LagunaLibre will be a unique meeting place and pit stop for encountering people from all the world (and Venetians of course), and to discover wine and food traditions, enjoying arts, music and culture from the local to the global. Based on all these ingredients it will work as an idea generator and incubator for new collaborative projects among creative change makers, driven by ideals of a multicultural, sustainable and just society.
As its first business initiative Smart Venice has launched LagunaLibre, an urban regeneration project in Venice, a cultural centre and bistrot in an old renovated wharehouse at the forefront of ecologically building techinques in the historical town. The centre will promote a rich agenda of intercultural and artistics events based on participatory design thanks to mobile technologies and aiming at fostering creative relations and socialization processes in a complex urban context and to support social change thanks to creative encounters between local neighborhoods and an international public of global creative people, artists and activists visiting and collaborating with the centre.
The project is based on renovating a portion of an ancient and prestigious building in Cannaregio, hosting the French Embassy in Venice during the XIX century, to transform it into ‘Laguna Libre’, a cultural- art centre and restaurant, grounded in ecological and solidarity values and a sustainable view of Venice’s future. The initiative has attracted financing and support of the Banca Etica whose local group of shareholders has rated it extremely positively according to its set of social and environmental ethics indicators.
Ethics in Working Relations, Environmental Sustainability, Family Friendlyness will be the main peculiar traits of Laguna Libre and its offer.
LagunaLibre will open in the summer of 2016.
Smart Venice 