Emotional Geographies of the Mediterranean explores the connection between space, emotion, and memory in coastal areas. Through emotional mapping, the project investigates the relationship between subjective perception and spatial configuration, questioning how environments influence everyday well-being and the quality of urban experience.

The aim is to construct an experiential narrative that offers an alternative reading of the Mediterranean—not only as a physical space, but as a sensory and identity-based phenomenon. By analyzing diverse coastal geographies, the project reveals a layered emotional landscape shaped by tensions, memories, and collective experience.

As part of this investigation, a set of drawings, maps, and videos was developed to represent the Italian coastline, linking each province to its main geographical features and corresponding spatial tags. From this foundation, we analyzed the top 50 Flickr images from each coastal city. Each image was processed through a machine learning model that calculated valence and arousal scores (ranging from -4 to 4) and identified the most likely emotion conveyed. These values were then interpreted to determine the dominant emotional tone associated with each location.

Emotional Geographies of the Mediterranean is exhibited in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Architettura 2025, curated by Guendalina Salimei under the theme Terrae Aquae.