SUPERFLEX floods courtyard to imagine interspecies futures
From April 14th to August 2nd, 2026, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati present There Are Other Fish In The Sea, a site-specific installation by SUPERFLEX in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi. Conceived for the institution’s ongoing Palazzo Strozzi Future Art program (find designboom’s previous coverage here), the project introduces a speculative environment that repositions the role of art within urgent ecological narratives, while activating a direct dialogue with the 15th-century Renaissance architecture of the building.
Curated by Arturo Galansino, the installation transforms the historic courtyard into a shallow body of water, from which eight pink travertine columns emerge. These vertical elements are conceived as future refuges for marine life, proposing a form of ‘interspecies architecture’ that anticipates rising sea levels and the gradual submersion of urban environments.
SUPERFLEX. There Are Other Fish In The Sea, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 2026 | image by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO studio
from palazzo strozzi, florence to Kunsthal Spritten in aalborg
Marking sixty years since the 1966 Florence flood, the work frames the courtyard as both a memory site and a speculative landscape. Danish art collective SUPERFLEX challenges anthropocentric perspectives, inviting visitors to imagine coexistence not as dominance, but as negotiation between human and non-human life forms.
Developed specifically for Florence, the installation will later travel to Kunsthal Spritten in Aalborg, Denmark, where it will be reconfigured for the institution’s opening in 2027. Produced in collaboration with Kunsthal Spritten, the project extends beyond its temporary setting, positioning itself within a longer trajectory of adaptive reuse and evolving exhibition formats. By staging a submerged architectural scenario within one of Florence’s most iconic Renaissance spaces, SUPERFLEX continues Palazzo Strozzi’s ambitious courtyard program, following interventions by artists such as KAWS, Ai Weiwei, and Olafur Eliasson. Here, the collective’s vision unfolds as both poetic speculation and critical framework, asking how architecture might respond when the boundaries between land and sea, human and non-human, begin to dissolve.
SUPERFLEX, As Close As We Get, 2022. Photo: SUPERFLEX
All Is Water, 2023. Still image. Photo: SUPERFLEX
All Is Water, 2023. Still image. Photo: SUPERFLEX
All Is Water, 2023. Still image. Photo: SUPERFLEX
project info:
name: There Are Other Fish In The Sea
artist: SUPERFLEX | @superflexstudio
location: Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
dates: April 14th – August 2nd, 2026
curator: Arturo Galansino
collaborator: Kunsthal Spritten, Aalborg
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