Alum-directed Project Brews Coffee from Canal Water at Venice Biennale
You might not think that canal water would make good coffee, but a feat of ingenious environmental design and engineering is brewing espresso straight from a Venice lagoon.
Architecture alumnus Sean Gallagher ’00 is the project director for Canal Café, a must-see, must-taste installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), where Gallagher is a principal and the director of sustainable design, developed Canal Café in collaboration with the U.S.-based water systems engineers Natural Systems Utilities and the Italian based environmental engineering and water engineering company Sodai. As DS+R describes it, the pioneering project is “part espresso bar, part laboratory.”
“Canal Café features a hybrid natural-artificial purification system that accelerates the cleansing effects of tidal wetlands, ultimately rendering canal water potable. A transparent pipe draws water from the lagoon and channels it through a bio-filtration system that removes sludge and toxins. The water is split into two interdependent streams: one passes through a ‘micro-wetland,’ where salt-tolerant halophytes purify the water while retaining natural minerals so important for a local espresso; the other stream is subjected to an artificial filtration process to lower the salt content of the brackish water. The two streams are then blended back together, steamed, and passed through coffee grounds to brew espresso.”
The novelty and innovation of Canal Café has garnered widespread acclaim, including the Golden Lion award for the best participation in this 19th iteration of the Venice Architecture Biennale. In its award decision, the jury praised the project’s “transdisciplinary experimentation” and its “demonstration of how the city of Venice can be a laboratory to speculate how to live on the water, while offering a contribution to the public space of Venice.”
Gallagher, who was the 2015 Distinguished Alumnus in the School of Architecture, said that the opportunity to develop Canal Café was extraordinary and that he is humbled by the Golden Lion award.
“This project holds deep personal significance, as it gave me the chance to collaborate with my brother, Zach Gallagher, CEO of Natural Systems Utilities, to show how human infrastructure and natural systems can work together—cleansing urban environments and harnessing on-site resources to celebrate local culture.”
Canal Café was supported by Webuild, the Italy’s largest engineering and general contractor group.
“Having a coffee is of course a provocation,” said Webuild CEO Pietro Salini at the project launch. “It is something that gives to every one of us the idea of how important it is to deal with water, to conserve water, to stock water, to sanitize water, to keep water for future generations.”
Occurring every other year, the Venice Architecture Biennale is an international exhibition of architectural works from around the world. The 2025 exhibition runs through November 23 and is under the curation of the Italian architect Carlo Ratti.
In a statement to the New York Times, Ratti wrote that Canal Café explored “architecture at its most immediate point of interaction — where design meets necessity.” Clean water, he added, is not only a Venetian concern but also a global one:
“We could say that the project is a prototype of the global dilemmas we face in a time of increased climate change when our infrastructures must adapt.”
Photos courtesy of Sean Gallagher and DS+R.