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Editor's note: This story was adapted from a feature on the AAP website. A previous Cornellians roundup of alumni, faculty, and students participating in the Biennale can be found here.

By Cornellians staff

While the Venice Architecture Biennale opened in mid-May, one of its most notable installations made a dramatic entrance in early September. Titled AquaPraça ("water square" in Portuguese), the work comprises a floating public plaza that was transported to its site via waterway.

The installation, at the Biennale's Italian Pavilion, was created by J. Meejin Yoon, BArch ’95, and Eric Höweler, BArch ’94, MArch ’96, in collaboration with CRA–Carlo Ratti Associati.

Meejin Yoon and Eric Höweler stand near a pool on the AquaPraça exhibit. — provided

(The two Cornellians cofounded the design firm Höweler + Yoon; CRA's founding partner and namesake, Italian architect and educator Carlo Ratti, is also the 2025 Biennale's curator.)

"AquaPraça is designed as a platform, both literal and figurative, for deepening our collective understanding and experience of sea level rise and the impacts of climate change on global cities and communities," says Yoon, dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. "It is an immersive civic space for advancing public discourse, fostering international cooperation, and seeking collective solutions."

AquaPraça is designed as a platform, both literal and figurative, for deepening our collective understanding and experience of sea level rise and the impacts of climate change on global cities and communities.
AAP Dean J. Meejin Yoon, BArch ’95

Constantly retaining and releasing water, the submersible structure uses principles of displacement and buoyancy to maintain a minimal freeboard—the space between a ship's waterline and its deck—that rises and falls in response to both occupancy and ecological changes.

After Venice, AquaPraça will take a transatlantic journey to Belém, Brazil, where it will be featured at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in November 2025, before becoming a permanent part of the city's infrastructure. (Known as COP30, it's the world's largest international climate conference.)

Spanning more than 400 square meters, the structure—which debuted as a scale model during the Biennale's opening in May—can hold up to 150 people for exhibitions, workshops, symposia, and cultural events.

The AquaPraça exhibit is towed into a Venice canal — provided

"Carefully calibrated to its environmental context, AquaPraça adjusts to water levels and occupancy in real time, allowing visitors to meet the sea at eye level," says Höweler. "Its sloping surfaces and shifting levels embody a delicate equilibrium."