The first volume of Fertile Futures records, for future reference, the programme developed for the Portuguese Official Representation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia 2023. This first volume reveals the premises of Fertile Futures, presenting the theme of the protection, management and future of freshwater, from the procedural record of the first moments of the project. It gathers from the transcript of the interventions of experts and consultants in the first Assembly of Thought, in Lisbon, the sharing of knowledge that marked the start of the project laboratory, and accompanies the work of each of the seven Hydrogeography Workshops throughout the first months of the project. Bringing together the first daring ideas, along with the interdisciplinar diagnosis carried out in the diferente hydrogeographies, this initial volume reveals the origins of the proposed models that are presented in Venice, in the exhibition Fertile Futures.

The second volume of Fertile Futures presents the entire laboratory developed during the programme of the Portuguese Official Representation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia 2023. Firstly, it reveals the perspectives and referential frameworks of each of the seven approaches to the problems of Portuguese hydrogeographies in the Fertile Futures exhibition, on display in Venice from May to November 2023. The second chapter focuses on the second phase of the laboratory, which took the form of the International Summer Seminar and brought together, in July 2023 in Fundão, more than 70 students from multiple geographies to work in a practical seminar context with the architecture teams, in the search for the reasons underlying the contribution of architecture to the issues under study. The third part presents the critical essays resulting from the interventions at the Assemblies of Thought in Venice, Braga, Faro and Porto Santo. The fourth and final part, brings together the essays published in the course of the editorial partnership with e-flux Architecture.