Song of the Cricket is a built landscape exhibition and living lab that reintroduces an endangered insect to the Venice Lagoon, using design as a tool to reconstruct ecological relationships in public.

Developed for the 19th International Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2025), curated by Carlo Ratti, the project transforms a cultural exhibition into a functioning living laboratory.

Short Overview: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/SoJQCQnzDmsBnLv4rHxfOUGufDA?domain=1drv.ms

At its core is the Adriatic Marbled Bush-Cricket (Zeuneriana marmorata), a species once common to the lagoon’s wetlands but lost through decades of habitat degradation, altered hydrology, and mosquito-control practices.

The project operates across sites and scales—from the Biennale, where crickets were bred and their song made audible through sound art and music, to field deployments within the lagoon, where a new population is now being established.

Composition Link: https://youtu.be/9fYM106_4Ws?si=Aqruy7-n6SogdACp

Rather than focusing on a single site, it uses species reintroduction as a catalyst for reconstructing food webs and evaluating how lagoon ecosystems respond to flood defence infrastructure.

Central to the project are Mobile Habitats—modular floating and submersible systems that construct a new land–water interface. These vegetated platforms and enclosures support breeding, egg deposition, and staged translocation while operating as both infrastructure and experiment. Designed to move across the lagoon, they establish provisional wetland conditions in degraded areas, acting as starter ecosystems that can be deployed, tested, and adapted over time.

During the Biennale, a series of designed habitats—including breeding enclosures, submersible cages, and Mobile Habitats—formed constructed wetland environments within the Gaggiandre shipyard. Live crickets reproduced within these systems, while an immersive soundscape amplified their presence, transforming the space into a living, audible ecosystem.

Following the exhibition, eggs produced on site have been translocated into the Venice Lagoon. The crickets function as bioacoustic sentinels: their presence, reproduction, and sound provide measurable signals of ecosystem health. Over time, they will be deployed across hydrological gradients—from managed wetlands at WWF Oasi di Valle Averto to sites directly influenced by tidal exchange—establishing a distributed living laboratory.

This work unfolds within a rapidly changing landscape. Venice’s MoSE flood defence system, designed to protect the city from sea-level rise, is reshaping tidal patterns and the acqua alta floods that historically sustained the lagoon’s marsh ecologies. Song of the Cricket engages these shifting conditions directly, using species reintroduction and mobile habitat systems to test how restored sites respond to altered ecological processes and engineered environments.

The project introduces a methodology known as Designed Experiments, where landscape architecture structures ecological research in real time. Instead of fixed solutions, it establishes an adaptive framework in which design, monitoring, and management evolve together.

Developed through collaboration between the Urban Ecology and Design Lab (UEDLAB) at the University of Melbourne, Fondazione Museo Civico di Rovereto, Esapolis Museum, WWF Italy, CSDILA (Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration), ARUP, and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, the project integrates ecology, engineering, geospatial modelling, and sound.

At once installation, infrastructure, and research platform, Song of the Cricket proposes a new model for climate adaptation—one where design does not simply represent ecological futures, but actively constructs them.

Website: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bb06dd4eb5164d7eb9fc0dc7ddf1e16c

Biennale Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TESIP3a2qU4

Collaborative team members are listed below:

Organizations
University of Melbourne:
Faculty of Architecture, Building, & Planning (ABP)
Faculty of Fine Arts & Music
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
School of Biosciences
School of Computing and Information Systems
School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
In partnership with the Fondazione Museo Civico di Rovereto

Led by the Urban Ecology and Design Lab (UEDLAB) in Landscape Architecture (ABP)

UEDLAB Core Team Members
Alex Felson, UEDLAB Director, Chair of Landscape Architecture, University of Melbourne (UoM)
Vittorio Lovato, UEDLAB, UoM
Gina Dahl, UEDLAB, UoM
Harrison Baxter, UEDLAB, UoM

Andy Wilson, UEDLAB, UoM
Maria Bulmaga, UEDLAB, UoM

Author Collaboration
Filippo Maria Buzzetti, Fondazione Museo Civico di Rovereto
Miriama Young, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, UoM
Monica Lim, Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, UoM
Alice Kesminas, Faculty of Engineering & Information Science, UoM
Jagannath Aryal, Faculty of Engineering & Information Science, UoM
Theresa Jones, School of Biosciences, UoM
Michael Kearney, School of Biosciences, UoM
Ary Hoffmann, School of Biosciences, UoM
Michael-Shawn Fletcher, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, UoM
Natalie King, Advisory Curator

Academic Partners
Will Carter, Indigenous Partnerships, UoM
Luca Mazzon, DAFNAE, Università Degli Studi di Padova
Niche Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University
Axel Hochkirch, Musée National d’histoire naturelle Luxembourg

Industry Partners
Ross Dennis, Ecological Planning, ARUP
Sophie Gleeson, Acoustic Consultant, Sound Lab ARUP

Institutional Partners
Enzo Moretto, Esapolis Grande Museo Vivente degli Insetti
Marco Baldin, World Wildlife Fund, Oasi Valle Averto

Technical Partners
Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
Fab Lab, Machine Workshop and Maker Spaces, ABP, UoM
Servizi Tecnici, Venice Italy
WET Systems, Australia
Aflex Technology, New Zealand
Biomatrix Water Solutions, Scotland

With Special Thanks and additional support of:

Marco Baldin, World Wildlife Fund, Oasi Valle Averto
Ines Pevere, Parco del Mincio
World Biodiversity Association
Macgeorge Estate
Melbourne Biodiversity Institute
Jan Schapper
Zoom Torino
Parco Natura Viva