Venice Water Lab

Venice is the oldest city of the future. In the post-sustainability era, it becomes the space where strategic visions, advanced planning, and institutional components converge to bring forth the Venice Water Lab—a centre of excellence conceived to build a better future for our planet.
Water today stands as our most precious and vital resource, and it is the element that will most profoundly shape the near future of our world. For this reason, the sea represents the ideal environment for constructing a new post-sustainable perspective—especially one as stratified and rich in environmental, logistical, socio-cultural, and historical-identity implications as that of Venice.
The Università Iuav di Venezia has established the Water Lab to make it an authoritative and distinguished international centre for higher education and research on water and marine issues.
The Venice Water Lab embodies, first and foremost, the lagoon environment—a confluence of freshwater and saltwater—and stands as a vibrant, contemporary fragment of a millennial history intimately linked to the resources of water and the sea. Venice, the lagoon city, is the ideal setting for investigating water-related phenomena in all their forms, manifestations, and implications, supported by an exceptional educational offering.
The central theme of the Venice Water Lab is the sea and the water cycle within post-sustainable equilibrium systems. Its objective is to reimagine the Blue Planet, positioning Italy at the forefront of Blue Growth and the Blue Economy.
Venice Water Lab represents the most innovative collaborative experiment among State Administrations, working together on a common project in a systemic and synergistic manner—conceptualizing and implementing concrete forms of planning while developing effective solutions to global challenges. 
The Università Iuav di Venezia is collaborating, among others, with the Venice Maritime Military Studies Institute (ISMM) of the Italian Navy and the National Research Council (CNR), with further partnerships with other universities and advanced research centres.
The academic programme promoted by the Università Iuav di Venezia within the Water Lab encompasses courses that explore the theme of water in all its dimensions: from infrastructures beneath and above the surface—both current and future—to physical communications; from the renewable energies of today and tomorrow to the spatial planning of the sea, a hallmark of Venetian studies.
In Venice, students and researchers could also benefit from the city's extraordinary quality, its rich cultural offerings, and its comprehensive services, within an international environment and an artistic and natural context unlike any other in the world.
The educational programme of the Water Lab is designed to cultivate professional profiles capable of meeting the demands of the public sector while anticipating the challenges of a rapidly evolving private labour market. All courses affiliated with the Water Lab are taught in English and offer various opportunities for joint degree programmes with international university partners.

Venezia è la più antica città del futuro. Nell’era della post-sostenibilità, diventa il luogo in cui visioni strategiche, progettualità avanzata e componenti istituzionali si uniscono per dare vita al Polo dell’Acqua, un centro di eccellenza pensato per costruire un futuro migliore per il nostro pianeta.
L’acqua è oggi la nostra risorsa più preziosa e importante e l’elemento che più inciderà sul futuro prossimo del pianeta. Per questa ragione il mare rappresenta l’ambiente ideale in cui costruire una nuova prospettiva post-sostenibile per il nostro mondo, in particolare un mare così stratificato e denso di implicazioni ambientali, logistiche, socio-culturali e storico-identitarie come quello veneziano. 
L’Università Iuav di Venezia ha creato il Polo dell’Acqua per farne un autorevole e qualificato centro internazionale di studi superiori e di ricerca sui temi dell’acqua e del mare.
Il Polo dell’Acqua esprime in primo luogo l’ambiente lagunare, punto di incontro tra acque dolci e salate, e tassello vivo e contemporaneo di una storia millenaria legata alle risorse dell’acqua e del mare. Venezia, la città lagunare, è il luogo ideale per studiare i fenomeni legati all’acqua e alle sue forme, manifestazioni e implicazioni, supportati da un’offerta formativa di eccellenza.
Il Polo dell’Acqua ha come tema centrale il mare e il ciclo dell’acqua all’interno dei sistemi di equilibrio post-sostenibili. L’obiettivo è ripensare il Pianeta Blu, ponendo l’Italia in posizione di avanguardia nella prospettiva della Blue Growth e della Blue Economy.
Si tratta del più innovativo esperimento di collaborazione tra le Amministrazioni dello Stato che lavorano su un progetto comune, in modo sistemico e sinergico, pensando e operando attraverso concrete forme di progettualità e sviluppando soluzioni efficaci per le sfide globali. L’Università Iuav di Venezia opera in accordo, fra gli altri, con l’Istituto di Studi Militari Marittimi di Venezia (ISMM) della Marina Militare ed il Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), a cui, in futuro, si uniranno altre università e centri di studi avanzati.
L’offerta formativa promossa dall’Università Iuav di Venezia nell’ambito del Polo dell’Acqua comprende corsi che esplorano il tema dell’acqua in tutte le sue declinazioni: dalle infrastrutture sotto e sopra la superficie, attuali e future, alle comunicazioni fisiche, dalle energie rinnovabili di oggi e di domani alla pianificazione spaziale del mare, da sempre un tratto distintivo degli studi veneziani.
A Venezia, studenti e ricercatori potranno infine beneficiare della qualità straordinaria della città, della sua ricca offerta culturale e dei suoi servizi, in un ambiente internazionale e in un contesto artistico e naturale unico al mondo.
L’offerta formativa del Polo dell’Acqua mira a creare profili professionali capaci di rispondere alle esigenze del settore pubblico e di anticipare le sfide di un mercato del lavoro privato in rapida evoluzione.
I corsi afferenti al Polo dell’Acqua sono tutti in lingua inglese e offrono diverse possibilità di laurea congiunta con partner universitari internazionali. 

Unique Master's Degree in Energy Engineering in Italy, this innovative Master's Degree trains engineers to protect coastal areas from environmental threats and to manage the complex processes involved in designing infrastructure and systems aimed at achieving sustainable development goals.
Venice, at the heart of a highly diverse and fragile ecosystem, is internationally recognized as a paradigm of resilience to climate change. As such, it is the ideal city to host our courses, focused on environmental management and protection and addressing connections among coastal environment, energy, and climate change.
This Master's program is offered in collaboration with the Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR) of the National Research Council (CNR), also based in Venice, enriching the curriculum with hands-on experiments and advanced calculation and simulation tools used by leading research institutes. Students can explore coastal and marine sites of high environmental value in the surrounding area and engage in experimental activities directly linked to the topics they study.
Students also benefit from the well-established student mobility network of the Università Iuav di Venezia. Internships are organized in collaboration with both public and private organizations, providing students with the opportunity to apply their academic knowledge in real-world settings.
Graduates will be equipped to plan and manage large-scale interventions in coastal environments, collaborating with technicians and designers from other disciplines.

This Master's degree offers a competitive education within the national context on topics related to mobility and transport. 
Venice, an incomparable model of architecture and urban planning, is also the ideal context in which to study mobility issues: the main modes of transport, from water to land and air, operate and interact within a single integrated system. The mobility and transport aspects covered by the program are diverse and provide a comprehensive view of the challenges ahead. In contrast, other programs focus mainly on transport-related aspects from a sector-specific perspective (e.g., safety, logistics, vehicle design).
The Master's degree also anticipates the consequences of an ongoing global trend in transport and mobility: the digitalization and automation of the sector. These developments require interaction with increasingly complex tools and a broader range of skills, all of which necessitate appropriate technical training. To address these challenges, the Master's program aims to train future infrastructure and mobility managers. 
Students will benefit from the faceted Iuav's educational offerings: internships with major companies and organizations in the sector, study abroad opportunities, and integrated workshops.
Graduates will be professionals able to face and solve complex challenges in the planning, design, implementation, management, maintenance, and preservation of large-scale transport works and infrastructure.

The MSc in Urban and Spatial Planning for Transition is a Master of Science entirely dedicated to spatial planning issues from a project perspective, with an experimental and integrated approach that combines science and design. Based on the University’s decades-long commitment to urban and spatial planning, but also the emerging field of maritime spatial planning, this program will introduce important and current issues related to the use of limited resources, the impact of climate change and the reconstruction of natural disasters. The program obtained the Quality Recognition of AESOP Association of European Schools of Planning.
The role of cities and communities is reinforced by the participation of the University of Venice in the “European Alliance Pioneer” (2025-2028), dedicated to the implementation of SD 11 of the 2030 Agenda. Furthermore, the program has been recognized as by UNESCO as Ocean Decade Contribution (n. 555).
The two-year program integrates scientific and design-based disciplines in an innovative and multidisciplinary approach, covering new issues such as circularity, land and environmental planning for disasters, coastal and maritime planning, as well landscape planning in a climate change scenario. This new program combines theoretical knowledge with workshops and practice-based learning, providing students with a comprehensive set of skills and advanced techniques for spatial planning in all contexts (urban, rural and maritime).
The course combines two professional profiles, one dedicated to urban and territorial issues and the other to coastal and maritime issues. The urban and territorial profile requires expertise capable of managing complex situations related to land-use conflicts, local regeneration and the use of nature-based solutions. The profile science and design for maritime spatial planning provides new specific expertise due to the obligation to implement maritime spatial plans, established at international level and at European level by Directive 89/2014/EU, but also in several countries in all continents. 
These emerging professional profiles, which are in high demand internationally, emphasize innovative and complex systems thinking and the use of multi-level competences. Graduates will understand the importance of developing urban, territorial and maritime spaces as a new frontier for sustainable growth and will appreciate the tangible and intangible values associated with these environments. 
The course trains professionals with the necessary skills to work as officials or consultants in the public sector (international institutions, cities, regional authorities, etc.) as well as in the private sector involved in urban, territorial and maritime or coastal zone activities. Graduates can work as designers and managers of urban, environmental, territorial and maritime planning processes at all levels; designers of sectoral, experimental and strategic plans; designers of public policies, as well ICT for spatial planning experts.
At the end of the two-year program, graduates in Urban and Spatial Planning for Transition can take the Italian State examination and join Section A of the Board of Architects, Spatial Planners, Landscape Architects and Conservators (Spatial Planning Section).

Education activities dedicated to maritime spatial planning will be developed in collaboration with the National Research Council-Institute of Marine Sciences and other international institutions. Università Iuav di Venezia provides its students with a unique and internationally recognized educational environment, in partnership with several European and non-EU institutions and universities and a double degree with Tongji University. Università Iuav di Venezia addresses contemporary challenges such as sustainability, resilience, rational and circular use of resources through innovative methods. Students engage in highly professional training activities that integrate traditional and experimental approaches. These activities include international workshops, study exchanges and opportunities to collaborate with prominent international agencies and the European Commission. For the final module, students can study abroad through the Erasmus+ program to complete their thesis.