CANAL

CAFE

Canal Café draws water from the Arsenale Lagoon to create the best espresso in Italy with a distinct flavor of Venice.

While the canals and lagoon are the source of the city’s historical wealth and beauty, they also elicit fears of contamination and flooding—concerns that are heightened in an era of mass tourism and climate change. Canal Café reaches beneath the photogenic surface of the city by converting these brackish waters into the comforting scent and taste of espresso—the irreducible Italian pleasure. The public will drink Venice.

Canal Café is part espresso bar, part laboratory. A hybrid natural-artificial purification system accelerates the cleansing effects of tidal wetlands, rendering canal water potable. A transparent pipe draws water from the lagoon, channeling it through a bio-filtration system that removes sludge and toxins. The water is split into two interdependent streams: one flows through a natural membrane bioreactor, a “micro-wetland” where salt-tolerant halophytes facilitate purification but retain minerals; the other undergoes artificial filtration, reverse osmosis, and UV disinfection to produce distilled water. The streams are then mixed, steamed, and forced through coffee grounds to produce espresso. Unused purified water irrigates an adjacent landscape installation.

Canal Café recieved the Golden Lion for the best participation in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro worked in collaboration with the US based water systems engineers Natural Systems Utilities, and the Italian based environmental engineering and water engineering company Sodai. The project was supported by WeBuild.