On November 1, the Humanitas360 Institute hosted the panel “Hemp Horizons: Cultivating Sustainability, Socioeconomic Development, and Environmental Innovation” at the Speakers’ Corner of the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture in Italy. The event marked the conclusion of H360’s participation in “Biennale Architettura 2025,” where the institute presented an installation built with Hemp panels—celebrating 10 years since its founding and furthering, on the international stage, its advocacy campaign for the regulation of industrial hemp in Brazil.
Held as part of the GENS Public Programme, the debate brought together experts to discuss hemp as a versatile resource capable of driving sustainable solutions. Participants included Fabiana Ferreira Lopes, H360 Board member and researcher at Fondazione Giorgio Cini; Piero Bonadeo, Duke University professor and H360 advisor; Werner Schönthaler, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of the Schönthaler Group; Professor Stefano Bona from the Department of Agronomy, Food, Natural Resources and Environment at the Università degli Studi di Padova; and Maddalena Cappello Fusaro, a Brazilian doctoral researcher at the same institution with a master’s degree in sustainable agriculture.
Professor Bona and researcher Cappello Fusaro highlighted the plant’s regenerative properties for the environment and climate change, emphasizing Brazil’s potential as a Hemp grower. Bona mentioned receiving, in the week prior to the panel, a delegation from the Brazilian government including representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Embrapa, who visited Padua in northeastern Italy to learn about the plant’s cultivation methodologies and techniques.
Werner Schönthaler addressed the challenges in creating a Hemp production chain for the construction industry, highlighting regulatory issues and citing France as a reference for its clear and defined rules for the industry, both in cultivation and in construction and textile applications. The Schönthaler Group is the supplier of the Hemp panels used by H360 in the installation presented at the Biennale.
Open to the public, the debate was part of a program that takes place almost daily at the Speakers’ Corner located in the Corderie dell’Arsenale, creating a dynamic platform for reflection on our shared future in response to the climate crisis. The theme also reflects the curatorial proposal “IntelliGens,” developed by Carlo Ratti for the 19th Architecture Biennale.
The Humanitas360 Institute’s participation in Venice is the result of a partnership with Instituto Ficus and architects Pedro Mendes da Rocha and Chico Gitahy, with whom, since the event’s opening on May 8, the installation “Ancestral Innovation: Hemp, Sustainability and the Future of Architecture” has been presented, inviting visitors to explore the applications of the plant—a Cannabis variant without psychoactive properties—in architecture and various types of human activity over the past 2,000 years. Read more about this work by clicking here.
