Angelo Renna Floats a 39-Tree Island on Florence's Arno

Thirty-nine mature trees would float down the Arno River — that's the core of Firenze Little Island, a demountable public platform proposed by Renna Studio and architect Angelo Renna for the heart of Florence, Italy. The project sits along the Pescaia weir, where the river's water flow is regulated and the current slows enough to create a sheltered stretch of water.

The island is built for the calm months. Renna envisions the floating public space operating between May and September, hosting cultural gatherings, orchestral performances, and recreation before it's taken apart ahead of autumn and winter flood conditions.

How does a floating island actually work?

The structure stays deliberately simple. Prefabricated floating pontoons — the same modules commonly used to build jetties and floating platforms — carry a lightweight timber beam substructure topped with finished decking. The whole system is modular and reversible, meaning crews can break it down without destroying it.

Around the central open-air deck runs a segmented, circular planter ring roughly one meter (3.3 feet) high, holding the 39 mature trees. That planted perimeter does double duty. It marks the boundary of the public space, and it works as an environmental buffer, moderating the local microclimate through natural shading and air circulation.

What happens when the floods come?

The short answer: the island leaves. The pontoons, decking modules, and segmented planters are all designed to be disassembled, transported, and stored off-site for the season. Even the trees get a plan. Their root systems would be maintained in municipal nurseries until the island is reassembled the following spring.

That seasonal logic is the project's core argument. Renna frames it as a circular, low-impact strategy for folding the historic riverfront back into Florence's civic fabric — without permanently altering a waterway that regularly swells with autumn and winter rains.

A paused project with real backing

Firenze Little Island isn't a pure paper concept. It was originally proposed with municipal backing in 2024, and it gained early support from Heritage Superintendent Antonella Ranaldi in early 2026, before municipal plans paused. Its current status is a proposal, but the trajectory shows it moved through institutional channels rather than existing only as a render.

The siting matters too. Along the Pescaia area, the water flow slows down, creating the sheltered zone that makes a seasonal floating deck plausible at all. One of the project's drawings takes its cue from Francesco Rosselli's famous Pianta della Catena, the iconic 1471 bird's-eye representation of Florence, placing the island within a centuries-long tradition of imaging the city from above its river.

Whether the island returns to the municipal agenda is now the open question — and if it does, Florence would gain a public space that appears each May and vanishes before the Arno rises.