Briccole (Italy, Venice)

Between sea and land, the Venetian lagoon creates a landscape of unstable balances. Here, the water is neither fresh nor completely salty: it is a brackish lagoon , where the currents of the Adriatic meet the contributions of the continent. These variations in salinity sculpt a living, moving environment, where light and matter seem to breathe together.

Wooden stakes , called briccole , are used to mark out navigable channels and anchor gondolas . Driven into the mud, they are slowly eaten away by wood-eating marine worms ( Teredo navalis ), which transform them into works of natural erosion. Replaced every ten years, these markers are both a maritime tool and a symbol of a city built on the temporary .

Beneath the surface, salt works the wood fibers like time sculpts stone.

Venice lives in this tension: a world that is both solid and dissolved, precise and vulnerable.