge of the Venetian lagoon.

Given that Margherissima was the first part of the Biennale to officially open, a number of VIPs were at Forte Maghera on the morning of May 6, including the Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, and Carlo Ratti, curator of this year's Biennale.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Ratti explained how Margherissima fits within the theme he devised for the exhibition—Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.—particularly the collective aspect, given the way students worked individually but also collaboratively, bringing their separate projects together into one whole. Ratti also said that architect Nigel Coates submitted the project through the Biennale's open call, which was set up last year to provide a bottom-up component for the exhibition.

Following Ratti's comments, AA director Ingrid Schroder spoke, calling the project a “space of imagination, a space of opening up of questions.” She then introduced Coates, “a provocateur and man of action,” who described the project in some depth. Our photos from the exhibition follow, with commentary from our impressions and some commentary from Coates.

Walking into the brick-vaulted space of the Polveriera austriaca (Austrian armory), visitors are confronted with a video and a book.

The video wall blocks a view of the large model that occupies most of the long space. The AA students worked for nine months on the project, with the final result being, “a jigsaw,” according to Coates, made up of the students' individual creations.

The overall plan shows canals reintroduced into the neighborhood, while the individual proposals are a hodgepodge, even using readymade materials like egg crates.

Coates described three project goals. 1: Bridging between Venice and terra firma.

2: Making a proposal that is sensitive, playful, and inventive. (Coates also said their proposal would retain the salt marshes that are integral to the area's ecosystem.)

3: Creating a bricolage of Maghera and Venice—something familiar but new.

One thing that drew Coates to the area was its towers and smokestacks; these signs of industry are projected on the side, serving as a backdrop to portions of the model.

The far end of the space features a head—a Coates oddity?—and view toward Venice from Marghera.

Margherissima, a project by the Architectural Association (AA) and Nigel Coates, with Guan Lee of Grymsdyke Farm, John Maybury, Michael Keverne and Jan Bunge, is on display at the Austrian armory (Polveriera austriaca) at Forte Maghera, Mestre, until November 23, 2025.