The Venice Lagoon Foundation seeks to preserve the health and vitality of the environment on which an international treasure, the City of Venice, depends: the Venetian Lagoon. The lagoon is a 212.3 square-mile tidal estuary that has historically shaped, and continues to shape, life in Venice. Through private donations, the Foundation supports scholarship, research and public education about the relationship between the City of Venice and its Lagoon in terms of design, form, culture and nature. The Foundation is especially interested in addressing, through design thinking, current pressures on the quality of life in Venice including the effects of: pollution, erosion and sedimentation, a graying and shrinking population, lack of affordable housing, tourism, rising sea levels, changing economic conditions and industrialization. Through a unique joint venture with the faculty and students in architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota, the Venice Lagoon Foundation also supports applications of design thinking that will help the communities in the Lagoon envision a sustainable future and transfer those ideas for applications to the United States.