Shaping the City Venice 2025

Details

Following the success of previous editions in Venice, Chicago, and New Orleans, Shaping the City is returning to the floating city for two days of conversations focusing on housing and community. The sixth edition of the conference, curated by ECC Italy in the context of its biennial architecture exhibition Time Space Existence, will take place at Palazzo Michiel on 21 and 22 November 2025, and will be streamed online on the YouTube channel of ECC Italy. Admission is free upon registration on Eventbrite.

The event brings together local and international academics, urban planners, designers, architects, policymakers, and organisations, with the aim of addressing challenges facing today’s cities and their communities. The conference recognises the crucial role that architecture and urban planning play in shaping people’s interaction with their cities and their well-being. Previous editions have involved international architects and institutions including Odile Decq, Kengo Kuma, Snøhetta, Aldayjover, MIT, IOM International Organisation for Migration, and UNDP.

This year’s conference turns its focus to two of the most urgent and interconnected challenges facing cities today: housing and community. Across the globe, from long-established urban cores to emerging cities at the frontlines of growth, questions of affordability, resilience, and belonging are reshaping how communities are living together.

By bringing to the table examples of housing models and community-led initiatives from different contexts around the world, this edition highlights how shared struggles—rising inequality, climate pressures, and spatial fragmentation—are met with innovative responses that blend design, governance, and civic agency. The conversations emphasise that housing and community are not separate entities, but deeply intertwined foundations for building more just, inclusive, and sustainable urban futures.

The Panels
Housing for a Shared Future
Where we live shapes how we live. In the face of growing inequality, climate challenges, and a severe shortage of affordable homes, the urgency to redefine housing globally is clear. This panel explores housing not simply as shelter, but as a civic right that supports dignity, agency, and collective well-being. The discussion moves beyond technical solutions, situating the housing crisis within its political, cultural, and architectural dimensions.

Key questions anchor the conversation: What defines good housing today? What policies and governance structures can support equitable, adaptable, and accessible living environments? How can architecture improve quality of life without increasing costs? The panel will examine innovative strategies such as incremental housing, co-living, and modular models, along with the reuse and transformation of existing spaces—positioning housing as a tool for social and environmental change.

Community: Building Together
In an era where cities face deepening social divides and rapid urban transformations, community-led development emerges as a powerful model for reclaiming agency and fostering equity. This panel explores how collective agency can reshape the built environment and strengthen bonds of belonging, examining how residents can co-design their neighbourhoods and emphasising participation, co-creation, and the role of users in shaping environments.

It highlights collaborations between governments, developers, and citizens, asking how new governance and financing models can place communities at the centre of decision-making processes. Public space is approached as a common good and an essential setting for building identity, inclusion, and solidarity, with strategies for designing inclusive, multigenerational, and resilient environments. The panel promotes a vision of community-led urban change, in which collaboration, belonging, and social justice shape the development of tomorrow’s cities.