Our natural and constructed environment is the defining character of a student’s ability to both create and inspire an education which deeply transforms and revolutionizes their collegiate career. The architectural response on Poveglia Island is representational of an ecologically sensitive concept producing an academic hands-on experience which facilitates research both inside and outside the laboratory. Established as a world-renowned campus and research center focused on the bioregional and environmental sciences, the Universities emphasis on the viability of both the island and the region’s natural resources is fundamental. Cultivating the core of the campus through an agricultural system, Poveglia becomes a micro city with an emphasis on self-sufficiency and the education of modern agrarian techniques. Bordered by the existing brick architecture, a field of crops becomes the primary source of sustenance alongside an emphasis on fishing and the cultivation of the surrounding aquatic waterscapes.

Exploiting and functionalizing the canal, the campus engages directly with the Venetian lagoon. New arteries drawn from the estuary begin weaving the fabric of the islands interior creating an embedded micro urban environmental which fuels the hydro-dynamic systems of the University.

On Poveglia, nature and architecture interact to promote an ubiquitous health – both for the inhabitants and the lagoon. Designed as a large Bio Purification Plant, Poveglia’s new landmark, a series of identifiable interacting duomo typologies, becomes a center for organic waste breakdown – a facility where educational studies can focus on the detrimental qualities of industrial and residential chemical fallout. Acting again as the sacrificial lamb for Venice, Poveglia becomes a testing ground for both academic ingenuity and bio remediation. Collecting invasive pollutants and byproducts flushed into the lagoon system, Poveglia’s purification plant acts as bio-sponge, providing chambers and damns which house beneficial microbes to proliferate and entrap lagoon pollutants that interfere with the normal breakdown of organic waste. Each Bio chamber allows researches to monitor the diverse lagoon ecosystem. All of the chambers are  composed of complex microclimates - utilized to develop sustainable solutions for wetland regions such as the Venetian lagoon. Through the harmonious unity of educational programs and beneficial working facilities, Poveglia creates an environment synonymous with education and lagoon purification.