Training and update programme for professional associations

LANDSCAPE DESIGN TO SAFEGUARD THE TERRITORY

Hydrogeological instability and various natural calamities increasingly stimulate a frantic search for so-called “good practices” as regards maintenance or safety work in local areas at risk.
The complexity of these phenomena requires up-line analysis so that research can extend its field of analysis beyond the specificity of mere “technical solutions”. We must broaden the outlook in order to understand, within the scope of landscape design, the critical aspects as well as the value and potential of systems used to model the ground.
The landscape, viewed as a living expression of cultures and practices operating within a systemic vision capable of shaping living and production environments in terms of beauty and sustainability, is an essential landmark in tackling contemporary and near future issues.
From this point of view, it is essential to understand and stimulate the role played by the cultural and environmental heritage defined by water.
The history of ground modelling has handed down a heritage of water management techniques intended to support specific production processes as well as ensure land safeguards.
The landscapes created by water – especially those on the banks of rivers, agricultural reclamation areas, lagoons and delta areas – can be reinterpreted in all their complexity in order to acknowledge their value as system assets, thereby helping to identify possible new projects that include the protection and promotion of the landscape as such.
In these cases, projects can only be based on a specific process of reading, re-design and re-interpretation of the physical and phenomenological features of places and especially the “ground architecture” defined by water management activities and the various current and historical ways they were exploited or produced.
The features of water landscapes are in any case determined and governed by an infrastructure network that ensures the hydrogeological life and balance of land standing above the water line.
Riverbanks are home to numerous production sites that exploit the features of the river landscape, where everything make use of or regulates the waterway, taking on a role of infrastructure and essential structures for every process. In addition, the reclamation system and production spheres in lagoon or delta areas are clearly built by a network of works on the ground still today configured to regulate the space occupied by water. Reclamation basins, rice fields, salt pans and fish farms are important spheres of food production marked off by embankments, pump houses and water control systems.
These territorial contexts are home to valuable architectures and locations shaped by the various processes involved, which the project can re-interpret into new forms through a strategic vision that, within the overall system, retain values reflecting the quality and character of the landscape.

MARZENEGO: A METROPOLITAN RIVER
RECYCLING SCENARIOS IN RESPONSE TO URBAN SPRAWL

This report investigates possible new life cycles for the Venice metropolitan area. It will describe the recycling strategies developed in response to the settlement, environmental and hydraulic conditions of a rather fragile area within the scope of a River Contract, i.e. shared decision-making approach. The River Marzenego is the testing ground for these considerations.
As it crosses the Venice mainland, the River Marzenego encounters different settlement and environmental situations: from the centre of a medium-sized city such as Mestre through to its suburbs, that at the same time also configures the linear progress of urban sprawl, as well as small-medium towns and the grid-like Roman settlement pattern. At the same time, the River Marzenego also crosses fragments of countryside squeezed between the urban settlements for which it acts as a backbone, through the broader areas of urbanized countryside, where the main natural reserves play an important role.
This variety of situations and environments and the role the River Marzenego has managed to retain as one of the few elements of continuity in settlement, environmental and relational spheres in this context means it has taken on a truly metropolitan character.
The recycling strategies implemented in this local area have responded to the need to achieve greater integration between agricultural areas, the functionality of hydraulic systems and the way collective open spaces are used, in both built-up and unconstructed spheres.
The hypothesis underlying these trials is that renewed integration between all these various aspects will help direct the metropolitan territory towards recapitalisation that in turn will offset characteristic imbalances: individual and collective mobility costs, low energy efficiency of social and economic processes, insufficient availability of public spaces for social events and recreation, poor quality of the urban scene and substandard hygiene conditions. In addition to these aspects, in environmental terms the hydraulic balance is also evidently imbalanced, there is no ecological continuity and farmland is exposed to progressive erosion.
The River Contract is a context where these considerations and hypotheses have been tested through continuous dialogue with associations, local administrations, cultural institutions and technical organisations. This work context has ensured that the representations, interpretations and design proposals developed, even when they attempted to provide answers to specific topics, have been placed within frameworks of more general common sense.