Amphibia, a Utopia for Venice

AMPHIBIA a Utopia for Venice

Nathan Fredrick

Flore Guichot

Francesco Lombardi

AMPHIBIA a Utopia for Venice

Nathan Fredrick

Flore Guichot

Francesco Lombardi

AMPHIBIA, a Utopia for Venice

2020-2021

Università Iuav di Venezia

by Nathan Fredrick Flore Guichot Francesco Lombardi

supervised by Paola Viganò Alvise Pagnacco

Acknowledgements Before entering this work we would like to express our gratitude to all the people who were in a way involved in the creation of this book, each in their own specific way, by sharing their knowledge with us, guiding us, pushing us a little further, by being patient on moments that all that mattered for us was work, or just listening to what we had to say.

First and foremost we would like to thank our professors and supervisors Paola Viganò & Alvise Pagnacco. Paola Viganò for being demanding as a professor, always asking us to seek a bit further than we usually would. But also, through lectures, reviews or some occasional meetings, for the ways that she made us look at things during the last two years. Alvise Pagnacco for the support and the presence, at all times, to answer our most pressing questions and guarantee the organisation amongst us and not to forget, the incredible boat trip he brought us on through the lagoon.

We would like to thank Ricardo Avella & Irene Guida, not only for being an important part of our formation last year but for continuing to give feedback and a fresh view on our work, especially on the moments we most needed it.

All the professors, researchers and specialists we talked to during our stay, for the information they provided us, but also for their care and effort they daily put in their work conveying the relevance to think about Venice: Georg Umgiesser, Tiberio Scozzafava-Jaeger, Emanuela Molinaroli, Alberto Barausse, Davide Scarpa, Rossella Boscolo Brusà, Andrea Bonometto, Elena Longhin, Alessio Tamiazzo and Anna Livia Friel.

Many thanks to Giorgia Fazzini, Jane Da Mosto, Emilio Ballarin, Rossella Favero, Fabio Cavallari, Pietro Consolandi, Cristina, Claudia Visser, Elena Zambardi and the people of Laguna nel bicchiere for their local insights and their devotion for the place they live.

We would also like to thank Pierre & Justin. Pierre for being able to live with us throughout an important part of our work, and both Justin & Pierre for bringing the necessary distraction in these peculiar times.

Special thanks to Greta, Alix & Olga for listening to us during the many moments of enthusiasm, but also of complaints, during late-night calls and the times you spent with us in Venice.

And last, thanks to our parents: Cristina, Pietro, Jean-Michel, Stéphanie, Ingeborg & Frits, for supporting us throughout these last two years and making this possible by having an open mind to let us explore further.

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Urgency - Why the necessity to think about Venice?

Venice is at a critical point. It has, throughout history, often been a place of contestation, a place of diverging and therefore conflicting interests. Venice and its lagoon are a unique territory that has demonstrated an ability to host constantly changing social and functional needs. It is not often that one can find a full-fledged modern society organised within the limits of an ancient city. Although as a city, this ability is being stretched to its limit. Next to being a uniquely adaptive territory, The Venetian archipelago is delicate, built on a fragile balance of conditions. This means that constant monitoring and precise control of the environment to maintain the necessary delicate balance has always been present throughout the past. The conflict of interest, which can be defined today as the touristic mono-economy, the residents’ needs in a modern society, and the ecological environment as an integral part of the city, is culminating to such an extent that a balanced solution seems ever more improbable. Although the current situation is a long-lasting process of different drivers, some recent events made the urgency to think about Venice crystal clear.

On 12 November 2019, an ‘acqua granda’ (high water) confronted us personally with the forces of the water in the seemingly soothing environment of the Venetian lagoon. This tide, the second-highest one ever recorded, reached a peak of 187 centimeters, a mere 5 centimeters lower than the renowned flood of 1966. The flood was an instant confirmation and direct experience of the scientific evidence that we as students were delving into and pointing to the increasing likelihood of such floods. Shops and residential ground floors were flooded by almost 1 meter, every loose object was dragged along the city, boats were pulled away from their piers into the city and parked water buses smashed into the fondamentas.

The whole city was petrified for a few days, schools were closed and services limited to a minimum. At the same time, we experienced how a city that is used to deal with floods was, although the severity of the event, able to intuitively respond to the situation. Every single shop and house, in possession of their electrical pump, started pumping the water out, a procedure repeated for the few days after the main flood. Slowly services went back to normal and life resumed, although damage was done.

On the 3rd of October 2020, the experimental protection system MoSE went into action for the first time to protect the lagoon from a high tide. After 50 years of debate, 30 years of project, and 20 years of works, the lagoon was for the first time in history completely cut off from the sea. More than the act of that day, this event is a major turning point for the future of Venice. The MoSE will from now on ‘protect’ the city from the highest tides. Venice might enter a paradigm in which it will forever have a controlled relationship with the sea. Putting aside the enormous cost of the project and the doubt on its functionality with climate change, it will have an influence that we cannot estimate on how this project will affect the capacity of the city and its inhabitants to live with water.

Last but not least, a vast part of this thesis and our experience of Venice took place during the global Covid19 pandemic. The experience was dual. On the one hand, the crisis brought the city to its knees, especially for a place that almost exclusively relies on the single economy of tourism. This recent period emphasised the long-debated urgency to rethink the role of tourism for Venice. On the other hand, we were able to perceive the city as it has not been for decades. The last twelve months were a unique time to live in the city, in which the incredible persistence of resident’s life and activity were no longer overshadowed and some glimpses of hidden potentials became apparent.

It is therefore that with this thesis, more than the importance of a single work, it is now urgent to think about Venice. To go beyond the current status quo there is a necessity to imagine alternative futures that can add to the debate.

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The following book is structured in three parts, all of them complementary in the attempt to construct a utopia for the complex situation of Venice and its lagoon.

The first part is an introductory framework on the notion of resilience and utopia. Resilience is our theoretical background and lens through which we intend to read the history and situation of the Venetian territory. It is a notion that throughout the whole work should always be kept in mind and forms the foundation for a utopian project for Venice. Utopia on the other hand is the backbone of our work, it is both the epistemology and structure of Amphibia.

We elaborate on why a project of utopia can be useful today and why it is useful for the context of Venice.

The second part forms the core of the book, Amphibia. Following the structure of Thomas More’s Utopia, it is divided into two books. The first book is a critical reading of the situation of Venice. It intends to lay out the paradoxicality of the situation leading to today’s impasse. The second book is the construction of a utopia called Amphibia, described through the eyes of a visitor. Traveling through Amphibia, the narrator offers a view on what an archipelago city settled in a lagoon could be, always with an implicit reference to Venice.

In the last part, we return to Venice. It is a contemplation through text, pictures, and stories from the ground on how much Amphibia is already present in Venice. We make the bridge between how Venice is already often described as a utopia, what forms of resilience are present in Venice today, and therefore how we could perceive aspects of Amphibia in contemporary Venice.

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Table of content Acknowledgements

5

Urgency: Why the necessity to think about Venice

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA The notion of resilience

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The Venetian history through resilience

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Why do we need a Utopia today?

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AMPHIBIA Book I. The situation of Venice Venetian lagoon under threat

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The Lagoon Paradox

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The MoSE project, a temporary solution?

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Three scenarios for the lagoon

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Three commons of the lagoon

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Rationality and aporia

100

Book II. Amphibia The territory of Amphibia

104

The Polder Plains

112

The Island of New Old Things

120

The Capital of Amphibia

128

The Garden Island

136

The Coastal Islands

144

Notes on Amphibia

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE A view from the ground

220

Strategies of resilience

274

Typologies of resilience

290

Actors of resilience

310

Conclusion

329

Bibliography

334

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA

Geography of references on Resilience

ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA

The notion of resilience Venice and its lagoon form a complex environment. The Venetian territory has a long history of constantly restructuring within its specific physical limits. In a city that underwent such ‘metamorphoses’, as Giulia Foscari tends to call it (Foscari, 2014), perhaps an interesting lens to approach the Venetian territory is the notion of resilience. In its essence, resilience is the understanding of how something is able to transform or re-structure without collapsing. The notion of resilience can be a frame through which the Venetian territory, its history, inhabitation and challenges can be understood. How can we understand Venice as a resilient city that has always been able to undergo drastic morphological changes but still remain a performant city? Moreover, through such reading, how can we understand how far the spatial conditions and the inhabitation of such territory can be stretched and still be liveable? It is therefore necessary to have a clear understanding of the notion of resilience itself and how it can constitute a tool to reflect on such complex systems like the Venetian lagoon.

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The notion of resilience

The Adaptive Cycle

variables and processes that control behavior”(Gundersen, 2002). Therefore the main difference to be understood here is that in the ecosystem resilience idea, there is not a singular point of equilibrium but many near-equilibrium states for one given ecosystem, with ever-changing resilience values.

The notion of “resilience”, from the Latin term resilire means “the act of rebounding”. At first, the term was used in physics in order to characterize the resistance of an object to deformation under a shock. From this field, the concept then found different interpretations throughout the 20th century, from psychology to ecology, geography and economy. Therefore, the term per se does not have a unique interpretation. In order to redefine the meaning of resilience within the field of urban design and research, we refer to one of the pioneers of the ecological use of the term: Crawford Stanley Holling.

Even though both definitions are correct, Holling argues that the second vision of resilience is the only one that can apply to complex systems. A complex ecological system is a dynamic system that exists within boundaries defined by variables and parameters in space and time, called the domain of attraction. Therefore within this kind of system, resilience does not relate to stability, but to dynamic states. In a complex system, resilience could be defined as the opposite of vulnerability. It is directly fostered by diversity and more specifically by the diversity of functional groups and their overlapping.

In 1973, C.S. Holling published an article titled: “Resilience and stability of ecological systems”.

This article was the first of a long-term research led by the Canadian ecologist to try and define ecosystems’ complex dynamics, which would not only impact the ecological discipline but also social and economic understanding.

For Holling, the ecosystem development and changes can be seen as a dynamic loop. The ecosystem moves through the loop in time and goes through cyclical phases that are characterized by their potential (the storage of “capital”) and connectedness (the level of integration of relation between the different parts of the ecosystem). This loop is called the adaptive cycle.

The adaptive cycle successively passes through four different phases: the exploitation phase, the conservation phase, the release phase, and the reorganization phase. The different phases are not equal in time, the longer state being the one between the exploitation and the conservation phase, a period in which connectedness and potential both increase. This phase could be seen as a trial and error development of an ecosystem with progressive accumulation of “capital” and interconnection of its functional systems. Eventually, the system becomes too rigid and falls into the second part of the loop. At the end of the loop, and after the reorganization phase, the ecosystem can either return to another exploitation phase, shift its domain, or extinguish.

The first step to comprehend Holling’s theory is to clarify the difference between resistance and resilience. Resistance is the capacity of an ecological system to stay in an equilibrium state without fluctuating or changing under pressure. Therefore, if a resistant ecosystem is overwhelmed by a shock, it will collapse.

Then comes the notion of resilience, for which Holling distinguishes two types. The first, and most traditional one, is called “engineering resilience” and defines the persistence of relationships within an ecological system. In other words, resilience is seen as a measure of the ability of a given system to absorb changes of variables or parameters, and still persist within its original state.

The second type is called “ecosystem resilience”.

Holling defines it as a dynamic model that focuses on persistence, adaptiveness, variability, and unpredictability. This system “emphasizes conditions far from any equilibrium steady state, where instabilities can flip a system into another regime of behavior, to another stability domain.

In this case, resilience is measured by the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by changing the

Resilience comes into play in this model when we consider the loop not only as bidimensional but in a cube with a third axis. This cube represents 17

ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA in an attempt to stabilize ecosystem outputs and sustain consumption patterns’’ (Holling and Meffe, 1996, Carpenter and Gunderson, 2001). By applying short-term management with a systemic disturbance reduction, humans have reduced the resilience of ecosystems, and their ability to buffer uncertain shocks and changes to come while freezing ecosystems in one given state. Controlled staticity of ecosystems, through knowledge and technology, and its relative success in the short term “makes navigating nature’s dynamics appear to be a non-issue and as a consequence knowledge, incentives and institutions for monitoring and responding to environmental feedback erode. Societies become vulnerable without recognizing it.” (Peterson et al., 1998) That is to say that our current anthropocentric service view of the environment is diminishing both its potential and its resilience.

the domain of the ecosystem. Within the domain, therefore, the ecosystem resilience fluctuates along the axes depending on which phase it is in.

Hence, within the domain, some phases have a higher potential for novelty, namely the reorganization phase where connectedness is low, potential high, and resilience is high. Phases that have a higher resilience can allow for more change and response to external disturbances within the ecosystem, without it being endangered.

To sum up, an ecosystem is determined by three factors within a domain: potential, connectedness and resilience. Where potential is the capital accumulated, available for change, “connectedness determines the degree to which a system can control its own destiny, as distinct from being caught by the whims of external vari­ability. Resilience determines how vulnerable the system is to unexpected disturbances and surprises that can exceed or break that control.” (Gundersen, 2002) Both resilience and connectedness are double-sided. When the connectedness is too low, the system is leaky, whereas very high connectedness makes the system rigid. For resilience, when too low the system is highly vulnerable, when too high the system becomes unchangeable.

Resilience in Urbanism What is the understanding and application of the concept of resilience in the field of urbanism?

Resilience is far too easily mis- or overused with a lack of specificity and therefore inability to translate into practice. On the other hand, there is a vast amount of highly specific knowledge on the ‘good practice’ of urbanism, theorised through concepts. Perhaps it is more interesting to read resilience in urbanism through these ‘good practices’ and the already existing knowledge in the field, rather than retrofitting the theory of resilience to the practice. Eventually, it might even turn out that these concrete concepts in urbanism are not so unrelated to the theory of resilience.

The urban environment is complex and therefore Holling’s theory, although applicable in many forms of governance and complex ecosystems, is as a descriptive theory hard to be understood in urbanism in a straightforward manner. Where Hollings theory is either applied to ecological systems (somehow related to space) or to social dynamics in systems of economy or governance (unrelated to space). Urbanism is the layering in

Thanks to the adaptive loop model, Holling defines the adaptive capacity of an ecosystem as its capacity to change states and reconfigure without major changes or decline. That is to say that any given system may have a certain level of adaptive capacity.

The adaptive cycle was developed by studying ecosystems. However, Holling and his team took it further than their domain of expertise, arguing that the model can be used to better understand complex social-ecological systems as well as to implement adaptive management.

For Holling, the lack of understanding of the adaptiveness necessary to the ecological system leads to the increasing vulnerability we witness in human environments such as monocultures, animal farming, and monodominant forests. “Far too often managers seek to command and control processes of change in simplified landscapes 18

The notion of resilience

source: C.S Holling, 2001

space of social, economic and ecological dimensions, for each of which the theory of resilience can be considered differently. Therefore there is hardly a one-on-one relation between the theory of resilience and application in urbanism as a whole. A field thinks, works and communicates in its own language (Pickett et al., 2013). Urban practice and theory often express concepts in spatial terms, when concepts in other fields don’t have these spatial implications, they might be hard to be understood in urbanism as such. The following questions highlight the haziness inherent to the direct application of the theory of resilience in urbanism. What does it spatially mean for the urban environment to absorb disturbance and still remain in the same domain? What is the spatial/social degree of self-organisation of a system or the spatial degree in which a system can increase its capacity to learn and adapt (definition of ecological resilience) (Allan and Bryant, 2011)? Urbanism is in need of a concept, a metaphor, or an agent as a translation that brings some pragmatic clarity and reference to space. In the last decades, throughout urban research and practice, a manifold of concepts have been developed, never directly under the heading of resilience, but somehow relating notions from the theory of resilience to how we understand space and the city. Within this frame, also space is not unequivocally defined but is meant as a handful of concepts that differ in meaning and coverage. Space can be understood as landscape (the shaped and cultured land), territory (the governed land, a stretch of land; a region), ecotopes (smallest ecologically definable area), or urban areas and cities (inhabited places of greater size, population, or importance).

source: C.S Holling, 2001

Adaptive cycle, C.S Holling, 2001

Adaptive cycle in three dimensions

source: Duvigneaud and Denaeyer-De Smet 1977

Some insights into urbanism around the time the theory of resilience was developed were necessary to make the bridge between urbanism and this theory. First of all, the notion of the city as an urban metabolism. For a long time, ecological science has excluded the city from its scope and the city has excluded ecological forces as carriers and elements of importance. Duvignaud and Denaeyer-De-Smet’s urban metabolism for Brussels in 1977 intended to understand the city as a more complex ecosystem. It is especially the notion of (eco)systems percolating in urban theory

Duvigneaud & Denayers’ urban ecosystem, 1977

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA reality of the urban environment. Some of these concepts are the following:

that allows us to consider resilience in urbanism since in its most basic definition resilience stands for ‘the ability of a system to withstand or recover from changes or perturbations in its environment’. The city is no longer a robust entity but a constellation of systems with their flows. In the early examples mainly systems of abiotic flows, as energy or matter were considered, nowadays also social and biological relations are included.

The metaphor The metaphor can be used as a translator across fields of knowledge. It is a way of conveying complex scientific knowledge from one discipline to another, especially when they have little in common. The metaphors from other fields are used to make phenomena in ecology tangible.

For example, the metaphorical use of concepts like ‘succession’, ‘competition’ or ‘disturbance’ originates respectively from monarchic continuity, a social concept of a joint call for common resources and a technical term for shock values (Pickett et al., 2013).

Since ecosystems do not necessarily relate to space but rather to the interaction of organisms, landscapes form the spatial constellation in which ‘organisms and fluxes relate’ (Pickett et al., 2013). Therefore the landscapes, as defined by Allan and Hoekstra (1992) as ‘spatial heterogeneity and the consequences such heterogeneity has for ecological processes’ (Pickett et al., 2013, p.9), can thus help us to spatialise where processes and interactions take place and thus resilience can be considered.

Planning of systems Cadenasso and Pickett state the necessity to think in ecosystems as the ‘specified area or volume of the Earth, in which the collection of organisms and the physical environment interact’ (Pickett et al, 2002, p.9).’ The approach on ecosystems shifted in the ‘60s, from focusing on fixed states to processes of nutrient cycles and energy flows.

Planning in systems rather than in zoning (Vigano, 2013), where thinking in zoning is obsolete and continuity of systems, such as ecological systems, can offer some kind of resilience to these systems. The high urban complexity is made comprehensible by the spatial analysis of different ‘components’ that constitute a system, such as understanding the components of ecological systems in an area and from here improving the resilience of these systems with concepts such as continuity and connectivity.

Four components can be defined to characterise the urban ecosystems: a biological component (species and products), a social component (institutions and norms), a physical component (soil, water, topography, and air), and a built component (buildings and infrastructures) (Grove & Pickett, 2009). This increased complexity of the urban systems distinguishes urban design from usual sciences by being a knowledge that unfolds through the practice. Urbanism does not contemplate only the layering of components of hard sciences, but equally includes aspects of creativity, soundness, usefulness, beauty, and historical understanding. Within the urban context, the interaction of these ingredients, distant from the strictly scientific fields, complements scientific aspects. In other words, ‘urbanism is an experimental science; it can abstract more general considerations from experience. Theories are met on-site, more than applied there’ (Viganò, 2013, p. 411).

Ecology of the city To grasp the resilience of the entire urban system it is crucial to understand the ecology of the city as ‘the reciprocal relationships of organisms and the physical environment, resources, waste streams, environmental regulating factors, individuals, households, and institutions’ (Pickett et al., 2013, p.21). Today the ecology of the city has evolved from ‘urban metabolism’ where the mere material budgets were considered, to incorporate the relations between these budget flows and ‘the identity of biological species and the heterogeneous structure of both the substrate

It is therefore that these experiences, met on-site and theorised through spatial concepts are a necessary step through which aspects of resilience should be considered. The concepts themselves remain abstract but intend to ‘translate’ and spatialize the theory of resilience in the complex 20

The notion of resilience and the biological community within ecosystems’ (Pickett et al., 2013, p.22). Considering the ecology of a city links the seemingly strictly physical and biological processes to the social aspect of the city, which influences the flows of energy, material and information, and vice versa.

Experimentation as a model To plan for a place in a way that the plan is adaptive towards future events means to plan proactively rather than to act reactively. This approach requires an understanding of the driving forces of all the elements composing the system: ‘Mitigation can become proactive rather than reactive if urban design and planning anticipate risk and exposure designing for resilience by remolding landscapes and re-constructing settlements to bend from hazards, but not break. There is clearly ample room for innovation and experimentation that is “safe to fail” (Lister 2007 ), which is heralding a new approach to recovery planning’ (Shannon, 2013, p.164).

Natural and rationalised water systems as agents for transformation.

Water as agent and isotropy An important element in a territorial approach is the movement of water and its structuring element for life (biodiversity, urbanisation, mobility, activity,...). In terms of resilience, it means that acknowledging water as an ‘agent’ for transformation might create a system that is more able to adapt than one characterized by high resistance towards flows of water. The rational tendency to highly engineer water flows denies the symbolic value that water had in ancient and vernacular urbanisations and the way in which urbanisation can exist with the forces of nature (Shannon, 2013).

Isotropy as the spatial translation of equality.

Not spatially everywhere the same but rather spatial distribution of opportunities.

As mentioned by Viganò, another spatial aspect of territorial resilience is the isotropy of the territory and its systems. Some models of urbanisation show aspects of isotropy, after centuries of rationalisation and gradual overwriting of natural systems. In such a context, as the Veneto region, where the natural has lost its meaning, implementing and strengthening the existing elements, such as the water system, might make more sense and even be potential in an isotropic way, corresponding to the isotropy of the manufactured landscape. For the water system, this translates

Acts of anchoring in the landscape, the primary localisation or spatial catalyser for settlement, development or project.

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA as a project of water bodies for retention, detention, expansion, and purification of various typologies, isotropically over the territory. Isotropy or a similar concept of modularity, given by Walker and Salt in ‘Resilience Thinking’, increases the social and rehabilitative resilience of a place.

Modularity by Walker and Salt means a loose dependency of modules to keep them functioning when other modules fail, and the whole system can restructure (Allan and Bryant 2011, p.41).

An example of this is the city of Concepcion (Chile) that works as a morphological polycentric or modular city but is functionally rather zoned than modular. After an earthquake in 2010, the functional zones were disconnected because of collapsing infrastructures, making it hard for some parts to self-organise because of a lack of internal differentiation (Allan and Bryant, 2011).

The concept of porosity or permeability opposes the fragmentation of systems and establishes adjacencies and relationships. The idea of an equal (democratic and reachable) environment means a sense of porosity of the systems, a sponge as both Ellin (2013) and Viganò (2013) metaphorically name it.

Anchoring to move away from entity Perhaps a less tangible notion of resilience in urbanism is ‘anchoring’, given by Da Cunha. According to him, the city as a singular entity is a myth and far from reality. Da Cunha, referring to William Penn’s plan for Philadelphia (1682), argues that a city does not emerge as a seed out of the designer’s conception, but rather as initiating anchors on a terrain that set in motion development. According to him, Penn’s first act was deciding how and where a new city would anchor best on the terrain, not his designed layout of a new city as an entity. The two different perceptions of the city stand for attitudes towards planning: the city as an entity goes hand in hand with planning as an ‘art of foresight and control’ in which the future is to be predicted and dictated, while the concept of a city as multiple anchors puts forward ‘agility, tenacity and resilience’ (Da Cunha 2013). Many things can be anchors in the city: a waterfront, a railroad, a square, a boulevard, a neighborhood, and so on.

Public space or Social capital Public space is a template for social resilience of the city. Allan and Bryant (2011) describe the important role of public spaces and parks after the earthquake and fire in 1906 in San Francisco. The parks turned into places of gathering and shelter, chosen in relation to the proximity to the house, and the hilltops became vantage points to survey the area. Public space can also be seen as a potential for recovery after a disaster. Where today, planning measures for disaster (one can even think of the MoSE project for Venice) are mainly considered outside of public space rather than investments in this public space: ‘the idea that the urban environment - not just the buildings but the spaces between buildings - might be designed to influence recovery is still new’ (Allen and Bryant 2011, p.38). To further add on the role of the public sphere within resilience, the term social capital, which reflects the ‘capacity to respond together’, should be considered as a more qualitative reading of public space that ‘tightens feedbacks and enhances the adaptive response’.

All these concepts and theories are attempts to clarify resilience for the practice of urbanism.

These concepts, acting as intermediate ‘tools’ to translate resilience in urbanism, are only a fraction of possible translations. The theory of resilience can be interpreted in as many ways as the number of scholars studying it and the multitude of fields relating to urbanism, for which resilience can be studied (sociology, economy, ecology, finance, anthropology,...). The given concepts therefore only attempt to give a glimpse of how such translations for urban practice take place.

Some concepts (isotropy, social capital, system thinking, safe-to-fail experimentation) are interesting because they are both specific enough to imagine spatially but on the other hand broad enough to relate to abstract theory. Others are more focused on direct spatial interpretation (porosity or permeability, modularity, water as an

Porosity & Permeability Fragmentation as for Ellin (2013) leads to the loss in biodiversity and when considering the urban realm it leads to the loss in social or programmatic diversity in our cities. ‘Nothing exists in isolation, only in relation’ (Ellin, 2013, p.69).

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The notion of resilience agent, territorial visions). Lastly, there are those few concepts that remain spatially vague but help to grasp an overarching ideology of resilience in ‘planning’ (anchoring, proactive planning and the use of the metaphor). In ‘Extreme Cities’, Ashley Dawson defines resilience as: ‘The ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events (definition of National Academy of Sciences). Unlike sustainability, which is a static, defensive mode, resilience is fluid, adopting a nimble, dynamic pose. Predicated on the ability of complex systems (such as cities) to organize themselves at multiple scales and to bounce back from various forms of stress, resilience connotes an ability to withstand the various, unpredictable shocks of the catastrophic convergence of urbanization and climate change.’ (Dawson 2019 p.139)

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Geography of references on Venice, the lagoon and it’s history

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA

Venetian resilience through history “We know that our planet is drifting closer to ecological disaster every day. La Serenissima left us a model for reconciling human enterprise with the environment. The legacy of how the Venetians have, for a long time, controlled and protected their ecology, at the same time allowing for the economic prosperity of the city.” (Bevilacqua, 1995, p. 171) The history of the Venetian archipelago is the story of the urbanization of a unique water landscape and the anthropic struggle to sustain, modify, and preserve it, in order to guarantee the coexistence of human life and natural habitat. Inhabiting a strenuous territory, both the first amphibious settlers and the maritime empire of the Republic of Venice were bound to observe and react to every small change within the humid landscape. Only by combining daily knowledge, innovative technological responses and unusual financial efforts, life in the lagoon has been able to last for centuries. In Venice, the amphibian city par excellence, there is no element in the urban and built structure, function or activity, that is not in a certain way influenced by the presence of water. Reading the Venetian history through the notion of resilience helps to understand how governance, policies, urbanisation, and economy were always highly entangled with the environmental survival of the lagoon.

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Venetian resilience through history

Five cycles characterise the inhabitation of the Venetian lagoon. Cycles are not just different domains of the lagoon ecology, but rather a complex entanglement of the governmental & political paradigm, social structure, and the anthropological approach towards the territory. Each cycle, as a paradigm, positions differently in governmental versatility, meaning the ability to respond in a versatile way to inhabit such peculiar territory (sometimes with important interventions). On the other hand, the cycles can also be measured according to their stability of the lagoon system, which can be stable, or unstable, tending towards a swamp or a marine bay.

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA

The first Venetian cycle

mainland since 2000 BCE. The colonization constituted a constellation of settlements: people from Padova and Este moved to the territories of today’s Chioggia and Malamocco, from Treviso to Rialto and Malamocco, and from Altino to Torcello. Little by little, refugees decided to settle in the water landscape, hence, the genesis of Venice (Mancuso, 2009) and the first step into the blurring between the artificial and natural reality of the territory.

The lagoon environment is the carrier of the archipelago: a shallow waterbody of 550 square kilometres, characterized by ‘barene’ and ‘velme’ - tabular floodable shoals -, emerging islands, and channels (Mancuso, 2009). The lagoon can be defined as one of the most ephemeral geological landscapes, generated only 6.000 years ago from a natural evolution of the continental and marine elements (Scortegagna, 2009). From the mainland, numerous rivers of northern Italy, mostly coming from the alps, used to carry a considerable amount of sediments of rocks and gravel, turned into sand, mud, and clay by the time they were reaching the estuaries in the Adriatic sea. On the opposite side, sea currents are generated by the two main winds of the northern Adriatic: the Bora, blowing in the north-east direction, and the Scirocco, blowing in the south-west one (Scortegnaga, 2009; Bevilacqua, 1995). The interaction of these two forces defined the lagoon: the sediments brought by the rivers were pushed into the sea, where they were carried in lines parallel to the coastline by the main Adriatic flow. These sediments, stopped by the action of waves and winds, deposited on the seabed far from the coast, creating the sandy embankments of today’s Venetian lidi. A waterbody, acting as a ‘natural bastion’ between the Veneto mainland and the sea, was thus taking shape (Bevilacqua, 1995). Nevertheless, due to its natural succession, the lagoon should have turned into an estuary, filled with the sediments brought by the rivers, but the anthropic colonization and actions on the continental and marine elements inverted this geological tendency.

People started to organize within the different islands as castra: independent self-governed entities under the jurisdiction of a tribunus. Meanwhile, in order to ensure common military defense a Federation of islands was instituted in 466 CE (Muratori, 1960), which already shows that the lagoon was the first body of common interests.

For the first settlers of this amphibian territory, the water body was simultaneously a strength and curse. It was a source of life, providing a natural defense system and a network for trades, but also vehicles of attack, and an incredible threat during the storms. The urban settlements in the northern part of the lagoon consisted of wooden stilt houses placed around the first campos and churches, as the one of Torcello. The rest of the emerging soil was used as orchards and vineyards (Distefano, 2014) and primitive defenses, as cane fences or tamarisk bushes, were already used against the strength of the wave. The first inhabitants of the lagoon were thus able to understand the difficult territory, learning how to live with the waterbody and take advantage of the few drylands.

The inhabitants of the lagoon developed their economy on what the lagoon was providing, namely fish, vegetables, and the highly valued salt production which they could trade with the barbarians of the mainland, in exchange for what they were not able to produce, like meat and grain (Distefano, 2014). It is only thanks to the trades, based on the lagoon as both provider of resources and medium of transportation, that the nuclei of the archipelago started to grow demographically and economically. The federation thus developed into the Dogado, a state governed by a Doge: the first of which was elected in 697 CE, marking the beginning of the Republic

The first act of ‘anchoring’ can be seen as the Veneti seeking refuge in the lagoon marshes fleeing from barbaric invasions in the 5th century and colonizing the territory. Although anchoring in this case is probably not the well-considered formation of settlement in optimal conditions, but rather the pragmatic inhabitation of the highest bumps of sand in a rather inhospitable landscape, it was this act that would define the method of inhabitation for the future. Initially, the colonisation of the marshes was a last resource for survival from the people who inhabited the 28

Venetian resilience through history

source: Scortegna 2009

of Venice (Distefano, 2014). It is at this moment that it became ever more clear that the lagoon was more than a defensive environment. The lagoon developed more and more into a structured urban system in which water was the ultimate agent for life (trade, mobility, protection, production). Without questioning it, the water as a carrier for urbanisation made that the territory can be considered as isotropic from the start, where the channels are the natural ‘infrastructure’ of connection.

The second Venetian cycle

Natural lagoon, lidi and archipelago formation due to the interplay of river sediments and sea currents

source: pitts.emory.edu

In 812 CE the Dogado was able to move from Malamocco, located on the Lido, to Rivoalto - today’s Rialto. This marks a key moment in the history of Venice: the centralization of commercial and defensive power along the main channel of the lagoon, instead of being scattered on small, isolated, and protected islands. By then, the water system already worked as an infrastructure, guiding the expansion of the city. Therefore, despite the tendency of densification in the island of Venice - with around 10-15’000 inhabitants - the archipelago system was still functioning as a network with several nuclei in the estuary. Meanwhile, technical improvements, starting from the capital island, spread over the lagoon, marking the passage from a city of wood to that of stone. The gained knowledge on foundations through the use of wooden poles allowed to build the first stone palaces and fondamenta - pedestrian roads along a channel - improving the city’s defense.

This shift from nuclei to a structured archipelago system supported by urban development can be considered the first step toward the domestication of the lagoon.

Paulo Lucio Anafesto, first doge according to tradition (697 CE), supposedly uniting the different tribes in the lagoon under one governance to protect from Slavs and Lombards

source: abebooks.fr

Between the 11th and 13th centuries, due to changes in the lagoon ecology, the archipelago system reached the hierarchy of today, in which Venice played a leading role. The central island, due to its strategic position close to the main channels, the inlet of Lido, and the mainland, became the place for economic and demographic growth, with more than 100.000 residents in the 11th century (Muratori, 1960). On the other hand, due to the natural succession of the lagoon body, some of the ancient centers in the

Libro d’Oro, book originating in the 14th century containing information on all noble families of Venice and oversea territories

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA northern lagoon were abandoned. The amount of sediments brought by the alpine rivers started to be such that the silting up of the lagoon turned into a threat. Becoming more shallow and swampy, the waterbody was less navigable, the quality of the air and of the water reduced, and malaria and liveability became issues. Gradually, the lower and older settlements - as Ammiana, Costanziaco, Equilo, Motta San Lorenzo, and Motta Dei Cunici - were abandoned and people migrated to Venice, Murano, and Lido.

This highlights a certain dynamism of movement within the lagoon, where inhabitants adapted to changes, densifying areas whenever some others were not liveable anymore. It is important to underline that the migrations mostly happened within the borders of the waterbody and not going back to the mainland, marking the cohesion of traditions, practices, and identity provided by the landscape.

solution was already on the agenda of the Republic since the 14th century, when Marco Cornaro, one of the Venetian Doges and renowned hydrologists, proposed to divert the alpine freshwater courses into the sea. Some first attempts took place between the 14th and 15th centuries in a non-programmatic way. It is in the 16th century, under the guidance of Cristoforo Sabbadino, one of the most famous executors of the Magistato alle Acque, that the diversion of the rivers was systematized. To preserve the territory, necessary for human activities, titanic works of diverting the major rivers were put in place, diverting the Piave, the Sile and the Brenta from the lagoon into the sea, reaching completion in the 17th century (Mancuso, 2009). We can argue that from this point on the lagoon underwent a shift from a natural controlled environment to an artificial natural environment. Under human action, the evolution of the territory inverted from silting up towards a stable lagoon.

The third Venetian cycle

On the opposite edge of the lagoon, even if it had always been a matter of concern and protection, in the 18th century, the Venetian’s confrontation with the sea as a threat intensified (Bevilacqua, 1995). In order to protect life in the lagoon and its navigability, between 1744 and 1782 CE the Serenissima constructed the murazzi. Stretched along the coastline of Lido and Pellestrina for sixteen kilometers, the murazzi were - and still are today - a system of walls, made in Istrian stone and pozzolan cement, with a height of four meters to secure the lagoon from the force of the sea. With the construction of the Murazzi and the diversions of most rivers, the consolidated perimeter of the lagoon we know today was defined.

In 1791 CE, these lagoon borders were juridically fixed with the ‘conterminazione’ (Mancuso, 2009). Inside the conterminazione activities that could damage the wet landscape, such as agriculture, breeding in the barene, or the construction of dykes or embankments to block the tidal expansion, were banned (Armani, 1991).

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Venice became a leader in art, trade, and culture. Despite the anthropic pressures - with more than 190’000 inhabitants (Mancuso, 2009) - the incredible economic power, and vast domains, the wet-landscape was never neglected. It is instead in this period that some of the most famous institutional figures for the protection, maintenance, and control of the environment were created. The systematic improvement of government introduced, among others, the organs of the Magistrato alla Legna e ai Boschi in 1452 CE, to govern woods and forests, or the Magistrato alle Acque since 1505 CE, to govern the waterbodies (Bevilacqua, 1995). Within the Republic system, those executive entities had an important power and versatility which allowed them to stand for the environment’s common good. It can be argued that these figures reflect the progressive Venetian governance for sustainable development, balancing the dichotomy between the productivity of the landscape while protecting the lagoon ecology, be it fauna, forests, or marshlands.

Today it might be hard to consider the river diversion, which created a fixed border for the lagoon’s water system, as a resilient strategy. Although it should be understood that the conterminazione at the time was a measure to keep the lagoon as

Despite the attentive management of the natural landscape, the silting of the lagoon became an ever-increasing threat. The urgency to find a 30

Venetian resilience through history big and open as possible. The boundary was drawn at the outer perimeter of the lagoons system, barely interfering with the tidal expansion. All interventions were rooted in the Venetian practice of ‘Scomenzera’ – a trial and error of prototype projects or a succession of interventions. It was the versatility of the governance system that allowed a high form of adaptability of the territory and its residents. Through constant monitoring and surveillance, the ongoing state was always questioned, with the balance of the lagoon as a priority. Venetians were through their governance not opposing change, as long as it was pointing towards a new balance. Measures were from their point of view reversible, always taken upon a deep understanding of the forces of nature and as the strictly necessary interventions to keep inhabitation possible. Hence the historical teaching of the Venetian republic is one of a symbiosis between a territorial reality and its governance, in which the constant struggle with nature is chosen over complete control.

source: acquerisorgive.it

The Venetian lagoon as an open water system

by Cristoforo Sabbadino 1556 (copy by Angelo Minorelli in 1695 )

Plan for diversion of the Sile river in the old Piave bed, 1684

The fourth Venetian cycle The end of the Serenissima is marked by the invasion of Napoleon in 1797 CE. From here on a completely different story of the Venetian territory starts and the transition could not be more abrupt. The invasion was an incredible external shock for a system that relied on gradual adaptation to changing conditions. It is specifically in this period, between the end of the Republic and the unification of Italy, that the Archipelago witnessed a decline phase. Under French and Austrian rule, the Republic was deprived of its equilibrium between traditional activities and lagoon ecology. By dismantling the Republic, the foreign forces broke with the millennial normative and state structure of protection practices that had preserved the quality of the natural habitat (Bevilacqua, 1995).

source: historytoday.com

Lagoon after main river diversions and establishment of the ‘conterminazzione’ by Angelo Emo, 1762

Within this context, the aristocratic classes, seen the lack of environmental conservation policies, the economic pressure generated by the foreign dominations, and the decline of trades, transferred their interests towards the mainland, rich in resources and infrastructures (Mancuso, 2009).

At the same time, since 1804 CE, in order to

Arrival of Napoleon in Venice under a fictive triumphal arch on the Canal Grande by Giuseppe Borsato, 19th century

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA cotton, tobacco, and alcohol settled on the west side of the island (Mancuso, 2009). By the end of the 19th century, the Venetian lagoon regained a leading role in the northern Adriatic, as one of the most industrialized areas of Italy. This also meant the start of the lagoon’s ecological degradation and the beginning of the decline of the archipelago system. In the wake of the 20th century, Venice struggled with this new socio-economic identity, in between its aspirations for modernity and the weight of a unique heritage. The archipelago became a centrality in the Adriatic sea and Italy, while the dimension of the port and industrial activities became too massive to be handled within the lagoon (Bevilacqua, 1995).

re-establish the sea-dominance of Venice, Napoleon started a series of interventions to make the lagoon navigable for bigger ships, by constructing jetties in the inlets and digging channels, initiating the future drastic changes in the balance of the waterbody. Between 1840 and 1872 CE the Istrian stone jetties were completed in Chioggia, Malamocco, and Lido. By channeling the flow, they allowed the currents to erode the lagoon bed and guide sediments into the sea. The depth of the three mouths passed from an average of -4 to today’s -11/12 meters, reaching -14 meters in Malamocco. Also the dredging of channels became a problem: instead of using the excavated sediments to build new barene as the Serenissima used to do, the foreign practice was to drop the sand in the open sea.

Furthermore, barene were also reclaimed for agriculture, covering 400 hectares of wetlands.

The consequence of all these interventions was the gradual shift of the lagoon into a deeper and flat waterbody, paving the way for the transition into a marine bay (Mancuso, 2009).

The first step in the modern reconfiguration of the Venetian lagoon was the digging of the Vittorio Emanuele channel in 1910 CE. Connecting the mainland to the Marittima port industries. This infrastructure, overruling the natural logics of water and channels, was the prelude for the industrialization of the nearby area of Marghera, located in the mainland (Scortegagna, 2009). The first part of Marghera started to be constructed in 1917 CE, following the rhetoric of the marine re-birth of the Venetian lagoon and fostering what, by the time, was considered the national most promising industrial concentration. By 1930 CE, the first Marghera zone was completed, covering 500 hectares of wetlands and barene. In the scope of industrial and demographic growth, already since 1926 CE, the municipalities of Venice, Mestre, Marghera, and all the islands gathered under the new municipality of Greater Venice. Following this clustering, the train bridge leading to the historic island was expanded in 1933 CE to also allow cars to cross the lagoon.

A new paradigm was initiated by the foreign control but continued throughout the unified Italian governance. From now on, interventions on the lagoon would still be grand but with much less environmental consideration. The awareness that intervention on the water system could potentially have enormous consequences for the lagoon faded.

The fifth Venetian cycle The second half of the 19th century witnessed several key-moment that marked the end of Venice’s insularity and the beginning of the process of integration within the mainland. Besides the pedestrianization of parts of the center, by burying channels and building bridges, in 1846 CE the construction of the train bridge from Mestre to Venice’s western tip physically connected the lagoon to the mainland (Distefano, 2014). The completion of the Venice-Milan railway in 1857 CE, the inauguration of St. Lucia Train Station (1865 CE), and of the Marittima Port (1880 CE) allowed for consistent touristic, commercial, and industrial development. New tourist routes emerged while more modern factories for steel,

Mestre, the agricultural town in the immediate mainland, grew from 28’000 inhabitants in 1917 CE to 36’000 in less than fifteen years, gathering the exodus of the lower classes leaving the historical island in search of job opportunities (Mancuso, 2009; Bevilacqua, 1995). After WWII, the second area of Marghera was completed, foreseeing the third expansion by covering 1700 hectares of wetlands. The project also included the realization of the Malamocco-Marghera 32

Venetian resilience through history

source: docplayer.it

channel, also known as the oil channel, with a width of 140 m and depth of 11 m, allowing larger ships to enter the lagoon. It is in this period that even on an institutional level, following the so-called “Italian Economic Miracle”, there was a push towards industrial development rather than agriculture. Venice’s Tronchetto Parking island, the doubling of the size of the lagoon bridge, and the Marco Polo airport followed this tendency, covering even more velme and barene (Scortegagna, 2009). The decade between 1955 and 1965 CE witnessed growth in production, occupation, with almost 33’000 workers in the Marghera industries, and urban life. Venice reached again the levels of residents it had in the 16th century, counting 175’000 inhabitants (Mancuso, 2009; Bevilacqua, 1995). The archipelago restructured once again, stretching and bending the territory towards a modern world, although this time disregarding the dynamics of the lagoon. Important maintenance works were neglected, sediments drained out of the lagoon through dredging and consequential increased communication with the sea was drastically polluted in the process.

source: consorziopiave.it

Coen Cagli’s plan for Marghera’s industrial and residential area, 1917.

Electrical pumping stations draining the last bits of excess water as final step in the land reclamation project. Portesine pumping station, 1930’s

The development of Mestre and Marghera stopped around the seventies, after having gone from 28’000 inhabitants in 1911 CE to 210’000 in 1975 CE (Comune di Venezia, 2020). The industries of Marghera gradually declined, replaced by modest ones in smaller municipalities in the further mainland (Mancuso, 2009). In 1966, the most severe flood in Venetian history was a wake-up call. The Murazzi broke in several points, after years of under maintenance, creating a new opening between sea and lagoon. The devastating consequences left public and private properties damaged and agricultural activities prostrated (Bevilacqua, 1995). After this event, the consequences of the unruled modernization came to the foreground, environmental fronts claimed the need for control on the lagoon ecology and preservation of wetlands.

source: unive.it

Aerial view from the Marghera’s industrial port, 1956

The industries in Venice and Marghera, the constant deepening of the inlets and channels for industrial and tourist ships, the covering of barene and velme and other anthropic interventions such as clam production turned the lagoon into a

Period of protest against environmantal destruction and factory closures. Chiara e forte factory, 1978

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA flat and deep waterbody, more prone to erosion.

The wetland area today is less than 10% of what it used to be in the late Serenissima. The increasing cost of life in Venice, the polarization of the productive activities in the mainland, and the pressure of tourism led to a drastic decline of the residents, reaching 76’000 in 1991 CE. This value is compensated by the arrival of new families on the island, which turned into an almost exclusively cultural and aristocratic city, devoted to art and tourism, where 50’000 commuters cross the lagoon every day to work (Mancuso, 2009).

The tumultuous 20th century resulted in the belief that the lagoon environment became too capricious to be liveable. The main tendency since the 1970s is to freeze the state of the lagoon. This attitude is exclaimed through the MoSE project, a movable protection system in the lagoon inlets to separate the lagoon from the sea when necessary. This project is the last act to turn the lagoon into a completely controlled environment and therefore prevent the potential to adapt to changes in the future. Moreover, the touristic mono-economy has complicated Venice’s possibility to adapt. Tourism puts enormous pressure on the housing market and can be seen as an important trigger of the archipelago’s depopulation.

This year’s pandemic has proven the dependency on mass tourism and the stativity of the city to respond, to such an extent that only a fraction of the usual economic activity could take place for almost an entire year.

It is clear that the resilience of the lagoon as a carrier for the Venetian urbanisation has been stretched to a limit. This means that we are not only heading to a loss of the ecological mediating features of the lagoon, but to the loss of its entire liveability. The question is then how we can re-introduce the notion of resilience into a vision for the future of the lagoon? At today’s turning point it is about choosing whether we want to follow the current paradigm of the lagoon as a fixed state or whether we are willing to once more shift domain and consider the archipelago as an adaptive system that hosts life in the lagoon.

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Venetian resilience through history

Territorial elements of the Venetian lagoon

35

Geography of references on Utopia

36

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA

Why do we need a Utopia today?

In the previous chapter, a theoretical framework on resilience has been defined, through which the history of the Venetian lagoon and its contemporary ecological, social, and economic situation has been (re-)read. Today, growing social injustice and inequality, along with ecological crisis, question the way we will live and produce together. When facing these multifaceted issues, what emerges is both a sense of uncertainty but also of indecisiveness, within the vast field of possible variations.

seem to lose their usefulness and the design act only seems to scratch the most superficial layers of socio-ecological issues, getting lost in a tangle of regulations, economic, political, and private interests.

Given these limits, the narrative and the structure of the utopia emerge then as a powerful tool, able to critique the contemporary situation, while depicting other alternative ones. This kind of exploration, outside of the problem-solving mindset, allows for a radical thinking exercise, an ‘extreme effort in imagination’, able to define new possibilities, overcoming the contingencies and overcomplexity of the situation.

Indeed, if for some never witnessed before forthcoming issues - such as climate change - it is clear the lack of knowledge to fully understand them, for some better-known others - as the decline of residents - it is even more dramatic the inability to take an action. For this second kind of threat, this indecisiveness makes it even worse: on one side the presence of the necessary knowledge to intervene - and therefore the general witnessing and recognition of the problem -, and on the other, the lack of political will to accept this condition and face it.

It is then fundamental to ask ourselves, what kind of utopia do we need today?

As argued by Viganò, ‘the issue today, in reconsidering the role of utopia, is that society is radically changing, and this has occurred again and again since the periods which have expressed a more pronounced or radical utopian thinking’ (Viganò, 2018, p. 11), as the second half of the 20th century. To address contemporary issues, it is not enough anymore to refer to the utopian projects from this period.

The question of the Venetian territories is not an exception but is part of a profound European crisis, and more in general of the Western democracies (Viganò, 2018; Dehaene, 2018), in which planetary challenges, climate change, post-carbon energy transition, demographic explosion, technical lag, and the crisis of democratic legitimation contribute to the “current malaise” (Dehaene, 2018, p. 95).

New utopias need to be developed, in light of the newfound contemporary social role of urbanism and architecture, differently from what Tafuri argued in his 1973 book, Progetto e Utopia.

A brief analysis on the concept of Utopia, its narrative genesis, and role in the field of urbanism and philosophical reasoning, to define a model for contemporary utopia will now be presented.

In this context, especially in complex and fragile inhabited territories as the Venetian lagoon, traditional tools of urban and territorial projects 38

Why do we need a Utopia today?

A critical tool The term utopia was coined by Sir Thomas More around 1516, as the title for his latest book.

Etymologically, coming from the ancient Greek, it means οú (“not”) and τόπος (“place”), which translates as no-place, meaning a non-existing society.

source: lavocedinewyork.com

The narrative of Utopia is divided into two books.

In the first one, More criticizes the situation of contemporary England, oppressed by the decline of customs and the enclosure of the commons, favoring the few while criminalizing the poor. In the second book, More’s interlocutor, Raphael, narrates the story of the society, government, and uses of the remote island of Utopia, where issues, similar to the English ones, were resolved.

By describing and comparing England and Utopia, More uses the narrative as a political tool to give a critical reading of the situation of his country. Through the description of the island of Utopia – the non-place – More overcomes the contingencies, of being in a precise moment and a precise place, to create clear collective imagery to envision a possible other future, which does not necessarily attempt to be the perfect one, nor a solution.

source: scems.group.shef.ac.uk

Drawing of the island of Utopia - Thomas More, 1516

It is precisely this condition of not being the ‘perfect’ and ‘definitive’ future that gives value to utopian narration as a tool of thinking. ‘Utopia has nothing to do with perfect or perfection, utopias are about better, […] saying that utopia means perfect, means impossible, means force and violence to impose that imperfection’ (Sargent, 2016, p. 189).

Enclosure of the commons by More, described as the fencing off of agricultural fields giving work to many, to use as areas for sheep breeding, practiced by the few”.

source: wikipedia.org

From this perspective, the construction of the ideal society is an important passage, but it must not be understood as an abstract and absolute exercise. It is instead a narrative to reflect on the current - problematic - situation. Several scholars have highlighted this, arguing that ‘the real issue at stake may be in the first book’ (De Cauter, 2016, p. 539). As stated by Dehaene, by studying More’s biography – form which emerges the figure of a progressive Real Politiker, ‘ready to challenge the current state of affairs’ (Dehaene, 2018, p. 97) - the description of the island of

Phalanstère - Charles Fourier, early 19th century

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA Utopia should be read as a satire to totalitarian systems of his time and not the blueprint of an ideal society. In this sense, the book, even more, seeks to displace the current thinking about the world and its status quo.

reconstruction, represented by the emergence of low-quality dorm neighborhoods all across Europe. Finally, the third and fundamental problem is the lack of understanding on the part of the planners of the transition from the modern to the contemporary city. That is, those realized projects were aiming at a society that was no longer there, shaken by the two world wars, profoundly different and rapidly changing (Secchi, 2000).

A tool for crises Following More’s Utopia, the term has been adopted by many fields and has gained a handful of meanings to the point that De Cauter distinguishes no less than 7 of them. Besides the only meaning of unanimous agreement as a literary genre, utopia has become synonymous with blueprint for an ideal society, of social experiment, of the realized ideal societies of the 20th century, of utopian architecture, of science fiction, and collective dream image of a better-emancipated world (De Cauter, 2016).

It was in this very context that the notion of utopia, after being discredited by the modern tradition, reappeared in the second half of the 20th century.

Building on issues already raised, as in previous decades by Buckminster Fuller, utopian thinking found fertile ground in the context of crisis.

In the attempt to reformulate the form of the city some currents emerged, such as the identification of urbanity and architecture as a machine, represented by the explorations of Plug-In City, Instant City, Walking City, by Archigram or the research on themes of mobility and functionalism, as Pellestrin’s Linea in Italy, or Biro and Fernier’s Ville a X (Sardo, 2014).

After resonating primary in the field of literature, with works such as Bacon’s New Atlantis – or more recent ones such as Calvino’s Le città invisibili or Callenbach’s Ecotopia - utopian thinking and narrative have had a powerful impact on urbanism and architecture. Indeed, using Calvino’s words, literature is ‘a series of attempts at knowledge and classification of information about the world’ (Calvino, 1992, p. 23).

Opposed to this optimism towards the progressive role of technology, research conducted among others - by Soleri, Friedman, Superstudio, Price or Constant focused on the social solution.

While Soleri explores the role of small communities, the others investigated nomad, mobile, and ephemeral structures in which citizens could directly participate in their organization. The theoretical framework of these projects relates to the 19th-century utopias, in which ‘the idea of a new society stands before the figures of the buildings that will host it’ (Sardo, 2014, p. 63). In these cases, the abstraction of the form, with results such as the reduction of architecture to mass operated

by Superstudio, has its aspiration in the radical critique of the socio-economic context, but also of the architectural practice.

Besides the illuminist utopias such as Fourier’s Phalanstère or Godin’s Familistère, and the few of the Modern Movement - as Ville Radieuse by Le Corbusier or Broadacre City by Frank Lloyd Wright - the second half of the 20th century witnessed the blossoming of numerous urban and architectural utopias. It is indeed at this moment that, in the wakening of an almost completed post-war reconstruction of European cities, a crisis in the trust towards the planning tools started developing. This crisis developed in a context in which the city was planned ‘note-by-note’ (Secchi, 2000, p. 60), with ‘the extreme separation between the scale of the building and of the city’ (Sardo, 2014, p. 21).

Nevertheless, besides the contribution to the construction of imagery of deep separation from the Modern Movement and some realized experiments, the waning of utopian thinking came during the last two decades of the 20th century. Besides the specific situation of architecture during these years, the ‘violence brought by neolibera-

Secchi identifies this crisis as caused, among others, by three reasons. The first one is the loss of the urban planner’s role in society, victim and executioner of a bureaucratic formalization of the practice. The second is the failure of post-war 40

lism since the latter decades of the last century’ (Pinder, 2013, p. 30) deeply influenced people’s way of thinking and ability to imagine alternative or possible futures. As argued by Fisher in Capitalist Realism ‘there’s the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it’ (Fisher, 2009, p. 2).

Familistère de Guise - Jean-Baptiste André Godin, 1859

source: moma.org

Similar to the events of the 1950s, but different in the issues, the new socio-ecological crisis we are in today and the uncertainty it produces, calls again for the necessity of renewed utopian thinking, as an exercise to envision new futures and open possibilities for contemporary society. Moreover, the physical consequences of this crisis, especially in terms of climate change and social inequalities, require these new utopias to be radical but ‘concrete’ (Bloch, 1995).

source: hiddenarchitecture.net

Why do we need a Utopia today?

The value of utopia In his book from 1973, Progetto e Utopia, Tafuri criticizes contemporary architecture and urban planning. He argues that ‘the drama of architecture [is to] see architecture obliged to return pure architecture, to form without utopia; in the best cases to sublime uselessness’ (Tafuri, 1973, p. 3). He continues stating that ‘the only utopia that the modern world concedes to architecture is that of form’ (De Michelis, 2018, p. 40), meant as a recovery of human totality, as the possession of disorder through an ordering form.

source: moma.org

Broadacre City - Frank Lloyd Wright, 1932

Tafuri denies any further social role of the utopia that, from his perspective, has shifted from meaningful social project to ‘a mask, which covers, ornaments, and hides the concrete aspects of an architectural proposition and becomes a fetish in the sense of magical technique, a method of hiding artifices […] with a beautiful façade of ideals, thereby provided with an appearance while it actually maintains the status quo’ (De Lima Amaral, 2018, p. 54,56).

source: hetnieuweinstituut.nl

Walking City - Archigram, 1966

Nevertheless, Tafuri’s drastic and stringent position has been widely contested. Reflecting on the value of utopia today, Viganò argues that ‘the architecture at the center of Tafuri’s harsh criticism is, in the early 70s, a discipline that has lost

New Babylon - Constant Nieuwenhuijs, 19591974

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA its role’, immersed in a crisis that invested it, on and off, since the second half of the 20th century.

Viganò continues by saying that Tafuri’s criticism:

abstract utopias seem rather weak, resulting as exercises of ‘abstract and transcendental ideal plans of living, […] attached to numerous more or less distant and unknown or misunderstood realities, but no longer in real life’ (Pinder, 2013, p. 32, 36).

‘shows its belonging to a definite and concluded historical period, that prematurely closed the gates of hope to [architecture’s] social role.

This is not because the issues are radically different today, but because now it is necessary to go beyond registering the difficulty, in the sense of the ‘utopian’ presumption of architecture and urbanism to change the world. It is time for architecture and urbanism to re-appropriate an imaginative capacity that can in fact act in the world and try to change it’ (Viganò, 2018, p. 12).

Instead, concrete utopias have a potential, being rooted in real life and attempting to change it, realistic and reasonable, able to ‘break down aspirations and desires into modest and common places, yet always capable of introducing lasting and extensive transformation of the inhabited space’ (Viganò, 2018, p. 15). Indeed, the concreteness of this kind of utopia must not be confused as a temporary simplistic solution or banality. About this, De Michelis proposes an interesting passage in Utopia and the project for the city and territory:

In the definition of what is the utopia for today, it is therefore important to acknowledge the failure of overarching all-encompassing solutions.

Instead of pursuing ‘delusional environmental determinism, for which the forms of the city can generate the right society’ (Secchi, 2000, p. 63) – as the utopias of form defined by Tafuri -, utopias should open a path to the possible, delineating a landscape that is not merely part of the real, ‘without losing sight of it’ (Lefebvre, 2003 (1970), p. 6). These explorations should not be placed in the most abstract levels but rather at the concrete moment of possible achievement of action or transformation.

‘During a dialogue with Ernst Bloch in 1964, the German philosopher Theodor Benjamin Adorno reminded him of the banality of the fact that certain Nineteenth-century utopia dreams seem to be realized in the present: that today there is television, the possibility of travel towards other planets, of flying faster than sound: ‘one could say, in general – Adorno added - that the realization of utopia only consists in the repetition of a continuously identical today’. But Bloch, for his part, retorted that as Brecht had written in Mahagonny: “Something’s missing”. For Bloch,[…] the utopian impulse is present in virtually any human activity oriented towards the future, of the atmosphere of hope that characterizes each purchase of a new item of clothing or the planning of a holiday, up to the commitment for a better world implicit in medical research, in the drawing up of a constitution, in the production of an artistic work. ‘Something’s missing’ means that humanity is aware that the world is not perfect. And that the impulse to imagine a change and an improvement up to the condition of perfection is an un-eliminable component of our culture. For Bloch, utopia is the search of a new life’ (De Michelis, 2018, p. 40).

In this frame, one can make use of the distinction made by Bloch in The Principle of Hope from 1954. Along with the definition of utopia, namely ‘the expression of hope’, the German philosopher distinguishes abstract and concrete utopia. The former is indicated as ‘fantastic and compensatory […] with the tendency to become lost in fantasy rather than being oriented to real possibility’ (Levitas, 1990, p. 15). On the other hand, concrete utopia is ‘anticipatory rather than compensatory, […] within the real, and relates to the part of reality which is coming into being on the horizon of real’ (Levitas, 1990, p. 17).

The challenges that the contemporary crisis poses upon us, call for the return of urban and architectural utopias as expressions of hope, for a better future. But while Bloch defines concrete utopias as carriers of hope, the abstract ones might only express it. Under these conditions,

Due to this natural tendency to improve our condition, concrete utopias are efforts in imaginations, to imagine a better world than the present 42

Why do we need a Utopia today?

source: uncubemagazine.com

one. According to Lefebvre, every plan has always a utopian dimension, since ‘there is no theory without utopia. Otherwise, people are content to record what they see before their eyes’ (Lefebvre, 2009 (1970), p. 178). Utopias require concrete thinking as much concrete thinking requires a utopian dimension to go beyond mere reality.

In this frame of concrete utopias, it is interesting to come back to some of the passages of More’s book. Some habits and customs described on the island of Utopia – such as the equal distribution and location of services in the cities; the six-hours working day; the minimum age of eighteen for marriage; the application of zero-land consumption policies (More, 2012, p. 64, 67, 69, 92) – probably defined as ‘utopic’ by More’s contemporaries, are now common practices or a current topic of discussion. They were, indeed, properly concrete forms of utopian thinking, rooted in the social custom of that time, aiming for a better future.

source: moma.org

Fun Palace - Cedric Price, 1961

Therefore, More’s role as a precursor of the utopian narrative understood as a fantasizing exercise on distant and unrealistic societies loses its meaning. Utopia is on the other hand an exploration of a possible, achievable condition based on a social change.

Ville Spatiale - Yona Friedman, 1958

Utopias for today With the present reflection, we have tried to give a brief frame on the concept of utopia and how its presence in the field of architecture and urbanism is related to moments of crisis of the practice. Nevertheless, the attempt here is not to give an overall philosophical definition of what utopia is, and how it has been used, but rather to define a taxonomy, a geography of references as a guide for a utopian project for the future of the Venetian territory. source: dorotheum.com

We argue that today the urgency to think about Venice calls for the return of utopia among the tools of urbanism and architecture, to give a new perspective to the investigation on the theme of resilience in urbanism.

In this frame, a first point is to recognize the po-

Supersurface - Superstudio, 1972

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA tential that utopia has to critically read the situation and comment on it, creating collective imagery of a possible better future.

utopia that reconsiders urbanism as an ‘emancipatory force […] coming from the commitment to vivre ensemble’ (Dehaene, 2018, p. 98)

Secondly, we stress the importance of Bloch’s concept of concrete utopia, as a realistic and reasonable exploration, that demonstrates to be the most powerful critique on the existing. Concrete utopian thinking also allows questioning presuppositions and projections of any research, preventing from ‘formulating assumptions without even subjecting them to new checks and discussion’ (Viganò, 2018, p. 13).

Finally, the most practical way to achieve this is by focusing the social concrete utopia in the terms of the commons, as defined by Elinor Ostrom, as a community, a common-pool resource, and a set of rules. De Cauter argues that utopianism can be redefined as a ‘plurality of experiments and endeavors in practices of commoning’ (De Cauter, 2016, p. 541).

Therefore, in our intentions, the project of Amphibia is an exploration on resilience in the terms of a concrete utopia starting from the commons of the Venetian territory.

Utopia’s approach of questioning practices and radical thinking is fundamental today, also in reconsidering what utopian means. Many thinkers, like Lefebvre, Zizek, Constant among others, question if it is more utopian to wish for something different, as a revolutionary change in society, or to believe in the eternal life of a stagnant economic system, blindly and resignedly accepting authority and circumstances?

Venice as a living Utopia The force with which Venice acts on the imagination is that of a living archetype that faces utopia.

These are the final words that Italo Calvino uses in 1974 to conclude a subtle but powerful essay on the aquatic city.

Throughout history, the Venetian lagoon has been the place of the interweaving of imagination and reality. Besides its unique physical and geographical features, the territory has been widely studied, represented, and described, adding layers of meaning and symbolism to it. Therefore, the Venetian lagoon is the accumulation of culture, images, and narratives, which somehow encourages ‘extreme efforts in imagination’ rooted in the specific Venetian context.

That is to say that the territory itself, by its uniqueness and by the relation it establishes between the inhabited parts and the surrounding environment, is an archetype of the city, it defines a possible of what a city can be, a modern locus amoenus, with extensive urban potentials, to be used as a model for ideal cities of the future (Calvino, 1974).

But even more, the Venetian imagery bends the limit between the possible and the impossible to open a door for the imagination, and by doing so, it is both a utopia and a fertile ground for utopias. The Venetian territory becomes an

Social, economic, and ecological challenges, as never witnessed before, have produced changes in our approaches to urbanism and architecture and in our conditions, to the point that it simply cannot continue in the way it is today. Facing the enormous task that the twentieth century has left us with, an ‘extreme effort in imagination’ will be needed. As stated by Winy Maas, during his year as editor of Domus, ‘playtime is over’.

What we demand is a socio-ecological utopia, a concrete utopia, whose seeds are present in reality. This utopia must not have the ambitions to solve everything but provide an image of a reachable better future, in which architecture and urbanism regain their social role. What we demand is a utopia that, instead of using the design to think the unthinkable and define through the form new ways of living, considers a design that reflects, allows, and is open to, possible new lifestyles. A utopia that proposes alternatives by conducting endless experiments by which ‘individuals and the group could actively initiate the process of social transformation’ (Pinder, 2013, p. 37), not by replacing one world for another, but being subject of their own history by changing the meaning of the world they are part of. A 44

Why do we need a Utopia today?

Source: https://it.wikipedia.org/

archetype for utopian explorations.

This hybridization of reality and imagination is maybe best embodied by the 18th century Capriccio with Palladian buildings, by Canaletto.

In this painting, the artist evokes the Venetian imaginary with its channels and gondolas.

Venice is here used as a scene for exploration, as a possibility to create a place that is another.

In the scene, non-Venetian renaissance buildings are projected, such as the Vicentine Chiericati Palace or the Palladian Basilica. However, by adding the unrealized project for the Rialto bridge by Palladio, Canaletto does not simply intend to create a sort of ideal collage but starts envisioning other realities of what the city of Venice could have been or could be.

Capriccio with Palladian buildings, 1756 - 1759 , Canaletto

Source: http://www.albumdivenezia.it

This theme of Venice as an archetype for utopias recurs also in other fields. Within literature, Calvino further explores it in Le città invisibili, in which Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the cities of Khan’s own empire. Nevertheless, by the end, Khan realizes that all the resumes of Polo’s travels through the Mongolian cities are the description of one only city, Marco Polo’s home, Venice, seen from different points of view.

Calvino is reading Venice in the terms of a concrete utopia, describing it in alternative ways through imagination, to propose a different view.

Moreover, Polo’s narration of the Mongolian cities – all utopian – always starts from Venice, meaning that Calvino intends Venice as a city that allows utopian thinking and explorations.

As highlighted by Psarra, Calvino writes Le città invisibili in 1972, a time of ‘urban crisis, when architects, urban thinkers, and planners were envisioning bold alternatives, drawing attention to imaginative projection as a key resource in constructing better places’ (Psarra, 2018, p. 1).

To counter this, it is possible to see in Calvino’s book as an attempt to embed the discourse on utopian and alternative futures in the concrete, taking a real place as an implicit starting point.

Source: https://lazzarettiveneziani.it

Fondaco of the Turks, 1932, Venice

Within the Venetian context, it is possible to identify three characteristics that can be considered realized utopias: physical and geographical context, cultural vivacity, and permanence over time. These unique features define both

Graffiti on the walls of the Lazzaretto Nuovo, Venice

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ON RESILIENCE & UTOPIA concrete and abstract territories for the Venetian case, which influence and encourage utopian explorations, able to ‘nurture human ingenuity’ (Psarra, 2018, p. 6).

On one side the physical and geographical uniqueness of the territory stimulates reflections on the urban environment that go beyond the mere registration of reality. For example, Calvino calls Venice an anti-Euclidean territory, where the concept of the shortest route between two points is not a straight line but is relative to the motion on water or land - and the type of body - person or boat - that traces the path. Moreover, he defines Venice as a multidimensional city, where the houses overcome the traditional binomial of earth/air – namely the foundations and elevation of the building – by adding a third element, water, creating a multidimensional human environment (Calvino, 1974).

These unparalleled features generate from the secular interaction between the lagoon ecology and the needed practices to live in it, going from the archipelago gemmation to the ways of inhabiting and flourishing with a challenging territory, to the development of site-specific techniques for production, cultivation, and the construction of palaces on water.

The addition of the dimension of water allows the urban landscape of the archipelago to gain its physical uniqueness in being directly connected to the liquid expanse. Water, therefore, is the binding element for the islands and not the dividing one. All these features create an antimonotonous environment for a daily-life utopia, that constantly stimulates life and is never boring.

cultures, a sort of Babylon.

Due to this attractivity, the lagoon has been home and place of gathering of thinkers, artists, people of culture and politics, along with the everyday inhabitants, as merchants, sailors, craftsmen, and so on. It is thanks to the interaction between these two categories that the territory evolved as an extraordinary urban setting, ‘acting as an interface between the conscious creativity of artists and architects and the unconscious creativity of common people’ (Psarra, 2018, p. 1). Again, Canaletto’s painting perfectly portrays this double-sided shaping force, painting exceptional palaces and urban sceneries animated by events and people of everyday reality.

Finally, part of the Venetian uniqueness lies in the way in which the landscape has gone through history, constantly changing and updating, but keeping the specific identities for each island within the homogeneity of the archipelago. Besides the physical permanence of structures and elements, that allows witnessing today the same places that Canaletto painted, it is important to remark that, despite some limited moments, the archipelago never denied its relationship with water and amphibian nature. For example, the territories have been able to elude the imposition of the car, maintaining water-based public mobility and walking as the main means of transport.

Among many examples, Venice never ceased to inspire architects, artists, and writers that explicitly or implicitly refer to it. Kevin Lynch describes Venice as the imaginable city par excellence, while Calvino considers that the city ‘unleashes the imagination, stimulates the ability to choose, sets free and shakes anyone from boredom’ (Calvino, 1974, p. 2690). Le Corbusier admired the city’s efficiency in intersecting and separating the aquatic realm and terrestrial routes. Moreover, Burckhardt summarizes all this potential describing Venice as an unprecedented example of urban innovation and collective imagination.

If only the construction of such a built environment would be enough to stimulate the imagination, these territories also create suggestions through their historical-cultural prestige, having been for centuries a cornerstone for exchanges. Here, in addition to the mere trade in goods, buildings – as the fondachi of the Germans, the Turks or the Persians – written traces – as the graffiti in many languages in the Lazzaretto Nuovo Island – or entire communities – as the Slavs in Riva Degli Schiavoni or the Armenians in the Island of San Lazzaro – prove that the whole lagoon was a pulsating center for different knowledge and

Today the archipelago and the lagoon might still be physically similar to the ones that Calvino, Lynch or Le Corbusier experienced and described, 46

Why do we need a Utopia today? but the questions raised by the contemporary socio-economic and ecological crisis might change it radically.

The Venetian territory is today disputed between conflicting interests and values, implying different future scenarios and therefore different priorities.

Several requests stir up the discussion on this territory. If some issues are closely linked to the local environment, like the needs of residents or the protection of the lagoon’s ecology, some others are of a larger scale, touching global issues such as climate change, mass tourism, and globalization. In this frame of today’s condition, Psarra remarks the role of Venice, comparing it to the ancient artifacts and myths, that provide us with ‘models and constructs, paradigms of experience and terms of comparison, revitalizing imagination, [able to] sustain its universal relevance over and above its transient conditions’ (Psarra, 2018, p. 6).

That is to say that even after five hundred years from its golden era, the Venetian lagoon is still an example and paradigmatic territory to look at, a place of discussion, being at the exact critical moment between a dystopia and a potential eutopia. And still, it is a place for utopian explorations that today, as in other moments of crisis, can open the way to other possible futures.

47

48

AMPHIBIA BOOK I. The situation of Venice

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

Venetian lagoon under threat In the framework of climate change, Bevilacqua argues that Venice and the Venetian Lagoon can be considered a ‘planetary metaphor’. Not only does the Venetian lagoon embody the long-term mutual relationship between human actions and both fragile and risky environments, but it also takes on a new layer of meaning today, by being on the frontline to face sea-level rise and future adaptation challenges.

According to the author, this territory and its traditions can be an example of how to deal with waters, but also an occasion for experimentation and testing of possible ways of dealing with an evolving environment, as a model for the global scale.

Climate change does not jeopardize only the municipalities within the perimeter of the water body. The lagoon is the common element that structures all parts surrounding it, directly or indirectly influenced by the natural habitat, its regimes, and evolution. The notion of climate also changes our perspective on other threats that the lagoon was facing and the anthropological attitude towards them. Climate change holds within a connotation of uncertainty, and therefore reframes other threats that for a long time seemed within the reach of human control as additions to this uncertainty.

Considering the uncertainty, the ongoing dynamics of the lagoon as an interplay between natural and human forces, have now to be seen as a more multiple and entangled cause consequence situation. The threats can be structured as: 1. the layering of the current and especially future pressure on the territory with climate change, 2. the anthropic actions harmful to the lagoon environment and its inhabitability, 3. the consequential outcomes of both climate change and anthropic actions that form threats on themselves and 4. the social question of the lagoon.

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Venetian lagoon under threat

Local knowledge gathering Georg Umgiesser Oceanographer & Physicist, researcher at ISMAR interviewed 09/10/2019 & 30/10/2020

Emanuela Molinaroli Environmental Scientist, sediment expert & Professor at Ca’Foscari interviewed 25/11/2019 & 09/11/2020

Tiberio Scozzafava-Jaeger Ecologist & former member of the ‘40 Savi’ interviewed 26/10/2019

Alberto Barausse Biologist, researcher at the University of Padua & vice-coordinator of Life VIMINE interviewed 15/02/2021

Giorgia Fazzini Member of non-profit project ‘Lazzaretti veneziani’ interviewed 25/10/2020

Jane Da Mosto Environmental Scientist & co-founder of think-tank ‘We Are Here Venice’ interviewed 23/02/2021

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

I. Climate Change Climate change, the modification of the Earth’s climate, has consequences that are both global and site-specific. Some of the latter already affect to a certain extent the lagoon and estuaries ecologies of today and will only increase.

The main global outcomes expected to occur are the increase in temperature, the variability of precipitation patterns, and mean sea level rise (Unesco, 2010, b). The Venetian Lagoon is already witnessing the first outcomes of these modifications, experiencing changes in the concentration of rainfall, average temperatures, wind intensities, and increased sea levels. Besides affecting the historical city, these alterations dramatically impact the hydraulics and ecosystem of the lagoon (Unesco, 2010, b).

flood area with 2 metres of sea level rise (500x500 km)

Nevertheless, it is important to note that the IPCC model excludes the contribution of melting ice to the increase of the mean water level, considering only the heating of the ocean waters and their consequent expansion (Unesco, 2010, a). IPCC has voluntarily excluded this phenomenon, reputed not yet fully understood and still too uncertain. The IPCC predictions should be then considered a lower limit. Indeed, other semi-empirical models forecast a peak value of 1.4/2.15 meters (Marsico, 2017; Unesco, 2010, a). Furthermore, due to global thermal inertia, even if emissions of greenhouse gases will be reduced during this century, the sea level will continue to rise for centuries. (Unesco, 2010, b)

In the following paragraphs, the main site-specific consequences of climate change will be analysed, namely (A) Sea level rise, (B) Wind pattern variation, and (C) Temperature and precipitation variation.

I.I Sea Level Rise ‘With time, the uncertainty of sea-level rise predictions goes down while the averages stay very similar. This uncertainty comes from the uncertainty of the processes, uncertainty about the models but especially, we do not know what mankind will do. The social economic uncertainty is the biggest uncertainty for sea-level rise.’ Umgiesser 2019 Climate change is considered to be a major threat to the survival of the Venetian Lagoon, especially considering the projected increase in sea level (Solidoro, 2010).

It is then important to investigate the site-specific consequences for the northern Adriatic Sea, which is not a stand-alone basin but is linked to the Mediterranean Sea and, in turn, to the Atlantic Ocean (Unesco, 2010, a).

Different prediction models have been developed by scientists and environmental institutions.

The IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change - has assessed a range of increased mean sea levels in relation to an array of possible scenarios, defined by the greenhouse gas emission rates and temperature variations. Going from a best-case scenario to the worst one, IPCC predicts sea level rise to range between 0.53 to 0.97 meters by 2100 CE. (Marsico, 2017).

In the 1980s and 1990s, the average sea level increased by 25 cm, above the zero datum of 1897 CE (Scoertegagna, 2009; Unesco, 2010, a), while more recent analyses show that the average water level is now closer to 30 cm above zero datum (Unesco, 2010, a).

The mean seal level is fundamental for the life of the Venetian lagoon since it is daily incremen 52

Venetian lagoon under threat

Climate change map

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

IPCC sea level rise prediction by 2100 & 2300

The Adriatic marine dynamics are mostly controlled by a warm long fetched and humid south-eastern wind - locally referred to as Scirocco - and by a north-eastern cold wind jet - named Bora - blowing from orographic gaps in the mountain ridges surrounding the eastern coast (Bonaldo, 2019).

ted by the tidal movements. With a water level of 110 centimetres, already 13% of the city of Venice is flooded. This means that considering a tidal increase of 0.7/0.8 meters, a higher mean sea level will lead to regular phenomena of ‘acqua alta’ (Unesco, 2010, a).

Nevertheless, Sea Level Rise, by being a global phenomenon, is not a threat only for the historic island of Venice, but also for the whole lagoon and whole northern Adriatic shore. Along these coasts, extensive areas lay below the mean sea level: 650 square kilometres below -2 meters, 1500 square kilometres between -2 and 0 meters, and about 2400 square kilometres between 0 and +2 meters (Unesco, 2010, b).

With climate change, it is foreseen that coastal regions and transitional environments, such as coastal lagoons, will be strongly exposed to the effects of sea level, meteorology, and oceanography dynamics. By projecting the climate expected in the Adriatic Sea in the period of 2071-

Furthermore, an increase in water could also lead to consequential damages, as it might affect the functioning of waste-water pipelines, drain, and septic tanks thus increasing the risk of spreading human pathogens.

I.II Wind pattern variations In the Adriatic Sea, a semi-elongated basin, coastal orography plays a major role in wind modulation (Bonaldo, 2019). Located in the northern tip of the Adriatic, the Venetian Lagoon is thus deeply influenced by the local wind patterns, able to move great quantities of water.

Average wind speed and direction in the lagoon

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Venetian lagoon under threat modifications in the temperature and precipitation variability, which can lead to short-term concentration of severe amounts of water and other direct and indirect impacts, including modification of habitats and species distribution (Solidoro, 2010; Unesco, 2010, b).

2100 CE under the IPCC worst case scenario - RCP 8.5, with the most severe greenhouse gas emission - one of the major outcomes is the northward movement of the midlatitude storm belt. This will lead to a decrease in storminess, an increase in precipitation seasonality, and milder temperatures (Bonaldo, 2019; Unesco, 2010, b).

Considering a reference period between 19611990 CE, according to the IPCC’s A2-scenario (one of the more extreme predictions) by the end of the 21st century the air temperature of the lagoon of Venice will increase by +3.2°C in winter, +3.0°C in spring, +5.0°C in summer, and +3.8°C in autumn (Unesco, 2010, b). Consequently, there will be a rise in the average water temperature of +3°C (Unesco, 2010, a). Therefore, the lagoon might experience increased precipitation in fall and winter and decreased ones during spring and summer, thus modifying the system’s trophodynamics, namely the dynamics of nutrition or metabolism (Solidoro, 2010). Rainy seasons will present short-term precipitations, with an increase of flash floods and fewer soil infiltrations (Unesco, 2010, b).

Nevertheless, despite the lowering of wave storminess in the overall Adriatic basin, it is possible that the northern and north-eastern coasts might experience a local increase of wind-induced waves impacting the shores (Bonaldo, 2019).

Predictions suggest that climate change will generate different responses in Bora and Scirocco sea states. The wave severity caused by Bora is forecasted to decrease in intensity, while the trend of Scirocco-induced storms are expected to have a more heterogeneous behaviour, with an increase of 10% in the northern part of the basin (Bonaldo, 2019).

I.III Temperature and precipitation variations

This variability in seasonality and intensity of rainfall will affect the water characteristics in the coastal lagoon, but also its freshwater reservoirs in the alps. Milder winters will indeed result in less snow and ice accumulation in the mountains, hence determining more variable flows of alpine rivers, such as the Brenta and the Piave (Unesco, 2010, b).

As in every ecological system, since water temperature is directly influenced by the one of the air, air temperature and precipitation patterns are fundamental for the quality of the habitat.

Nowadays, monthly high and low air temperature values in the Venetian Lagoon range from 3°C to 24°C, but can also reach 30°C or fall to 0°C (Solidoro, 2010), while the average temperature of the waters is 3.5°C, half a degree hotter than the Adriatic Sea (Unesco, 2010, b). In a dynamic relation, air temperature is in turn influenced by the waters: there is a significant temperature variance between the average air temperature of the lagoon, 14.5°C, and the one of its watershed, which is 13.5°C (Unesco, 2010, b).

Finally, the combination of sea-level rise and decrease of rain will enforce a negative sedimentary budget and an important shoreline retreat (Marsico, 2017).

In the area, precipitation has two peaks, one in the spring and one in autumn (Solidoro, 2010), bringing a fundamental contribution to the water renewal and thus to the ecological balance of the ecosystem (Unesco, 2010, b).

Nevertheless, climate change predictions foresee 55

AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

II. Anthropic Actions If climate change shows the future threats the Venetian territory faces, the current state of the lagoon is already highly impacted by an elaborate series of anthropic interventions. Human presence has always been a constant pressure on the natural environment, even though with different intensities. As Bevilacqua argues in “Venice and the Water” the approach towards the lagoon ecology of the Republic of Venice - the local government that lasted from the 7th until the end of the 18th century - was to consider the landscape as an essential provider of resources to be used, but not to be exploited. Conservation and protection of the lagoon were a central point for the government of the Republic, backed by a well-organized bureaucratic machine, that was dismantled with the fall of the state.

This led, from the 19th century to the consumptive use of the landscape, as the wetlands or network of channels, and of resources, as groundwater and local fauna. This paradigmatic shift of anthropological interventions led to the fixed and constrained lagoon we know today, that seems less and less able to adapt to changing conditions the territory is facing.

II.I Industrial and agricultural wetland reclamation Since the beginning of the 20th century, a series of activities, such as the industrial port and the reclamation of wetlands for agriculture or infrastructures, took place in the Venetian Lagoon.

Wetland reclamation and the fishing valleys within the lines of the conterminazione reduced the perimeter for the natural flows of the lagoon.

Evolution of Marghera, Maritima and Marco Polo

Furthermore, the industrial sector has grown exponentially from the 1930s until the 1970s, impacting the lagoon ecosystem by extracting groundwater from the artesian wells - thus causing land subsidence - and increasing the number of large ships entering the lagoon, leading to sediment suspension and expulsion (Bevilacqua, 1995).

The development of the Marghera port, in its first, second, and uncompleted third expansion, has covered almost 2.200 hectares of barene, velme, and tidal flats. The same happened with the development of the Marco Polo airport in 1957 CE, covering the barena of Tessera, the expansion of the train bridge in 1958 CE, filling the barena of St. Giuliano, or, in the same year, the construction of the Tronchetto island (Scortegagna, 2009).

Between 1917 and 1963 CE, almost 3.000 ha of wetland were lost (Mancuso, 2009).

Almost in parallel, even agricultural activities have grown in the mainland and along the lagoon shores, reclaiming, from 1820 CE, around 400 hectares of wetlands (Solidoro, 2010; Bevilacqua, 1995).

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Venetian lagoon under threat

Map of anthropic actions in and around the lagoon

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

II.II Fishing activities

hly underused while their influence on the water dynamics remains.

In the fragile Venetian ecology, even the more water-related activities need to be controlled and regulated. Fishing practices are an example of this. Under the Republic of Venice, fishing activities that would interfere with the lagoon’s water dynamic were prohibited and constant surveillance ensured this policy. Modern times have witnessed an exploitative approach in the sector, leading to significant effects on ecosystem structure, fish-community diversity, and presence of biomass (Unesco, 2010, b; Solidoro, 2010).

Not only fishing activities in closed ponds have severe impacts on the lagoon ecology. Also overfishing in the open lagoon, targeting specific consumer-based species, decreases both the target species and non-target ones (Unesco, 2010, b).

The most threatening aquaculture activity is the Manila Clam production, which has turned the practice into an environmental issue (Solidoro, 2010). Today the activity is more regulated but the uncontrolled clam farming from the ‘80s and ‘90s left an enormous impact on the lagoon environment. Introduced in 1983 CE to increase the lagoon production, the Manila Clam - Ruditapes Philippinarum - is a quickly growing allochthonous species. Turned into a semi-industrial production since the 1990s, it is considered to be a major cause of ecological imbalance in the lagoon, by clashing with the benthic fauna, but also contributing to the process of erosion and loss of sediments from the lagoon (Solidoro, 2010). Fishing vessels targeting the Manila clam use heavy-impact gear, plowing the seabed for at least 15 cm, disrupting the environment, and lifting a huge amount of sediments (Mancuso, 2009). When considering that in 1999 CE the clam production reached 40.000 tonnes per year, it is clear the contribution that the activity had on the lagoon sediments outflow. (Solidoro, 2010).

For long time aquaculture has been carried out in restricted areas, mostly ponds, called ‘valli da pesca’, fishing valleys. Even though in extensive practice, the valleys had little impact on the local trophodynamics (Mancuso, 2009).

The collapse of the governmental system of the Serenissima made it possible from the early 19th century for individual fish farmers to embank their fishing valleys, thus enclosing vast areas of the lagoon from the natural water flow. The intensity and dimension of the activity have drastically increased, going from 2.600 hectares of fishing valleys in the 19th century, to 8.500 in 1970 (Mancuso, 2009), until today, with 15.000 hectares used for aquaculture farms (Solidoro, 2010). Nevertheless, today these valleys are hig-

II.III Interventions on the water system ‘You have a big problem in the central lagoon, because of the Malamocco channel. Very big ships enter from this Malamocco inlet and go to the Marghera area. They bring a lot of waves and cause erosion. The tidal flats here are eroding, the sediments move inside the channel, fill it up and the flat is going down. This is a mechanism that we absolutely have to stop.’ Molinaroli 2019 Besides the 16th century titanic diversion of the rivers, from the lagoon to the sea, the Venetian water system has been largely modified, both within and along its borders. After the Napole-

Area of the fishing valleys in the lagoon

58

Venetian lagoon under threat onic construction of the jetties in all three inlets, to increase the depth and favor the navigation, successive interventions have further lowered the seabed. Already in 1934 CE the jetties were extended, influencing the sea-lagoon interaction (Tommasini, 2019). Ecological practices of the Serenissima were further dismantled. It was common during the Republic to keep dredged sediments inside the lagoon. Under the Austrians, sediments from dredging were used to reclaim land for agriculture and by 1869, because of economic efficiency, sediments dredged from the channels were thrown in the open sea.

in Malamocco (D’Alpaos, 2010). Strong fluxes through the inlets may reach, during spring tides, 20.000 m3/s at peak flows, which is quite an impressive value, when compared to the average flow of 1.500 m3/s of the Po River (Umgiesser, 2010).

It is important to understand that the more channels are dug, the straighter water flows are, and the deeper the inlets are, the easier it is for the sea currents and tides to enter the lagoon. In this way, more sediments are dragged outside the shallow basin, making it deeper and, step-bystep, more marine.

Later on, the Vittorio Emanuele Channel (1910 CE) and the Malamocco-Marghera Channel (1968 CE), - respectively 10 m and -12 m deep were excavated to allow ships of increasing tonnage to enter the lagoon for industrial and commercial purposes (Mancuso, 2009; D’Alpaos, 2010). The growth of cargo and, more recently, cruise ships has required a constant enlargement and deepening of the channels. Furthermore, the heavier the vessels, the more intense the transverse currents they generate, thus favoring erosion (D’alpaos, 2010). All these works were done by using dredging machines in a quicker and more effective way, but also overruling the intricate web of channels and the traditional trial-and-error methods.

The most recent important intervention on the water system is the MoSE project, a long-debated project to protect the city of Venice and the surrounding lagoon from ‘acqua alta’. Not yet fully completed, the project entails building mobile barriers at the bottom of each inlet, which, when tidal events threaten to become critical, rise and shut off the lagoon from the sea (Umgiesser, 2010). Nevertheless, the project has severe consequences on the lagoon ecology, modifying the length and direction of the outflow jet, intensifying the current speeds, thus becoming a risk for the conservation of habitats and infrastructures (Umgiesser, 2010).

Evolution of the waterflux in the Malamocco inlet

As a consequence of all the interventions, the inlets have severely changed in section, going from an average depth of -4 meters before the jetties, to values of -11/12 meters, peaking -14 meters 59

AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

III. Consequential Outcomes The Venetian Lagoon is a complex system, where cause-consequence relations are not unilateral, but rather influenced by a superposition of social, natural and economic dynamics. Natural and anthropic actions, that undermine the balance of the lagoon ecology, have been described to give an overall image of these interests at stake.

These interventions together with climate change generate and will generate a wide array of consequences that are themselves entangled and reciprocal.

III.I Subsidence The Venetian territory has, and partially still is, experiencing land subsidence, the progressive sinking of the ground. The phenomenon in Venice is among one of the most important on the Italian scale and is both caused by natural and anthropic processes.

Subsidence in Venice and Trieste since 1900

1930s, along with the development of the industrial area of ​​Marghera, reaching a peak between 1950 and 1970 CE (Brambati, 2003). Due to the post-WWII industrial boom, data from 196869 CE show a maximum rate of subsidence of 17 millimeters per year, when 6,000 sub- and circum-lagoon wells were counted (Brambati, 2003; Bevilacqua, 1995). After this critical phase, many wells were closed and the water supply diversified, decreasing the rate of subsidence.

Localized sinking is still going on in the northern and southern lagoon. Records highlight that between 1930 and 1970 CE the lagoon has sunk 23 cm, thus making the territory more vulnerable to the surrounding waters (Brambati, 2003; Bevilacqua, 1995).

Natural subsidence is the result of the consolidation of the sediments and deep tectonic movements (Scortegagna, 2009). Despite being a diffuse phenomenon in the northern Adriatic area, data show a maximum in the Venetian basin (Marsico, 2017), ranging between 0.4 and 1.3 millimeters per year, slightly above the average (Brambati, 2003; Scortegagna, 2009). Natural subsidence is still taking place within controllable limits, but it might increase due to climate change. Indeed, the Venetian basin is mostly composed of consolidated clayey soils, which might be affected by the increase of salinity related to climate change. The salt concentration in the clayey sediments of the substratum, inducing an electrochemical compaction process, causes lowering of the lagoon floor (Brambati, 2003).

III.II Sediment outflow Marshes, and shallow lagoons in general, are environments subjected to climate changes and anthropogenic pressures (Tommasini, 2019). In the Venetian Lagoon sea level rise, along with the effects of wind pattern change, can produce stronger and higher waves, causing a more rapid erosion of the marsh boundaries, thus also increasing the depth of the tidal flats. The increase of waves can alter the equilibrium between sediment deposition and resuspension (Solidoro,

Moreover, the human presence in the Venetian territory has caused anthropically-induced subsidence. Excessive and unregulated groundwater extraction from artesian wells for industrial and agricultural activities has caused the depressurization of the water level located 350 meters below ground level (Scortegagna, 2009; Bevilacqua, 1995).

Records show that the phenomenon started in the 60

Venetian lagoon under threat

Aerial view from the Marghera’s industrial port

61

AMPHIBIA BOOK I. ‘The much bigger problem of erosion we have now is due to the excavation of the MoSE and the ‘canale petroli’, the industrial channel realised in the ‘60s. The changes we are facing in the lagoon are transforming the lagoon into a marine bay. From an ecological and hydrological point of view, this means a totally different thing. A marine bay means higher energy, stronger currents, high depths of the water and loss of all the transition area which are muds, saltmarshes and so on.’

of sediments that are lifted and brought outside by the currents (Bevilacqua, 1995). Finally, the several breakwaters put in place as part of the MoSE project further reduce the income of marine sediments.

The erosion process also affects the barene and velme, which are fundamental to break the continuity of the waterbody through their height and vegetation. Between 1811 and 2010 CE, there has been a reduction of 76% of their surface area, decreasing from about 180 to 43 square kilometres (Tommasini, 2019). Close to the Malamocco inlet the erosion is drastic and at a rate more than three times higher than the average lagoon erosion (4.8 m2/year compared to the average 1.36 m2/year). Subtidal flats on the other hand - with a depth of -0.75/-2 meters keep on increasing, passing from 90 square kilometres to 200 in less than a century (Solidoro, 2010). The lagoon has become deeper, passing from an average depth of 49 to 146 centimetres between 1901 and 2003 CE by losing one million cubic meters of sediments per year.

Scozzafava-Jaeger 2019

2010), promoting a vicious cycle of increasing depth and erosion rate (Tommasini, 2019).

Besides the river diversion of the 16th century, since the 1900 CE the Venetian Lagoon has experienced morphological and biochemical transformations due to human interventions, thus accelerating the deterioration process. Big navigation channels, such as the 12-meters-deep Malamocco-Marghera one, the extension of the jetties, and the modification of the section of the inlets - passing from an average of 4-5 meters to 11-14 in less than two centuries - have almost stopped any sediment supply from the sea (Tommasini, 2019; Solidoro, 2010), while industrial, agricultural and urban activities, land reclamation, and clam farming have dramatically altered the chemical and morphological lagoon equilibrium (Solidoro, 2010), reducing flora and fauna able to stabilize the soils. Furthermore, part of the damage is also caused by the constant passing of both large cargo and cruise ships as well as small fast boats, causing the movement

1700

1800

1900

Without the tidal shoals, along with the network of channels or ‘ghebi’, waves do not find any obstacle, growing in strength and thus increasing the erosion process, (Bevilacqua, 1995). The Venetian Lagoon is undergoing a transformation from a morphologically complex and well-developed micro-tidal lagoon to a simpler, deeper, flatter-bottomed, and more bay-like system (Solidoro, 2010).

III.III Acqua Alta A renowned consequence is the phenomenon of the acqua alta, tidal floods, submerging the city’s streets, squares, and ground floors. Due to the increasing transfer of the marine forces, climate change, subsidence, and the deepening of the lagoon, along with loss of natural breakwater shoals, the flood events have increased exponentially during the last century. While in the decade between 1920 and 1930 CE only 2 high tides exceeded 110 centimetres, 97 of them occurred in the decade after 2010 CE (Comune di Venezia, 2021).

2000

The acqua alta turned from being a peculiar lo-

Barene area and average lagoon depth through time

62

Venetian lagoon under threat cal feature of Venice into a serious threat after the events of 4 November 1966, when the combination of extreme Scirocco wind, low pressure, and astronomical tides generated an exceptional sea flood, reaching a peak of 194 centimetres.

This flood, later called Acqua Granda, the ‘Big Water’, left the city in black-out for three days, destroying goods, crops, and taking the life of three people.

The threat is becoming systematic, rather than exceptional. Local residents deal with water in various ways, by leaving the ground floors empty, putting door planks or sandbags, using water pumps, but the change requires a greater effort.

These water masses damage the built environment, penetrating the foundations and walls and corroding them through saline crystallization, and at the same time are a serious burden for everyday activities.

On 12 November 2019, the city experienced the second-highest acqua alta ever, with a peak of 187 centimetres. What was important in this event was the fact that for one week, water levels were very high and on 4 days exceeded 140 cm (Umgiesser, 2019), flooding 90% of the historical city, thus destabilizing the whole territory and complicating the aid interventions. In the last 150 years, there were only 23 exceptional events above 140 centimetres, 9 before 2000 CE, 14 in the millennium after, and 5 in the last 2 years (Umgiesser, 2019).

Even though it is demonstrated that most of the storm surge peaks could be lowered by 20 centimetres if the section of the inlets would be - sometimes drastically - reduced (Unesco, 2010, b), Italy is building, since 2003, the MoSE, which prevents a future reduction of the inlet’s depth, adding to the dynamic of increased acqua alta it wants to prevent.

Evolution of the mean sea level and ‘acqua alta’ events

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

III.IV Pollution

NPL, national priority list for contaminated sites (Mannino et al., 2015).

‘This is one of the few lagoons where you have oil tankers passing through, if something ever happens it would be a disaster, a real disaster.’

On the other hand, the Venetian lagoon is the estuary of many rivers in a vast drainage basin.

This drainage basin covers an area of almost 2.000 square kilometres in one of Italy’s most populated and intensively cultivated areas (Solidoro, 2010), gathering a total of 1.461.000 inhabitants (Bevilacqua, 1995). 900 million cubic meters of water, rich in chemical leftovers from industrial, agricultural, and breeding activities, yearly enter the lagoon, leading to pollution, loss of biodiversity, and eutrophication. (Solidoro, 2010; Bevilacqua, 1995).

Umgiesser 2019

One of the most severe consequences of the human presence in the Venetian Lagoon is the pollution of the local ecology caused by already discussed incompatible activities.

By the late 1960s awareness around the pollution caused by Marghera rose. At that time the industrial port was causing devastating effects on the lagoon ecology, but also workers’ and inhabitants’ health. Activists at the time described some factories as followed: ‘San Marco and Ferroleghe are silicotic mines; the Cs Chlorine factory is a department of lung diseases; the As department of the Siai is pure sulfuric acid; at the Fo-Icpm [factories] there are blood diseases due to the presence of lead oxides; in the Am [factories] where cyanide and hydrocyanide are produced, we risk death every minute; at CV-AlAm we have also witnessed fatal cases’ (Zazzara, 2017). In 1973 a special law was put in place to safeguard the lagoon from this industrial pollution and by 1998 the port area was included in the

During the 1960s and 1970s, these activities have caused peaking values of heavy metals Hg, Pb, As, Cd, Zn, and Ni - and organic pollution. Due to unregulated productive site washing, extensive use of fertilizers, and sewage discharges, wastewaters have entered the Venetian Lagoon and deposited chemical components in the water column and seabed (Unesco, 2010, b; Solidoro, 2010; Bevilacqua, 1995).

While a controlled amount of biomass components provides benefits to a habitat, eutrophication means the excessive growth of algae due to

nitrogen and phosphorus pollution related to Marghera’s activity

64

Venetian lagoon under threat

65

AMPHIBIA BOOK I. by 2075, 37%, or even 51% in the worst-case scenario, of the Venetian Lagoon habitat could lie underwater and different typologies of marshes will answer in different ways to this increase of water level, also in relation to their ability to resist salinity (Ivajnšič, 2018).

the surplus of minerals and nutrients in the water.

During the decade between 1980 and 1990 CE, the nutrient load entering the lagoon was such that, together with the modification of hydrodynamic and morphological features, favored the occurrence of massive macroalgae blooms dominated by Ulvaceae (Solidoro, 2010). The large biomass of Ulvaceae caused a sharp decrease in other seaweeds, hypoxia, and a reduction of biodiversity (Unesco, 2010, b; Solidoro, 2010). Following these events, several policies were enforced, starting from the harvesting of macroalgae, removing 60.000 tonnes of plant per year for the whole 1980s decade, the introduction of nitrate wastewater treatment plants, and strict control on agriculture fertilization

Due to climate change the Venetian Lagoon will also experience hotter summers, milder winters, less precipitation, and the increase of south-blowing Scirocco wind. The local climate will become more Mediterranean, similar to the one of lagoons located from 3 to 5 degrees latitude to the south, causing a change of the Venetian flora and fauna (Unesco, 2010, b). Migratory species that now use the lagoon as a nursery will move further north. New species that thrive in warmer waters may possibly invade the lagoon: this could facilitate the invasion of other alien species in a process termed invasional meltdown. In the Venetian waters, this is already the case of the Manila clam, which has caused major consequences for the ecosystem’s functioning. Alien species, besides simply overtaking resident biota, might also introduce parasites, infections, and pathogens (Unesco, 2010, b).

Still today the polluting activities from the last century are tangible. Despite the measures to prevent further pollution, many pollutants deposited in the lagoon bed. Specific islands as landfills are created to store polluted dredged sediments and polluted sites are still in high need of remediation.

III.V Fauna & flora ‘A lagoon is from an ecological point of view the second most productive environment after a rainforest. The productivity of organic matter per square meter is the second highest, it is a system where you always have a lot of nutrients, quite balanced temperatures and enough humidity.’

The decline in estuarine and coastal ecosystems can also be linked to unregulated urban development, agricultural and industrial use, engine pollution, and aquaculture (Ivajnšič, 2018). The consequential water pollution of these activities has impoverished the macrobenthic community between the late 1950s and 1960s, leading to a shift toward assemblages that are more tolerant of eutrophic conditions (Solidoro, 2010).

Scozzafava-Jaeger 2019

Local flora and fauna are fundamental for the persistence of a healthy lagoon. Estuarine and coastal ecosystems, such as seagrass, mangroves, and tidal marshes are important ecosystems on earth (Ivajnšič, 2018), being a habitat for biodiversity and providing a natural defense against the marine forces. Already the first human settlements in the Venetian Lagoon understood the protecting role of tamarisks against the waves (Distefano, 2014).

The increased intrusion of seawaters, due to the deepening of the inlets and channels, has also led to the expansion of the central mud habitat at the expense of estuarine-like oligohaline ones, causing the replacement of brackish species with marine ones (Solidoro, 2010).

Furthermore, pollution and clam farming have caused a severe loss of the Zostera Noltii and Marina, local seagrass which, with their complex root system, helped to consolidate the seabed.

While present in the lagoon bed in vast meadows just a short time ago, today these plants are much less widespread, superseded by the presence of

On a global scale, following IPCC projections, sea-level rise is predicted to increase by 30 to 100 centimetres by 2100, thus reshaping coastal wetlands. Under these circumstances already 66

Venetian lagoon under threat

‘I understand the economic value of Venice but no one really thinks of the economic value of the environment, because you cannot really monetise the environment.’ Molinaroli 2019

the lagoon, the deepened bathymetry bringing the lagoon in more direct communication with the sea also highly influences the salinity levels of the lagoon.

For the lagoon’s biodiversity, the major factor influencing the distribution of organisms in estuaries is salinity variation, rather than the absolute salinity tolerance. The seasonality of freshwater flows induced by temperature variations and the increase of flash floods (Unesco, 2010, b) will increase the extent of salinity variability, turning it into a major threat (Zirino, 2014). Both organisms in the water column and in the lagoon floor, as plants with different tolerance to salinity, could be affected by the variation of salt concentration (Zirino, 2014). The three parts of the lagoon - northern, central and southern lagoon - respond with different tolerance to the changes. The most impacted by salinity variability will be the northern lagoon, while light variation will happen in the central zone, further decreasing towards the south of the basin (Zirino, 2014).

algae species (Filon, 2013).

Vegetation plays a key role even outside the water: the plant coverage of the barene is fundamental for their resistance to wave erosion.

While sediments below the vegetation layer can easily be mobilized, the effect of stabilization of sandy soils due to vegetation reduces erosion by 80% (Tommasini, 2019). Besides mitigating the marine forces, marshes vegetation also filters nutrients and pollutants from the water column, furnishes nursery areas for coastal biota, and is an important organic carbon sink (Tommasini, 2019).

III.VI Salinity Another central value in the lagoon ecology is salinity, namely the amount of salt present in the water: the more the lagoon becomes a marine bay, the higher salinity is.

Two more important outcomes of salinity are the aforementioned sinking of the lagoon seabed due to the chemical interaction of salt with clayey sediments (Brambati, 2003) and the damage to the built environment. Due to sea-level rise, the salt will be able to penetrate the porous layers of houses and foundations, as the bricks, rising by capillarity, thus causing great harm and undermining the physical structure of the city (Unesco, 2010, b).

Salt concentration varies spatially and seasonally due both to the volume of freshwater discharged by the rivers and the precipitation-evaporation balance, which is affected by temperature as well (Unesco, 2010, b). Today, and in the future, salinity concentration will undergo changes, related to climate change but also to anthropic actions, taking place in the upstream of the rivers and along their courses.

Considering man-induced consequences, freshwater discharge from alpine rivers is reduced by upstream dams for hydroelectric power and gravel mining and water use for industries and agriculture in the plain. Together with the historical diversion of the rivers, the volume of freshwater entering the lagoon is understood to be very small, <2% of the total incoming waters (Zirino, 2014). This leads to the salinity increase, since, as highlighted by Zirino, the overall value is related more closely to the daily channel flow rather than the episodic rainfall events (Zirino, 2014).

Next to the low amount of freshwater entering

Effects of salinity on the built fabric

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I.

IV. The social question

2019).

IV.I Mass Tourism

These aspects emerge clearly when looking at the numbers of the city. 28 million visitors per year (Coses, 2009), considering both tourists – those who stay for the night – and excursionists – day-trippers. Over the past 25 years, the number of arrivals of tourism has quadrupled. Specifically, the number of excursionists, 5 million in 1988 CE, is now something like 22 million per year, having increased almost five times (Bertocchi, 2020). This has also meant a change in the urban fabric, with the growth of accommodations, that have gone from 8.246 in 2008 to 49.260 in 2019 bed-places in the historical city, along with an increase of 160% of restaurants (Bertocchi, 2019). Moreover, the typology of tourists has changed, since, among the 28 million yearly visitors, only 2 of them visit one or more cultural attractions. Tourism in Venice is not considered cultural at all, but rather a free-ride on the city’s cultural beauty (Unesco, 2010, c), meaning the use of the infrastructures and services but not a contribution to the expenses. Considering the projections made by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, between 2015 and 2030, this typology of tourist is forecasted to double (Bertocchi, 2020).

‘If on one day, every visitor in Venice stood in a line in front of St. Mark’s Basilica, how long would the line be? 40Km, reaching Padova’ (Scheppe W. & IUAV, 2009) According to ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics – Veneto is the second region in Italy per yearly number of tourists, with almost 47.000.000 presences in 2018 CE. Still on a national scale, Venice - gathering all the islands, Mestre and Marghera - is, after Rome, the municipality with the highest number of tourists, with 28 million visitors per year (Bertocchi, 2020). Furthermore, three other municipalities of the lagoon, Cavallino-Treporti, Jesolo, and Chioggia are on this list, in the sixth, seventh, and thirty-sixth place respectively (Istat, 2018).

This means that, besides the extremely high numbers of Venice’s historic center, the whole lagoon is a hotspot for Italy’s national and international tourism.

Nevertheless, this apparently positive value has severe consequences for the territory. Venice is indeed considered one of the most relevant cases of overtourism, a complex phenomenon associated with the livability of a place, wellbeing of residents, visitor experiences, and extent to which stakeholders have direct or indirect involvement in tourism. Venice is also beyond its limit for the ‘tourists carrying capacity’, namely the maximum limit to tourism development (Bertocchi, 2019), which is exacerbated by the geographically limited space of the island.

The figure that emerges clearly is a condition that the city can hardly sustain. With a drop in residents, from 178.000 in the 1950s to 52.000 in 2020, and a number of 87.000 daily tourists (Bertocchi, 2019), overtourism in the island creates social tensions and exacerbates inequalities.

These two clashing categories have divergent lifestyles and use of daily places, even though they share the same urban amenities and spaces. Another hot topic in the Venetian lagoon is the economy of cruise ships, which are extremely damaging for the built and natural environment, dump huge masses of tourists for a hit and run visit, but creates a market of 283 million euros (Mandurin, 2015). Therefore, mass tourism causes pollution, congestion, modifies spaces, and alters facilities. Due to hotel development and short-rental accommodations, such as houses being converted into holiday apartments, this economy enhances gentrification, the expulsion of the local residents, and raises the costs of life

During the last century, the historical city of Venice has evolved as a center almost entirely devoted to tourism. The development of the Marghera industrial and port area, allowing the functional separation of the productive activities, led to the identification of Venice as a cultural and aristocratic city, dedicated to art and luxury functions (Mancuso, 2009). Tourism has thus become some sort of monocultural economy, the only driver for development, turning the historic center into some kind of company town (Bertocchi, 68

Venetian lagoon under threat and urban maintenance, increasing local taxes and costs (Bertocchi, 2019).

local climate change consequences. Furthermore, the 2020 Covid19 crisis has shown an extremely fragile system that has had consequences on both corporations, small entrepreneurs, and public institutions. Numbers speak for themselves: while during the summer season of 2019 there was an average of 1.397.000 monthly tourists, during 2020 the same period has seen only 372.000 of them.

The monopoly of tourism has also led to severe consequences on the quality of urban life and local services. The city of Venice has indeed lost most of its low-class workers, the so-called “small population”, as artisans, small industries, and enterprises, that have gone from 2.000 in 1977 to 1.200 in 2009 (Bevilacqua, 1995). Obviously, there are nuances to this shift, as there are many groups with interests in tourism as official employees, part-time jobs, renting-house landlords, and non-qualified positions (Bertocchi, 2020).

The Covid-19 crisis and the experience of a city free from over-tourism should be an occasion to radically rethink the priorities and values for the municipality, its residents, and stakeholders.

The need for a slower and controlled number of visitors has emerged through the years: as suggested by Bertocchi, the new tourism should be controlled, favoring those who plan the trip rather than day-trippers, should make use of existing technologies to organize and control the flows, define a system of external terminals, and foster detourism, namely the experience of lessknown parts of the city and of the lagoon (Bertocchi, 2020).

Anyway, this trend shows how tourism, if not managed and planned, radically changed the social and urban structure of the city and the lives of local residents (Bertocchi, 2020). The city urgently needs new plans and strategies, along with an overall vision to move away from this mono-economy, since the activity has a physical limit in which it is financially sustainable. As argued by Bertocchi, mathematical models define the optimum number of visitors for Venice per day as equal to 52.000, meaning 19 million tourists per year (Bertocchi, 2020). According to this value, the income coming from visitors is enough to completely manage and respect the city, while today’s trend of 28 million tourists is unsustainable.

IV.II Demography ‘In Burano, the number of fishermen is going down like this, in just a few years only one third remains, the population is shrinking. It’s a time of change and economic crisis.’ Barausse 2021

Despite some institutional or bottom-up initiatives to change the situation, such as the association OTS – Operators of Sustainable Tourism – or the campaign led by the Venice Chamber of Commerce ‘Venice is not an Island’ to bring closer tourists and residents, the touristic sector still does not seem to embrace a radical change. The Venetian management seems to follow conflicting ideals: for example, a regional law made it easier to turn a house into a rentable apartment, and at the same time the municipality proposed to put a tax on the entrances to the island (Bertocchi, 2019).

All these threats, impacting the morphological and ecological state of the lagoon, are not unrelated to its social question and dynamics. If on the one hand, the swarms of tourists that crowd the calles, campos, and vaporetti, are easily identifiable as a consequence of mass tourism, the decline of the residents, and therefore of the social vivacity, is a silent but constant issue in the Venetian territory.

Indeed, throughout modernity, the exodus of the residents from the archipelago towards the mainland has become painfully clear in terms of management of the territory. Even though this phenomenon follows a common trend within the whole lagoon, it is exacerbated in Venice. The numbers are quite telling: when considering the historical island, residents go from more than

Anyway, the tourism system is still uncertain and not resilient at all, as Mancuso argues, Venice ‘is a city sick with tourism”. Simulations foresee a decrease of tourism-related income to be between 105 to 415 million euros by 2030 due to 69

AMPHIBIA BOOK I. 175.000 in 1951 to 51.208 in 2020 (Bevilacqua, 1995; Comune di Venezia, 2021).

as a house owner, it is more profitable to rent the house rather than live in it. Indeed, on the historic island, tourist season never ends, management costs are lower and incomes higher (Casagrande, 2016).

Moreover, Bevilacqua argues that between the 1950s and 1980s, the number of residents leaving the city was 150.000, but this decrease was counterbalanced by the arrival of migrants and new families (Bevilacqua, 1995). Nevertheless, in the last two decades, more than a third of the residential population left the historical center.

Within this frame, Da Mosto & Smith point out that successive relaxations of housing regulations have made property speculation an attractive investment opportunity. This has created the ideal ground for online booking platforms and, as a result, property prices more than doubled in the historical center between 2000 and 2010 (Da Mosto et al, 2020).

Different reasons lay behind this phenomenon.

Among the most evident ones, the difficulties of everyday life play a key role. The worldwide beloved medieval calles and bridges of the Venetian islands are a constant obstacle to simple activities, such as shopping for basic goods, rubbish collection, management and maintenance of service lines, wastewaters, or public lighting and greenery. Since everything has to be moved by boat or by foot, these logistical constraints affect the life of Venetians and have a severe economic impact. It is estimated that ‘Venice is compelled each year to spend 41 million euros more than a comparable ‘ordinary’ Italian municipality’ (Casagrande, 2016, p. 124). The same difficulties also apply for construction and renovation works, which have higher costs and are regulated by strict policies due to the value of the heritage.

‘The population is really old and instead of their houses being sold, they turn into tourist accommodations. That is the demographic trend. In 2019 was when the number of beds available for visitors and tourists exceeded the beds of permanent residents in Venice. Lack of political management of the situation, lack of policies to address is a benign way of saying there could also have been an incentive to reduce Venice to a theme park. The existence of Venice depends on being a living city. I moved to Venice in 1995, that is about when things started to change, they deregulated the urban plan. Before there was very strict control on what could become a hotel.’ Da Mosto 2021

Moreover, besides Venice - which has train and car connections to the mainland - all the other islands are characterized by certain isolation, both in terms of distance and frequency of public mobility runs. Isolation also generates a lack of availability of non-tourism jobs. As a consequence, younger people leave the historical island, further increasing the aging of the population, decline of social attractivity and opportunities.

The commodification of housing and ‘the cost of living in Venice has spiraled beyond the reach of an average income’ (Da Mosto et al, 2020, p. 12). These conditions favored the spread of tourism-related enterprises, which have taken over those in support of daily life necessities, thus further thinning the socio-economic mass of the city and increasing the costs per visitor that burden on the residents.

Finally, it is important to consider the outcomes of the ecological crisis of the last decades. Besides the periodic inconveniences related to flooding, acqua alta events severely damage goods, businesses, and the built environment, thus becoming a further incentive to leave the archipelago.

In this kind of city, a city ‘under siege’ (Da Mosto et al, 2020, p. 11), facilities and services are relocated on the mainland, increasing the diaspora from the archipelago.

The abandonment of Venice does not only affect the social life of the island, but also the balance and caretaking on the lagoon. Indeed, on a legislative level, Venice and the archipelago are part of the larger municipality of the metropolitan city of Venice, which also incorporates Mestre

According to Casagrande, even though all these issues - while significant - contribute to the reduction of residents, the main reason for this phenomenon lies in real estate management. In Venice, 70

Venetian lagoon under threat and some other small localities on the mainland (Casagrande, 2016). Within the last 40 years, the residents that have left the archipelago have first moved to Mestre and Marghera, and then, in the last two decades, further dispersed in the constellation of small towns scattered along the lagoon edge.

As argued by Bevilacqua, newcomers have arrived, such as entrepreneurs, students, traders, professionals, along with seasonal workers. If the pros and cons of these changes are nuanced, Bevilacqua highlights that these new residents have a completely different relationship with water. By not working on or through water – as fishermen or boat carriers do –, they often see it as a passive element of the scenery, if not an obstacle, making it harder for them to read the water landscape, recognize its problems, or even potential (Bevilacqua, 1995).

Due to this movement of people, Mestre has outgrown Venice and the islands: today, 260.000 people live within the metropolitan city of Venice, 180.000 of which are on the mainland and 80.000 in the archipelago. This unbalance creates problems of the democratic justification of priorities of the municipality and in the extent of the policies (Da Mosto et al, 2020).

It is worth mentioning that some attempts to address the current situation were proposed under mayor Cacciari. Under his coordination, the refurbishment of old abandoned buildings – such as the convent of Sant’Anna, of the Terese, of San Daniele, and the Magazzini della Repubblica – was done, along with the acquisition by the municipality of 1.000 dwellings in the historic center for residential use only. Nevertheless, the political discontinuity of the following mayors has undermined this positive approach.

Indeed, even though the delicate and fragile territory of the archipelago and the lagoon would require greater attention and efforts, given the weight of the residents of the mainland, it is more democratic to favor policies for the well-being of these latter. Since 1979, five referendums calling for the division in two municipalities have taken place, claiming that, by being unique in its landscape, heritage, and built environment, the archipelago should also be unique in the need of attention, maintenance, and political agency.

Nevertheless, none of these referendums ever reached a quorum of voters.

In ‘Whose city is it anyway?’ Da Mosto and Smith criticize the ‘dogmatic’ pursuit of neo-liberal policies of the last administrations, which have led to the ‘prioritization of private interests over those of the local population’ (Da Mosto et al, 2020, p. 14).

During the last 50 years, the emptying of the archipelago has deeply changed local economies and the profile of the social classes. On one hand, what once used to be the center of the Venetian territory has been surrounded by new economic forces, territorial reasons, and pressures from the mainland. Productive activities find it easier to move to the mainland, where space, infrastructures, and labor are more accessible resources. This further fosters the monoculture of tourism in the historic center and the vicious cycle of its emptying.

As for the ecological threats, the decline of the residents of the archipelago is not a standalone phenomenon but is the result of the interaction of many issues, policies, and ways of management.

To overcome today’s impasse, drastic decisions need to be taken and the re-definition of the values of the lagoon is a way to define a path.

On the other hand, the social classes of the city have been completely re-shaped. Venice has become an intellectual representative city, where the common people - such as neighborhood shops, minute crafts, and small industries - have disappeared, leading to a loss in social maintenance.

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The Lagoon Paradox ‘The city of the Venetians at the behest of Divine Providence founded on the waters, surrounded by the waters is protected by waters instead of walls: whoever therefore dares to cause harm in any way to public waters is condemned as an enemy of the homeland and is punished no less severely than he who violated the holy walls of the Fatherland. The right of this Edict is immutable and perpetual.’

Giovanni Cipelli known as Battista Egnazio (1478-1553). Engraving behind the stalls of the ancient seat of the Magistrato alle Acque. (translation by authors) It would be wrong to assume that today the lagoon is in a static state. On the contrary, many activities and projects are taking place within the territory. However, most of them have very conflicting interests, bringing forward different sets of values. the protection of the ecology, the heritage, and built environment, or the relevance of productive activities.

The tension between these three forces produces divergent priorities. Hence, these values tend to clash with each other, opposing different actors, with very unbalanced power and resources such as governmental institutions, private sectors, and bottom-up associations. The lack of an overarching vision to coexist in the fragile lagoon equilibrium leads to conflicting projects.

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I. Paradoxical initiatives take place in the lagoon, simultaneously aiming for territorial preservation and exploitation resulting in both an economic and ecological loss as well as the exhaustion of the capacity to imagine a common future. On the one hand public money is invested in the highly necessary ecological restoration of the lagoon.

On the other hand, there are publically funded works, of a completely different scale (MoSE, channel dredging, port activity) that enhance environmental degradation together with a political reluctance to implement more systematic policies that prevent the ecological destruction. Not only are these projects conflicting investments, they also increase Venice’s dependency on national and supra-national subsidies, marginalising the role of residents as the main actors of the territory. Venice’s local government has become a small fish amongst the big actors surrounding it in its governance such as the Italian and European governments and powerful economies of the port and the tourism industry. It is in this situation that it should assume its role as the ‘pater familias’ of the lagoon’s residents above the interests that others might see in the lagoon and the city.

ong the coastlines (Life Redune).

All these projects integrate nature-based solutions with technical and scientific processes for the environmental restoration of altered morphological elements, along with sensibilization, educational activities, and interaction with stakeholders and local workers. They all act upon the understanding of the consequences of every action taken in the environment, recalling a scientific translation of the traditional trial-and-error Venetian approach, the so-called Scomenzera method.

Through adaptability and constant updating, the Life projects have reached the forecasted successes, marking the efficacy of nature-based solutions.

This institutional interest also highlights the acknowledgment of the importance of the wetland ecosystems, being a habitat for biodiversity, carbon sink, natural breakwaters for the tidal strength, and water and air depurative systems.

Paradoxically, at the same time, incoherent activities keep on being practiced in the lagoon, directly having counter effects to the environmental measures. Besides the clam production that is regulated to be restricted in particular areas, the most relevant activity is the continuous dredging of the artificial channels, such as the Malamocco-Marghera. In 2020, the channel was excavated to a depth of 12 meters extracting 650.000 cubic meters of sediments, to allow large ships to enter the lagoon. Even though the sediments are used to create new barene, as already discussed, the deepening of the channels means stronger sea currents and waves, leading to a higher erosion rate.

Amongst different values, the lagoon ecology is the weakest, and the less economically profitable.

It is important to understand that the conflicting projects and pressures might end up destroying this natural habitat. One of the major examples of this conflict lies in the coordination of policies and projects to protect the wet landscape and the contemporary presence of incompatible activities.

Several projects are part of the LIFE program and the Natura2000 - respectively EU’s instruments for the environment and climate action, and the conservation of biodiversity - have taken place in the area. Among others, the Life Vimine focuses on the reinforcement of barene and velme, Life Lagoon Refresh on the rediversion of the rivers to foster the brackish flora and fauna, Life Seresto helps repopulate the lagoon with seagrass as the Zostera Noltii and Marina, able to slow down sediment outflow. Other programs help protect the rock habitat of the northern Adriatic sea (Life Ghost) or reinforce the dune protective system al-

Furthermore, the MoSE project, even before completion, has already caused changes in the morphology and hydrodynamics of the lagoon.

The underwater barriers have modified the section of the inlets and the breakwater systems have drastically changed the length and direction of the outflow jet, intensifying the current speeds (Umgiesser, 2010). Due to an infraction procedure proposed by the European Union in 2005, the Consorzio Venezia Nuova - the society in charge of the construction of the MoSE - was forced to develop compensation and restoration 74

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Ecosystem reconstruction projects

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I. works within the lagoon. These operations include the reconstruction of barene and velme, the plantation of seagrass, and the requalification of the construction sites. Nevertheless, besides the several delays or incompletion, these interventions are conducted in an over-simplistic way, by pumping lagoon sediments in perimeter areas, in a completely different approach from the nature-based one of the Life projects, improper to ecosystem redevelopment. The presence of the port and the commercial cruise economy are the other drivers that require ongoing interventions on the lagoon system that conflict with works of reconstruction. These activities seem to have a persisting influence on the policymaking in the lagoon, slowing down or preventing further measures of protection. Until today the Venetian lagoon is one of the few to let oil tankers cross, allow polluting industries in such a populated water environment and allow the tourism economy to overrule residents’ priorities.

On a national level, privatization of state-owned small islands - Santa Cristina, La Salina, Buel del Lovo, Madonna del Monte, Tessera, San Giacomo in Paludo, La Grazia, San Clemente, Sacca Sessola, Santo Spirito - started from the 1990s and continues today with the case of Poveglia, sold without an auction base, despite a fundraising campaign to keep the island public, led by an association of residents. The commodification of the islands leads directly to gentrification and the disappearance of such islands as potential common spaces.

These processes take place despite the presence of a special law for Venice, n°171 of 1973, and the law n°798 of 1984, that both frame the protection of the lagoon as a national interest, defining the necessity of direct intervention and strategic plans.

Since 1987 Venice and its lagoon are also inscribed in the list of World Heritage, meaning a further level of attention towards this fragile landscape. Moreover, many research institutions, such as the ISMAR, the Co.Ri.La, or ICPSM, are put in place to monitor, predict, and act upon environmental matters.

In 2012, following the events of the Costa Concordia disaster in Tuscany, the Clini-Passera decree prohibited the entrance into the San Marco Basin and the Giudecca Canal to ships with a tonnage exceeding 40,000 tons, impacting 1020% of the total traffic. Nevertheless, the decree was canceled by the Administrative Court of the Veneto region (TAR) because the limitations did not propose alternative ways. Here again, a conflict of interests arises, on one side the preservation of the lagoon, on the other the economic interest behind the activity, and here again, nothing seems to be able to reach above private interest.

Anyway, due to two almost severe incidents that took place in Venice in 2019 involving cruise ships, the decree has been reintroduced directly by the municipality.

Nevertheless, the overall management of the Venetian lagoon seems to be shortsighted, trapped between the interests of trading and touristic activities, which are strongly linked to an efficient port system, and the need to preserve unique and fragile ecology and heritage. The specific weakness of the governance system, which should ensure coherence between international and local actions and lead to the necessary redefinition of the lagoon-dependent economies, plays a huge role in the current crisis. This fact can be partially explained by the little weight that the Venetian archipelago represents politically compared to Mestre-Marghera, a weight that is reducing even more with the progressive depopulation of the islands. It was only under the mayor Cacciari (1993-2000) that the city for the first time had a new regulating plan for its development and transformations, answering the local needs, allowing a certain level of social housing, lower rents, or turning many historical buildings to public use (Bevilacqua, 1995).

On a local level, the municipality follows different intentions in the management of the territory. In 2014 the Park for the Northern Lagoon was proposed, to define a clear border and protect the most conserved remaining part of the waterbody.

Nevertheless, the subsequent mayor canceled the proposal in 2016, not recognizing the usefulness of such a park, considered a redundancy in regulations and environmental policies.

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Activities threatening the lagoon ecosystems

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The MoSE project, a temporary solution?

On the 3rd of October 2020, the MoSE system was first activated in the occurrence of an Acqua Alta event and successfully prevented the sea flood to reach the archipelago. This event was praised by local newspapers and even by the population of Venice. However, this punctual success does not doge the problematics that such infrastructure implies. Here we propose to give particular focus to the MoSE project, whose long genesis and development has severe consequences on the natural environment and long-term capacity of survival of the Venetian lagoon.

the sea (Ghezzo, 2010).

The premises of the defensive system date back to 1966, when the highest acqua alta ever recorded, peaking at 194 cm, flooded the city of Venice, causing extensive damages and three deaths. After a long bureaucratic process, in 1973 the Special Law for Venice was approved, declaring the protection of Venice a matter of national interest. Hence the project felt under the jurisdiction of the national Ministry of public works. In 1984, the Consorzio Venezia Nuova was constituted and put in charge of the development of the project. A series of consultations on how to move forward took place until 1988 when the prototype of the MoSE was presented: it was still a long way to go before the system could be seen in action.

Ideally, the MoSE system can be seen as a sort of middle ground, an attempt to satisfy all the values that underlie the Venetian territories, going from ecology to the functioning of the port, and the protection of the heritage and its idealized image. Nevertheless, in this all-encompassing attempt, the project raises drastic critics due to its incompatibilities with the surrounding landscape, severe consequences on the natural environment, lack of long-term management and even functioning capacity. Indeed, given the enormous duration of the construction of the work, the input data relative to climate change are now largely outdated. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask for how long the project will be able to defend the lagoon from flooding and if it is only meant to hold over while looking for other solutions, and if so what will be the next step?

The construction works for the MoSE started in 2003. After 17 years of construction, the MoSE was finally activated for the first time. However, it is still not completed, missing the central control room, its control agency, the engagement rules for its activation, and some specific technicalities as well as a clear maintenance plan (Mandurin, 2015). Planned to be finished by the end of 2021, the delay in the construction is a result of technical issues and a series of frauds and corruption, leading to a triplication of the original budget figure (for a total of 5.5 billion), 46 arrests, and 40 plea deals, revealing 43 million euros lost in false invoices and 21.5 million in bribes.

The MoSE project - MOdulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico,Experimental Electromechanical MOdule - is a long-debated underwater mobile barrier system intended to protect the Venetian Lagoon from the high tide phenomena and sea-level rise. The system is based on a simple principle: the temporary closing of the three inlets – Lido, Malamocco, and Chioggia - that connect the Venetian Lagoon to the Adriatic Sea. On the seabed underneath the inlets, lie 78 twenty-meters wide yellow steel boxes, connected to an underground concrete tunnel. When tidal events threaten to become critical, compressed air flows in the boxes, lifting them, thus separating the brackish lagoon from

Besides the corruption issues, one of the main problems of the MoSE is the concept behind the project. Indeed, to preserve the pristine and romanticized image of the lagoon, the barriers, and the necessary concrete structures, have been placed underwater. This made the enterprise extremely completed, in addition to modifying the shape of the inlets which increased the difficulty of the system. As a consequence, some technical aspects have been overlooked in the design phases, such as sediment accumulation, the corrosion of underwater hinges, or the modifications to the lagoon hydrodynamics.

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Indeed due to the enlarged section of the inlets and the constructions of several breakwaters in the immediate sea, modifications of the water systems have emerged both in the areas near the inlets and in the lagoon ecosystem as a whole. As a result, more intense current speeds and vortex have been registered in the mouths (Ghezzo, 2010).

Source: mosevenezia.eu

Despite the immediate consequences of the interventions, one of the most relevant issues of the MoSE is its life expectancy. The variation of the mean sea level deeply influences the functioning of the MoSE and the frequency with which it has to be activated or not.

As already discussed, the long span that the design and construction phases took has not kept track of the variation of the macro-environmental parameters, particularly the updatings on the forecasts of sea-level rise. During the project planning phase, three sea-level rise scenarios for the next century were considered. The most probable (Corila, 1999) gave an estimate of 16.4 cm, the prudent one - the one recommended for the MOSE project - 22 cm, and the pessimistic one 31.4 cm. These estimates were given at a time when climate change and sea-level rise were still highly debated. It emerges that these numbers even the pessimistic one - are now at the lower end of what is believed to be a realistic sea level rise scenario for the next century, between 0.53 to 0.97 meters by 2100 CE (Unesco, 2010, a). Even if the Consorzio Venezia Nuova today argues that the MoSE will be able to physically take on a sealevel rise up to 70 cm, this drastically changes the operational reality of the system.

Source: veneziaautentica.com

MoSE locations on the three inlets

Acqua Granda 1966

According to the original design, the barriers were intended to rise with a high tide level of 110 cm, an event recurring from 5 to 10 times a year, for a total amount of 22/44 hours per year (Umgiesser, 2019). In this way, the solution aimed to guarantee the persistence of the lagoon environment and the continuity of the touristic and commercial port activities. Nevertheless, if the recent sea-level rise predictions are considered, the role of the MoSE changes drastically, having severe consequences on the system itself, on the inbound and outbound flows, and the lagoon 79

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singular removal of each box once every five years to be brought to the Arsenale and cleaned (Mose, 2021). Price estimation of these costs variates between 80 million per year, according to the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, to 120 million per year (Mandurin, 2015). For now, no budget has been allocated for this purpose.

With a sea-level rise of 50 cm, the lagoon will be closed from 300 to 430 times a year – 1400/1800 hours – while with 75 cm there will be 550 closures per year. This latter value means that the lagoon starts to be more closed than open.

Apart from the maintenance cost, it is also important to realize that each closure of the MoSE has a substantial cost, which explains in part the decision that has been taken on the 30 of September 2020 to only close it for Acqua Alta higher than 130cm, and not with the ones of 110, as defined by the design. In the prevision report, the cost of rising the MoSE had been established between 120.000 and 150.000 euros, however, every activation since October 2020 has cost 291.000 euros, for a total of 15 million euros (Zicchiero, 2021).

Obviously, in this configuration, both port functioning, and ecological survival of the lagoon are under threat, damaging the flora, reducing sediments inflow, migration of marine fauna, and water exchanges.

These predictions are not far from reality. Since the first activation in October 2020, the barriers have already closed the lagoon more than twenty times in less than four months (Comune

‘This means that if it gets even higher than 70cm SLR, you don’t speak about closing the lagoon but you speak about opening it. That for me is the breaking point.’

For these two reasons, the financial aspect of the MoSE remains an important blind spot on the viability of the project.

Umgiesser 2020

Three-hundred times, or four-hundred-thirty, closing times is an incredibly intense activity, which means a constant expense in the operational costs and an increase in the maintenance ones.

In addition to this, another aspect of the project will increase costs: the limitation on the port activities. During the last 60 years, the port of Venice has grown considerably, with passenger movements shifting from 10’000 in the ‘50s to almost 1’500’000 in 2006 (Vergano, 2010).

The non-passenger shipping, including tankers, has also grown considerably, although unevenly with a slowdown in the 1970s. Simulations have been made on the future of the Venetian port.

Considering the biennium 2000-2002: with the 8 events of high tide above 110 cm, the barriers up for 4-5 hours, and only one sluice gate in the Malamocco inlet, the port activities would have had a business loss ranging from 350’000 up to 1’300’000 euros (Vergano, 2010).

Nevertheless, in the actual state of the project, the public maintenance plan has not yet been approved, since the Consorzio Venezia Nuova will withdraw once the construction is completed.

However, due to the ongoing corrosion of the pieces and the high technicality of the infrastructure, heavy interventions are already needed every year. Among these maintenance procedures, one of the most striking ones is the

This loss is caused by the additional costs of potential charter and mooring, hiring onboard staff, clogging up of loading and downloading operations, and warehouse rent. In a wider frame, the port of Venice becomes less competitive and loses traffic, since the decision to lift or not the MoSE is taken with short notice, only 4 hours before the tide peak, and ship traffic can not be easily managed with such uncertainty.

di Venezia, 2021). Indeed, the Acqua Alta phenomena are increasing in recent years. In the last 150 years, there were only 23 exceptional events of more than 140 cm, 9 before the year 2000, 14 in this millennium, and 5 in the last 2 years (Umgiesser, 2019). This is a clear sign that Venice has to prepare for these high water events. Hence, the MoSE will be then required to work more in the coming years, even though it was not planned to.

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It is worth noting that this simulation and its result are precautionary since it considers the 20002002 biennium, in which high tide events above 110cm were only 8. The same data for 2019 reaches the value of 25, meaning the need for an intensive closing.

Source: abc.net

It is then clear that the protection provided by the MoSE, which has been effective during fall 2020, will probably be a short-term solution since numerous factors interfere with its correct functioning. Moreover, we cannot underestimate the extraordinary costs, both for operating the system and caused to the port activities, and loss of biodiversity in a fragile ecosystem that will occur during its functioning time.

Local protest against the MoSE project

Source: .mosevenezia.eu

‘We have to gain time and in this case, the MOSE is helpful because we gain some time before we have to make drastic decisions.’

Umgiesser 2020

The dilemma is the availability of a technological solution that if implemented would help the city and the environment, but the lack of research, try-out, means, and strategies on how to use it. Hence, building scenarios just relying on the correct functioning of the MoSE is unfeasible. It is then correct to consider the system as a temporary instrument that does not solve the Venetian dilemma but allows to delay the inevitable adaptation. Therefore, it is critical to use this time to experiment and develop strategies on how to protect the city and its lagoon or accept and adapt to future changes. With the MoSE system, we are at a turning point for the future of the Venetian lagoon. If drastic actions are not taken during the « gained » functioning time of the MoSE, the Venetian system will face a deadlock situation in which only the complete closing of the lagoon and hence the loss of its ecosystem will remain possible. This is why in no case can the dependence on the MoSE allow for a counter adaptation to the Venetian capacity of living with water.

MoSE in action, 2020

sea

lagoon

MoSE section, hidden but massive infrastructure

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Three scenarios for the lagoon By investigating the future of the Venetian lagoon, we can recognize three major families of possible futures envisioned by researchers so far.

We propose to summarize these different proposals with three existing visions.

– today mostly based on septic tanks that release dirt into the channels - and that navigation and production would need to be pollution-free.

The second question raised by this scenario is the pressure that the barrier islands between the lagoon and the sea, - namely Pellestrina, Lido, Cavallino-Treporti, and Chioggia - would be under. It is likely that with the MoSE they will be more often flooded. Moreover, the pressure of the sea will probably create infiltrations of saltwater within the soil and the aquifers of the barrier territories, that therefore would need another kind of engineered protection.

All three visions take on the same postulate that, in about fifty years, the MoSE will not work anymore and the mean sea level will be at least fifty centimeters over what it is today.

Scenario one: The artificially sustained lagoon

In the artificial lagoon, the engineering of the lagoon would mean that Venice and the other inhabited islands would be protected from high tides as well as sea-level rise. Within this scope, however, the lagoon environment could no longer self-sustain itself. Once the lagoon is closed off, the salinity of the water would need to be controlled to choose between a lake or a brackish lagoon environment. Even if the brackish environment is maintained, the lack of exchanges with the sea and water movement would demand great work to maintain the fragile ecosystems of wetlands.

The first scenario is developed by professor Umgiesser, oceanographer and physicist, part of the national research center ISMAR - Istituto di Scienze Marine ARsenale based in Venice, that has been working on the lagoon environment for twenty years. The scenario proposed by Umgiesser is mainly based on ecological engineering.

The proposition is to transform the lagoon into an artificially maintained body of water, closing it completely from the sea inflow. Therefore, all three inlets would be closed, making the port activity impossible. In addition, to maintain the inner level of water steady, the edges of the water body would need to be strengthened and the remaining rivers, still entering the lagoon, would need to be diverted away into the sea.

Water inflow and evaporation would need to be at equilibrium. However, pumps would have to be installed on the ex-inlets towards the Adriatic sea, to manage the exchanges of water, similarly to the Dutch engineered water system.

Finally, this vision creates a deadlock situation in which the survival of the Venetian lagoon would end up depending on the engineering capacity to resist the sea. Indeed, since today most of the mainland territories overlooking the lagoon lay below the mean sea level, in the long term, the Venetian lagoon would end up being a protected enclosed basin within the sea.

However, two main problems remain: the first one is related to the vulnerability of a closed water body. Even if movement is artificially or wind-induced within the lagoon, the water body would remain extremely fragile and could not support any exterior pollution or disturbance, whether natural or anthropic. This also means that Venice, and the whole archipelago, would need to provide itself with a new sewage system 82

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Map of the closed artificially sustained lagoon scenario

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Scenario two: The natural lagoon

sediment outflow, as well as subsidence while also lowering the salinity of the lagoon. By doing so it would preserve and enrich the ecology of the Venetian territories, as barene, velme, and ghebi, which can also act as natural breakwaters able to reduce the damages caused by the tides to the built environment. Finally, the reduction of the section of the inlets would lower the peak value of exceptional tidal events. Nevertheless, this scenario gives few indications for how to live and produce in the inhabited islands in the frame of sea-level rise. Therefore, while promoting ecological sustainability, this scenario does not deal with social and economic sustainability. In this vision, the city of Venice and the other islands would need to progressively adapt to the rising sea level.

The second scenario for the Venetian lagoon relates to the deep ecology approach - a term coined by Arne Naess in 1973 - namely the recognition of the values that inhere objectively in nature independently of human wants, needs, and desires. This scenario is described by Tiberio Scozzafava-Jaeger, architect, ecologist, and professor who developed a long-term study on the Venetian lagoon, also as a member of the “40 wises” public committee for the safeguard of the Venetian ecosystem.

As mentioned before, due to its history of manmade transformations, the Venetian lagoon is already a highly artificial environment. This scenario proposes to a certain extent to renaturalize the lagoon to strengthen its natural protection devices. However, this scenario is way more than an undoing, for it demands important ecologically engineered re-naturalization.

In order to stop the sediment out-flow and the progressive salinization of the lagoon, the three inlets of the Venetian lagoon would need to be filled and brought back to their natural depth between 4 and 5m. In addition, the jetties, which are today drastically accelerating the water exchanges and outflow of sediments, would be removed. That is to say, that small ships would still be able to enter the lagoon, whereas big ships, vessels, and tankers would not, making the port of Marghera obsolete. Without port activities, the dredging of the channels would not be necessary anymore, and artificial channels such as the Malamocco-Marghera would naturally fill up. To further diminish the salinity of the lagoon, some rivers are strategically rediverted into the lagoon, improving the sediment inflow. Nevertheless, this operation would demand the de-pollution of those rivers before entering the lagoon body.

Finally when all those conditions are met and thanks to the positive sediment balance, the reconstruction of the barene and other wetlands ecosystems could begin with artificial catchers in addition to natural sedimentation processes.

This strategy allows stopping the erosion, 84

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Map of the natural lagoon scenario

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Scenario three: The divided lagoon

subdivision of the intervention, which would probably end up favoring economic interests.

Moreover, this strategy would probably end in a deadlock in which the removal of the systems to separate the lagoon, given the difference between the two areas, becomes impossible regardless of them being non-permanent structures. Moreover, within this vision, the problems of adaptation of Venice to sea-level rise are identical to Prof.

Scozzafava’s scenario or fall under the same critic moved to Prof. Umgiesser’s scenario, of a – partially – deeply engineered lagoon. Finally, even if separated by walls, it is unlikely that the deepening of the lagoon floor will remain located only in the central part and have no impact on the other part which might not be countered by sufficient sediment inflow.

The third scenario was proposed by Antonio Foscari and was already presented as an alternative to the MoSE project in the 1980s.

Foscari is a Venetian architect and professor of History of Architecture at the IUAV. His scenario advocates for the possibility to deal differently with different parts of the lagoon that today no longer have the same characteristics. This scenario is strongly rooted in the empirical Venetian knowledge of waterworks.

As a starting point, Foscari questions the physical and ecological unity of the Venetian lagoon. He argues that the three inlets naturally define three different water systems, whose interactions are relatively limited. In this scenario, acknowledging the economic relevance of the Marghera port and the ecological damages it has already caused, the Venetian Lagoon would be divided into three parts by a removable system, such as sheet piles. Foscari considers that today the most preserved ecosystems are located in the borders of the waterbody, particularly in the northern part, whereas the central lagoon has deepened faster and is very close to a marine bay environment. Therefore, the northern part - roughly going from Jesolo to Giudecca island could be re-naturalized to strengthen the existing wetlands ecosystem. The same could be done for the portion of the lagoon that goes from Pellestina to Chioggia. Both in the northern and southern inlets would be filed, to return to their previous states at around 3 to 5 meters of the depth, and the jetties removed. As in the natural lagoon scenario, sediment balance could be restored thanks to partial river rediversion. The central part, however, would become a marine bay. That is to say that in this part, the dredging of the channels would continue, and even increase, allowing the Marghera port to continue its activities.

The main interest of this scenario, besides allowing the application of several prototypes of strategies in these different areas, lies in not involving the dismantling of the port. However, this configuration generates a hierarchical 86

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Map of the devided lagoon scenario

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Three commons of the lagoon If Venice is seen as a battlefield of threats, paradoxes, or entanglement of conflicting interests, it is only because Venice is relevant. It is because it is a city and an environment that is valuable. A place that sparks one’s imagination and simultaneously forms the other’s daily reality. The Venetian territory’s history, indissociable from its extreme environment, is the tale of the constant back and forth between exploitation and protection of an environment, the complex and conflicting tentatives to maintain a balance in the human consumption while providing social and economic opportunities for the territory.

In this sense, the inhabited lagoon rises as a common, that is to say, a provider of resources and life in general, human and non-human, that is both rivalrous and non-excludable.

Venice as a place of layered interest results in its current tripartite identity as a historically unique (1) place of economic interest (2) in a water landscape (3). This is where the conflict begins. If during the Serenissima era, thanks to a strong governance system prevailing above individual interests, these three identities seem to have found an equilibrium in the maintenance of such common goods, today they arise as opposing forces.

Perhaps, Venice’s tripartite identity could also be considered as a layering of three commons: the heritage - the industrial port - the lagoon, each with their own value. This also demands to reflect on who is the beneficiary of the common: Venice’s population, the entire world, or the non-human species?

All three identified commons have value and raison d’être. It is therefore important to understand what each of these commons consists of to determine this value and their relevance for the future.

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Three commons of the lagoon

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(as the owner of SADE). Mancuso describes it as a double flow of money from public to private interest (Mancuso 2009). Maghera’s anomaly, conflicting, and double-sided character is described by Zazzara as followed:

Bordering the lagoon, at the landing of the ponte della Libertà in the mainland, lies ‘Porto Marghera’, an industrial port of 2000 ha. Throughout its 100 years of existence, Marghera has been a place of accumulation, contestation, opportunities, and protest, because of its heavy economic weight, its complexity, and its social and environmental conflicts (Mannino et al. 2015). The reason for its contestation is that the industrial port carried, and perhaps still carries, a common value for Venetian territories and its inhabitants: the promise of the socio-economic revival of the archipelago.

‘the reasons have probably to be found in its perception as an anomaly within the “Veneto model”, characterized by diffuse industrialisation, which is geographically rather peripheral and hybrid compared to the paradigms of the big factory of the “industrial triangle” (Milan-Turin-Genoa) and of the “development poles” of southern Italy. Marghera was a case of a state-planned economy, but immediately given over to the private investors; urban revolution, but outside of the “company town” format; of Fordism without the assembly lines, due to the predominance of chemical and electro-metallurgical productions; where the mass-worker of the “boom” years was not represented by the young man from the south, and where the political identity of the different classes has fluctuated dramatically between passivity and radicalism.’ (Zazzara 2017, p.210).

By the turn of the 20th century, the aspirations for Venice as a modernized marine power, which had emerged during the French and Austrian domination, led to the planning of a new industrial port. The existing port of the city, located on the historical island, seemed unfit for a modernizing Italy due to its disconnection from the railroad system, the lack of available land, and the inability to expand. Driven by entrepreneurial will, especially from count Guiseppe Volpi, a swampy area 5 kilometers northwest of Venice was allocated as the strategic place for a new port.

Marghera was directly connected to the productive Po plain and on the economic Adriatic route with seemingly limitless potential for expansion.

In 1917, the works on Marghera’s first sector of 700 hectares, commissioned by engineer Coen Cagli, started. The Breda shipyard, steel and alloy plants, a fertilizer plant, a glass and coke chemical factory, and the SADE power plant were the first industries.

Initially, the port benefited from the large availability of workforces coming from rural backgrounds, mirroring the pre-world war II political convictions of modernisation and rural connection. By 1942, the industrial port employed 20.000 people(Zazzara, 2017) most of which were rural workers. It was after the second world war that the port reached its peak and became a pole of work opportunities for both the mainland and the historical center. More modern industries of petrochemicals and metal alloys emerged on two new platforms of 900 hectares, while those from the first zone modernised. Conglomerating companies from both zones formed enormous ‘kombinats’ (Zazzara, 2017, p. 221) for the petrochemical industries such as Montecatini and Edison. During the ‘60s, more than 33.000 workers were active in the industrial port (Mannino, 2015). Marghera metamorphosed the economic and social fabric to such an extent that the historical careful consideration of the lagoon environment became a secondary concern. Between 1964 and 1968, the 11-meters-deep Malamocco-Marghera channel, later infamously known as the ‘oil channel’, was dredged as part of the

A complicated duality between high and questionable private profit and the undeniable employment the port created, obfuscated the distinction between an important common value for the city and a project for private profit pursuit. For example: not only incredible amounts of public money have been invested to drain the wetland, consolidate the ground, construct the platforms, provide road and rail infrastructure and housing, but this money also went directly to associations such as ‘Società di Volpi’ to carry out these works and later on had great interest in the port itself 90

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the highly specialized infrastructures of pipelines and reservoirs. These industries have an ‘expiration date’ due to the difficulty to repurpose the vast vacant lots once out of business. Instead, the small and older industries from the northern part have proven to be more efficient in persisting and restructuring. This area hosts 65% of the companies and 57% of the employees, on only 15% of Marghera’s surface (Cittá di Venezia, 2018).

Until the ‘70s, however, the growth of industries in the area continued, with increasing specialization in oil refining, metallurgy and steel, and the phosphates and fertilizer industries. In the ‘60s-‘70s, Porto Marghera worked as a center of ‘agglomeration, representing in Italy and in Europe, as a model of concentrated industrial activities capable of triggering the economic growth of a much larger area including the entire north-eastern Italy’ (Mannino et al., 2015, p. 289).

During the last years, because of the diversification of enterprises, Marghera has even seen a slight increase in employees, especially on these northern platforms. Today a little more than 11.000 workers are employed in over 800 different smaller and medium scale industries and services. Still, 4.000 industries and 400 workers are respectively active in manufacturing and construction, the other 6000 workers belong to sectors such as energy and water provision (850 people), transport and warehouses (1925 people), scientific and technical activities (1073), information and communication (530) and other services (Citta di Venezia 2018). In 2017, around 3500 large ships still entered the lagoon, delivering 75 million tons of goods, materials, and resources (Porto di Venezia e Chioggia 2017). In perspective, the port accounts for 8% of the city’s employment with 11.000 of 140.000 Venice’s employees. This highlights that, although it’s indisputable decline, Marghera is still of economic and social relevance.

But by the end of the ‘70s, as in many other western countries, a wave of de-industrialisation dismantled the manufacturing perhaps even faster than they emerged. Besides the never constructed third expansion, continuous tension arose between workers, unions, and universities pleading for better working conditions, while industrials were struggling to keep their industries profitable next to new competitors. It is during this period of decline that the dual character of the ‘mother Marghera’ (Barina, 2017) became apparent: on the one hand, an important ‘common’ provider of work and community, contested at every new closure, and on the other hand a heavy burden on the ecological and hydrological livability of the lagoon. By 2001, a mere 13.000 people were still employed in the industrial port, while the number of companies rose. Bigger industrial complexes have gradually been closing for 30 years while the remaining ones restructured to smaller businesses and diversified in new sectors of services, research and education.

With today’s knowledge of the lagoon’s dynamics, current port activities are not compatible with the lagoon as a healthy hydrodynamic system.

An industrial port inside the lagoon is synonymous with the acceptance of the lagoon as a marine environment. Perhaps today’s main value of Marghera as an industrial common does not lay in its activity as a global port per se but rather as a vast platform of opportunities inside the bigger territory. Next to being an industrial port, Porto Marghera is a highly infrastructured template, connected to both the mainland and the lagoon.

It is the place where activities of scale that were never possible in the lagoon could take place and it is exactly this value that, when rethought, shows the potential for the future.

Since 1990 environmental regulations and the inclusion of the port in the SIN list (national list for contaminated sites) meant a reinvention of the industries. It is possible to define two types of companies: those from the second expansion, in the more southern areas, characterized by a big size, and those from the original area, smaller in size and more differentiated. The former is inert and difficult to adapt to changes in the global market, due to the size of the activity and 92

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Heritage as a common

weighs the cost of tourism, around 400 million euros is earned through tax revenues from tourism while the estimated cost is around 75 million euro. Venice was always a place of attraction, hence tourism is not new to the city and has since long been part of its economy, from 19th-century elite tourism to the current globalized form.

But the ability to find an equilibrium between the preservation of the city as a lived space and mass tourism is getting increasingly challenging.

The heritage value of the city of Venice comes at the same time from the cultural value of its built environment and from the art and culture embedded in this built fabric whether material or immaterial. These features relate to each other and provide a double-coded notion of heritage, both ‘symbolic’ and ‘patrimonial’ and ‘physical’, as the city of stone standing on water.

On the one hand, the patrimonial value of Venice and its lagoon is resumed by its definition as a ‘World Heritage’ by the Unesco since 1987: ‘Venice is an extraordinary example of a human civilization which showcases a conjunction of technological advancement and control over nature as well as architectural, cultural and artistic climax, that kept its authenticity and integrity’. The city in itself is an object of art, while its wealth and trade tradition made it a place of art. Inside and outside, the palazzos and their art collections have been turned into museums and exhibition spaces. Even the city in itself hosts protected events such as the carnival, making it an exemplification of a cultural common good.

Nevertheless, there is another underestimated value that the city of Venice embodies and transmits. The value of the city of stone: the constructed city. This means the accumulation of rational constructive knowledge which made the city livable and has proven to be adaptable to such an extent that it was able to survive without alterations for multiple centuries in a whimsical landscape of water and mud.

The Venetian unique construction methods result from the superimposition of three conditions: the soft soil composition, the presence of brackish water with tidal variation, and the shortage of available land (Foraboschi 2017). These are conditions that oppose each other, such as soft soil composition that excludes heavy constructions and the lack of available space that requires the maximization of every square meter. Hence, the Venetian delicate search for balance resulted in an accumulation of strategies and techniques which constitute one of the most important knowledge bases for water construction. The foundations, due to the upper soft soil layers, require a transfer of the forces to deeper lying ground layers. Hence, oak or larch poles of 6-7 meters are driven into the soil reaching the caranto, a layer of consolidated oxidized silty clay located between 2 to 10 meters underground. Due to the lack of oxygen and to the minerals present in the lagoon waters, the wooden poles petrify and can resist for centuries. This dense system of 5-10 poles per square meter surrounded by compacted soil turned muddy liquid substance into a solid, a heterogeneous but monolithic entity, on which a wooden plateau sets the base of the construction (Foraboschi 2017). This whole system allows the foundations to remain intact for 500 to 1000 years. For example, after the collapse of Saint

On the other hand, the patrimonial value of Venice is doubled by a ‘symbolic’ understanding of heritage. It is the value that addresses a universal imagination of Venice. The city of arts conveys a collective memory embedded in its decorum of buildings and channels. This imagery is a superimposition of Venice itself and of its representation in literature, art, cinema, theatre as well as the tales on Venice’s customs and history.

However, this ‘symbolic’ reading of Venice is also prone to cliché and simplification, hence playing a significant role in the vision of the city as a theme park of consumption.

Venice attracts an ever-increasing number of tourists as mentioned in the mass tourism part of the threats. In 2019 an estimated 5,52 million people visited the city of Venice (Statistica), outnumbering the local population of the island by two to one in peak periods. Tourism brings with it an enormous economic value for the city, an estimated 2,3 billion euros was earned in 2015 by tourism (Blanco et al. 2014). For the municipality, the income from touristic practices largely out94

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I. Mark’s tower bell in 1902, the foundations - at work since the 9th century - were in such a good state that they were kept for the reconstruction of the new tower.

addition. The layout of some rational elements, such as foundations and lightweight structures, provides flexibility and the ability to rethink what was there before. Ruskin wrote in ‘The Stones of Venice’:

The architecture on top of these foundations does not follow the logic of ratio, composition and symmetry developed elsewhere in Italy but rather the logic of rational and lightweight skeleton structures. An elaborate combination of construction techniques was specific for Venice, such as the structural logic of carrying walls perpendicular to the channels, the use of decoupled facades, timber floors and ceilings and natural stone coverings. Even heavy terrazzo floors, that seem to contradict the lightweight logic, were of high structural importance. Together with the underlying timber, the terrazzo formed a ‘composite’ elastic floor because of its stickiness transferring shear forces and contributing to the overall stability of the buildings.

‘As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a single building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not sustained essential change in one or more of its most important features’ (Ruskin 2003 [1851], p.11).

The book ‘Elements of Venice’ by Giulia Foscari describes Venice through the concept of metamorphosis. What we inherited from the past is not to be seen as a static morphology but rather a moulding or ‘metamorphoses’ through perpetual modifications and adaptations of the built fabric. Therefore, in Venice heritage is more than the physical construct, it is the attitude of shaping the built environment to the necessity and livability of society in a peculiar environment. Hence, Venice’s common lies in the built fabric as an adaptive system itself and in the knowledge it transmits.

In addition, as Venice developed as a city of traders, out of necessity due to the lack of resources, it became a place of wealth and accumulation.

This means that on top of this highly rational foundation system, the architecture was meant to convey a strong symbolic status of power.

Facades became a means to showcase wealth, turning the urban landscape into an extremely dense demonstration of wealth, due to the city’s constrained density. All of this, the architecture of wealth but also the dense and efficient construction of the entire city, can be seen as the art ‘of’ the city.

It is then that we not only perceive the double-codedness of Venice’s heritage but also the double value of it: the architectural-historical value and the adaptive-resilient value.

‘Looking along the Grand Canal, one does not see the palaces that flank it; one sees the paintings of Canaletto. Modern features, which do indeed exist in the city, cannot be perceived. In short, Venice is not only being slowly submerged by the waters, but also being drowned by a flood of clichés, merchandising, and sentimentalism.’

(Foscari, 2014, p.10)

The creation of a city through perpetual addition and modification consolidated it into the form we know today. Hence, Venice today is a reminder of a past period. It is one of the largest remaining sites of accumulation of architecture, art, and urban layout from the medieval European period. This is exactly what forms its attraction today which is underlined by Unesco’s preservation measures. The simultaneous incredible historical and economic value coming from tourism results in a preservationist status quo that overshadows the adaptive value of the heritage. We should also notice that Venice through its history of architecture was always a place of adaptation and 96

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fish, crustaceans, reeds, salt on controlled flats, water-powered mills, a protecting environment against the sea, and a landscape of attraction. It was, and still is, an eminent part of life in the city.

From the first river diversions in the 15th century onwards, interventions have been made with one main purpose: to preserve the lagoon as it was, to make sure that the scarce resources and the peculiarities of the living environment would not drastically change. This mainly came from an economic and commonsensical perspective that the lagoon and the city were mutually beneficial: the lagoon could not survive without human intervention and Venice’s power relied on the protection and trade opportunity that the lagoon provided. From another perspective, the lagoon with its limitations formed the binder of a modern, structured, and rigorously governed society specifically because the environment required so.

Living in the lagoon required living together.

‘For centuries, unlike other states, [Venice] did not have the problem of expanding her home territory, opening new land: in short, producing development. Her economic goal, as concerned the heart of the city - the lagoon - was conservation: keeping men and the processes of natural evolution from altering the existing state of things.

Her whole effort, concerning the physical place where her power was settled, was to keep it as it was. While she was becoming an international economic power and behaving like one, the republic was working out and practicing a policy of conservation to maintain and restore the natural balances that made living in the lagoon possible.’

(Bevilacqua ,1995, p.29) From the Alpine mountain range to the northern edge of the Apennines, the Venetian lagoon as the backside of the Padan plain is one of the largest remaining elements of high ecological relevance in this landscape of cultivation. The arrival of Roman civilisation 2 B.C. with consular roads and the centuriation grid initiated the conversion of the woody plain landscape into the highly productive and inhabited environment of today (Matteazzi 2012) Channels, roads, intensive agriculture production with irrigation and fertilisation, characterise the stretch of approximately 650 kilometres in the North of Italy. It is at the far end of this productive megastructure that a seemingly more natural area remains. Too swampy to cultivate, too important as a defence system (against both nature and foreign threats) or simply too relevant as a resource in itself, the lagoon was historically safeguarded from anthropological conversion and complete drainage. At the same time, it was this ecosystem that created the unique conditions for people to settle.

‘Venice is inconceivable without its Lagoon, it would not, could not, exist without its Lagoon. So if this unique cultural, social model is to survive, its environmental heritage must be preserved, maintained, and managed just as carefully as its cultural heritage.’ (Viñals & Smart 2004) The lagoon’s vast area of approximately 550 square kilometers forms a system of high biodiversity and ecological value. Where land meets the sea, a specific landscape of brackish salt marshes and wetlands is created. A system of barene (marshes), velme (floodplains) and ghebi (channels)is home to a multitude of species.

Some species are highly specific to the lagoon, rarely found elsewhere in the mediterranean sea, others depend on the lagoon for important life stages, as migratory species that see the lagoon as a seasonal stop. More than 60 water-bird species, a multitude of fish species, crustaceans and smaller mammals live in the Venetian lagoon while more than 200.000 migratory birds halt for breeding during winter (Provincia di Venezia, 2004). Barene are not a singular typology, graduations of wetness and salinity create different types of marshes, each unique ecosystem with their specific halophyte vegetation. This specific vegetation and marshy ecosystem are a mechanism of carbon sequestration. Yearly 24.780 tons

Since its formation about 6-7 thousand years ago, the lagoon of Venice (Brambati, Tosi 2003) reached an intermediate and balanced condition between land and sea. From the 5th century on inhabitation took place in the delicate lagoon environment with a gradual adaptation and development of living techniques to the peculiar conditions (Distefano, 2014). The lagoon was an incredible but limited resource. It provided 98

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I. of CO2 are sequestered, equivalent to a value of 1.08 million euros (Brancolini, 2020). A drop in the ocean compared to the yearly 34.449.123 tons of CO2 emitted in the region (Istat 2017), but a potential to be explored when we think of the expansion of the wetland area in a less carbon-intensive region.

tensive food chain and rich biodiversity that they support. They play major roles in the landscape by providing unique habitats for a wide variety of flora and fauna. Now that we have become concerned about the health of our entire planet, wetlands are being described by some as important carbon sinks and climate stabilizers on a global scale.’ (Mitsch & Gosselink 2015, p.4)

The drastic loss of barene area since the start of the 20th century puts enormous pressure on the ecosystem. Barene once covered around 250 square kilometers of the lagoon while today a mere 40 square kilometers remain (D’Alpaos 2010). Especially recent interventions since the construction of inlet jetties such as the arrival of the Marghera port requiring continuous dredging, calm industry, pollution, and the construction works for the MoSE exponentially increased lagoon erosion. The erosion of the barene means the loss of habitat and therefore the loss of diversity and specific species but, in addition, it also means the loss of a fine-brained network through which tidal streams flow before reaching inhabited islands. Hence, erosion forms a highly visible loss of the common ecosystem and of the common protection system. Because of its unique ecological and landscape value, the Venetian lagoon became a RAMSAR site, a designation for wetlands of high value. The lagoon places itself next to the Camargue, the Danube Delta, the Po Delta, and the Gulf of Gabèsthe as important ecological bodies in Europe (Viñals & Smart 2004). As E.O. Wilson argues in his book ‘Half-Earth’, we have gone quite far until today in destroying our ecosystems. If we consider the Venetian lagoon in specific as an ecologically rich system, it is certainly a common of high value, beyond what can be expressed in mere economic terms. Or as Mitsch and Gosselink, authorities in wetland science, summarize their relevance:

In this sense, the Venetian lagoon and its habitats are a common for the inhabitants of Venice as a carrier of human activities, a natural protective system, and a provider of resources but also a common worldwide as an ecosystem delivering ecological services of high value such as ecological diversity, pollution reduction, and carbon sequestration.

‘Wetlands are sometimes described as kidneys of the landscape because they function as the downstream receivers of water and waste from both natural and human sources. They stabilize water supplies, thus mitigating both floods and drought. They have been found to cleanse polluted waters, protect shorelines, and recharge groundwater aquifers. Wetlands also have been called nature’s supermarkets because of the ex100

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AMPHIBIA BOOK I. Aporia: 1. an expression of real or pretended doubt or uncertainty especially for rhetorical effect; 2. a logical impasse or contradiction; especially: a radical contradiction in the import of a text or theory that is seen in deconstruction as inevitable (Merriam-Webster online Dictionary)

Rationality and aporia How can we, in a state of aporia, a state of doubt and uncertainty about what is to happen, design for the future? What does it mean to design for a future that is not fixed? Perhaps the concept of rationality can help. What is truly rational in a future that is unknown?

between 50cm and 4m, depending on a manifold of variables and the timescale of this rise.

Is it then truly rational to close off the entire lagoon, knowing that it is a mere spot in an entire territory of low-lying land? In the early phases of sea-level rise, considerable investments are required to prepare the lagoon to be closed: a new sewage system, zero pollution policies, reduced ship communication with the sea, protection of the barrier islands and pumping stations.

Furthermore, with high levels of the rising sea, it seems quite unclear what will become of the lagoon. Will it remain as a fortified island surrounded by a floodscape? Will the protection system expand? Will it just be abandoned? And most of all, is this where we want to go? More conceptually, this scenario relies on creating an enclosed micro-entity, secluded from dynamics of reality ongoing right at its perimeter. The scenario starts contradicting exactly where it is supposed to bring solace, at high sea-level rise, in which we don’t know what social structure might remain for whom we are investing and protecting. And until then, might we not try to live with a more natural lagoon as long as possible? Although the closed lagoon scenario might seem an inevitable fact in a certain future, opting for such a scenario today means entering a paradigm of strong determinism.

All the scenarios proposed contain valuable argumentations and insights on what is considered by each author, the most important value in the lagoon, some of which have been clarified in the previous chapter through the commons.

Nevertheless, some scenarios, although they seem equally valid lines of thinking which take different postulates as their starting points, contain some questionable rationalities. Within this frame, Adorno’s view on the notion of rationality offers an incredibly insightful tool for understanding. He defines two forms of rationality. On the one hand, there is ‘true’ or ‘complete’ rationality which is fundamental and based on critical reasoning not only of the means but also continuous questioning of the essence and the objectives, while, on the other hand, instrumentalised rationality is a reduced form that negates true critical reasoning and only the ‘ready-to-use’ aspect remains (Heynen H. et al., 2014). Umgiesser’s artificially-sustained lagoon, for example, relies on extreme future predictions of sea-level rise, in a situation in which sea-level rise estimates range 102

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The scenario of a natural lagoon brings forward another perspective with highly interesting interventions, such as the reconstruction of barene to temper forces of the sea and the removal of the jetties and inlets to dampen the lagoon erosion.

Nevertheless, some questions of feasibility arise, such as the re-diversion of rivers into the lagoon which seems, through some study projects, a useful but delicate procedure. River rediversion might need a broader approach rather than just bringing them back directly. Also, the natural lagoon scenario does not really provide an answer on what it would mean to live with water in such an environment. The rationality of the interventions themselves is hardly questionable, but it is perhaps the feasibility in political will and determination that is needed for such a scenario that becomes harder and harder to believe.

of water. Intervening in such a drastic way might make it impossible to eventually turn back to a full lagoon. Similarly to the scenario of an artificially sustained lagoon, once opted for these paradigms, there is hardly a return. Both the closed lagoon and the separated lagoon scenarios are today instrumental rational responses to what is ongoing, without the further question of how and for whom such scenarios are.

A true project of rationality is balancing and acknowledging the value of the three commons, understanding the tools that the previous three scenarios provide, and simultaneously their shortages. Perhaps a project of rationality, especially in a condition of aporia, is not providing control of what has yet to come, but increase the adaptability to change by the time change will occur. In this frame, the continuation of processes of perpetual trial-and-error, management, and maintenance, as done by the Venetian ancestors, has proven to be the most successful in a dynamic environment. Constructing resilience through experimentation that is safe-to-fail, in which there is always a way back. In a future of global uncertainty on sea-level rise, Venice has the advantage that it knows how to live on and with water. To lose touch with its strong entanglement with water might only make it as vulnerable to it as all the other places in the world.

The scenario of a separated lagoon with three distinct parts highlights the already present difference in dynamics in the three parts of the waterbody: a drastically deepening middle part and more conserved north and south parts. Although combining the ecological relevance of lagoon and wetlands with the economic value of the industrial port, the scenario does not offer more answers on liveability and uncertainty towards the future than the natural scenario. Also, the lagoon has always worked as one coherent body 103

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The territory of Amphibia Amphibia is a place at the confluence of different environments, where rivers arrive from the mountains through the flatlands and merge with the sea, creating a unique in-between landscape, shaped by both natural flows and human interventions.

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When the sea level rose, cities in the world decided to resist.

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While the people of Amphibia continued what they have always done: adapt to the gradually changing conditions. Eventually, an environmental equilibrium state was reached when planetary awareness stopped emissions and pollution.

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Some radical steps were taken to adapt and safeguard the lagoon. The people of Amphibia destroyed the jetties towards the sea to stop heavy erosion.

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They laid the rubbles on the seabed to shallow the inlets, to cover their rigid and obsolete protection system.

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They also removed the industrial port, harmful for the fragile lagoon ecosystem.

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The Polder Plains I arrived in Amphibia where the rivers meet the lagoon, the low-lying Polders. A vast extensive waterscape structured by a system of ditches and embankments, reminders of a productive past.

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I was told that these territories, once from the lagoon and dried for cultivation, were given back to the waters.

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As far as my eye could reach, the plain was a productive wetland, in which higher and lower platforms were moulded through earthworks to cultivate in an environment of tidal fluctuations.

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It is here that Acqua-farmers, anchored to the existing lines in the landscape, farm crabs and mussels, experiment with floodable crops on higher grounds and breed fish in the lower basins.

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This intermediate landscape extends to the northern lagoon as a place of manufactured nature, cleaning the rivers that enter Amphibia and a breeding ground for all sorts of species.

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This intermediate landscape extends to the northern lagoon as a place of manufactured nature, cleaning the rivers that enter Amphibia and a breeding ground for all sorts of species.

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Some men were taking care of the wetlands. As I later discovered, constant work is put into maintenance of the environment, orchestrated by the Magistrates of the Waters, that look after the overall well-being of the lagoon.

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The Island of New Old Things I arrived on the Island of new old Things, known for its history of glass production, which left behind an industrial heritage of warehouses and workshops. People of Amphibia realised their value and transformed them into new workspaces, devoted to their local production.

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The old and polluting glassmaking decayed, emptying many of the industries and new purpose had to be found for these structures.

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Some warehouses along the channels were reconverted, adapting the ground floors to the changing water levels. small boats move in and out to supply goods.

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I understood that in amphibia’s resources are scarce, demanding for circular processes. It is here that I saw craftsmen and manufacturers make and repair as much as they can.

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Behind the frenzy of production, the island is easeful.

Houses are organised around orchards where older people meet young artists, artisans and students, attracted by the available workspaces.

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At the far end of the island, a vast park extends toward Amphibia’s tree nursery, on an old landfill. It is here that the new generation of glassmakers restructured around collective furnaces.

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I sat down and realised how calm it is here. People of Amphibia walk or move on water, by kayaks, rowing or small electrical boats but also thanks to the water busses.

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The Capital of Amphibia The capital of Amphibia is a place of gathering to celebrate the culture of the lagoon. It is an incredibly dense city, organized in nuclei by channels, as an archipelago within the archipelago. Each nucleus relates to the tidal movement: some dry, some flooded a few times during fall and some even flooded every day.

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I was told that the capital used to endure a touristic mono-economy, emptying the city of its residents due to the growing conflicts with the visitors.

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But then came the planetary pandemic which opened the eyes of the people of amphibia, who realized that they could not rely only on tourism anymore. Progressively, through tax incentives, housing policies and reorganization of tourism, a new inflow of population revitalized and reorganized the capital.

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No longer a simulacrum, but a dynamic place, the city opened up vacant spaces, the flexibility of which cater to the changing needs of businesses and facilities.

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During my stay, one of the exceptional high tides reached the capital. The high nuclei, places of intense life, were not affected. Here the stunning large public spaces pay tribute to the pedestrian nature of the capital.

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In the half dry nuclei, while I witnessed the tides invading the square, citizens seemed to be rather impassive. Urban spaces and ground floors are designed and maintained to cope with daily flooding.

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In the lowest nuclei, regular or exceptional tides make no difference. Here the ground floors are surrendered to the water, while passerelles define a dense superimposition of pedestrian and water movement.

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The Garden Island The Garden island has since long been the orchard of the lagoon. It is an agricultural laboratory where Agro-scientists of the world gather to witness the relation people of Amphibia established between brackish water and cultivation.

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The old and polluting glassmaking decayed, emptying many of the industries and new purpose had to be found for these structures.

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I was told that channels structure the island into different cells, in which a sequence of beds of different heights are testing grounds for agricultural practices to apply in the whole archipelago and in the polders.

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Passing by, I realized that the tides were covering the fields. This place is an open-air diffused laboratory.

The researchers of Amphibia use tides to select plants resilient to the brackish water, while developing closed nutrients cycle.

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The Garden Island

Constant human force and monitoring is needed to fuel this morphological machine, to heighten pieces of land or recycle the channel sediment as fertilizer

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The island’s higher protected grounds are the focal point of research and education poles. Places of exchange between scientists and locals, of goods and ideas.

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The Garden Island

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II.

The Coastal Islands My final destination were the coastal islands, long slender strips of dunes that protect Amphibia from the sea.

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The Coastal Island

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After being in the frontline, fighting a war against the marine forces for many years,

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The Coastal Island

people of Amphibia started a non-violent resistance.

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Piers were extended, nourishing the beaches with sand.

Tamarisk and cane sand catchers helped the dunes grow and become an adaptive defense. Some of the areas are off-limits to humans, to foster natural processes, while some others are reforested, to stabilize the soil, protect from the wind and as biomass.

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The Coastal Island

The linear islands, stitched together by a soft mobility road, are a protective landscape park where new and slow forms of agrotourism interact and take care of nature.

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For centuries, a five-meter high Istrian stone wall completes the dune system in the thinnest parts of the islands, as a monumental promenade and harvester of tidal energy.

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The Coastal Island

Behind these defensive lines life overlooks the lagoon; it is from this furthest edge that I could finally grasp the vastness of Amphibia. An endless flat, some stubbornly persistent islands and the mountains as a backdrop.

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II.

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The Coastal Island

By the end of my journey, I understood what it means to accept water: it is Something that goes beyond the physical condition. Amphibia is a collective effort to reconsider the relation to our landscape and heritage, to the notion of risk and the way we live together. An effort in which water is perhaps only the metaphor for the transition (for this different gaze). An effort which I wonder if we are willing to make.

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Notes on Amphia During my journey, I carried with me a notebook in which I tried to translate all the explanations I was given and documents I was provided about Amphibia. These, in addition to my own experience of the territory, were the basis of my report on Amphibia.

I have chosen to further develop three parts of Amphibia for their exemplary character, each demonstrating the Amphibian inventiveness.

Through the Island of New Old things, I want to give an example of how the built fabric responded to the new water conditions. With the Garden Island, I try to go deeper in the understanding of the adaptive entanglement between landscape and production, in order to provide new attractors. While finally, with the Polder Plains, I retrace the necessary stages which allowed the rigid territory to turn risk into opportunities.

The selected extracts presented here are meant to help the reader’s understanding of this particular territory. Amphibia was not a given, it was collectively constructed through trial and error processes of adaptation which allowed the progressive construction of resilience.

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Water level in Amphibia

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II. note I.I.I The open water system

Amphibia is a place where the saltiness of the sea blends with the flows of the rivers into a brackish landscape of different ecosystems, modes of production and ways of living with water. This intermediate body, the lagoon, is a breathing system, expanding and shrinking with the rhythms of the tides. Amphibia is not like most other places, it is delicate yet resilient, it is a landscape that can stretch and bend if considered in a careful manner. It is defined by topography, forces and flows of water creating a constellation of bumps, humps and water where extremities are tempered and therefore liveable.

note I.I.II Islands and Governance of Amphibia

Amphibians govern their territory in a unique way. Because of the importance of the environment in which they live, a distinct governmental body called the ‘Magistrate of Ecology’ safeguards the overall status of the territory. This Magistrate of Ecology is composed of representatives with different backgrounds that act on the good of the entire territory. It is constituted by experts, academics, research groups, local associations and people’s representatives from different islands in the lagoon. Through this body and because of the complexity of their environment, Amphibians deal with the territory through careful trial and error and experimentation that is needed for an environment that is never static. Since each island they inhabit is specific, each island also has its own governance strongly related to the maintenance of the island. note I.I.III Production and ecological systems

Amphibians know that they are not the only ones inhabiting their territory and the natural environment is to a large extent what defines Amphibia.

Care of natural systems is also what makes living between land and water possible. The lagoon itself is the main ecological body of amphibia, with its variations of wetness a complex ecosystem of marshland, permeated by narrow natural streams and wider channels. The water in the lagoon is brackish, specific and necessary for the ecosystems inside. Forested coastlines and dunes are another element to protect the lagoon environment from direct interaction with the sea. More than mere natural protection bodies, all these ecological systems are home to the multitude of species: small animals and plants. note I.I.IV Mobility system of Amphibia

The entire territory is connected by waterborne public transport, which is the core of the amphibian mobility, this public water transport connects all corners of the territory through lagoon channels and rivers, from close-by Islands to the productive edge through rivers reaching further land inwards connecting to distant mainland cities. The islands themeslve are for pedestrians, Amphbia is a true walking territory. Islanders also share smaller boats (kajaks, gondolas, electric boats, rowing boats) to trade and carry goods. A bus loop inside the lagoon acts as a faster way to connect perimeter areas and as a landscape route for cyclists. In places closer to the mainland an overlap occurs between the water mobility and land mobility in the form of railway lines creating nodes of interchange on the edge of the lagoon.

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Water conditions of Amphibia

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ON THE POLDER PLAINS

Note I.I During my stay in the polder plains, it took me a while to understand and imagine how this landscape used to be, and how it transitioned in what I was witnessing.

I was told that, until recent times, the polders were treated as the backside of the mainland, denying their ecotonal value, and where resistance used to be the main practice at play. Dikes and embankments restrained the flows of the alpine and spring rivers and characterize the lagoon borders. It was particularly here, at the interface with the brackish waters where many fields, once torn from the lagoon, were laying almost three meters below the sea level, kept dry by energy consumptive pumping systems.

The accumulation of these practices generated a severe territorial rigidity, often flooded during storms and heavy rain events. The people of Amphibia understood both these fragilities and the positive outcomes that opening the polders towards the water would have brought. If on one hand, the opening would have meant the loss of many hectares of agricultural fields – even though characterized by a low yield – and the flooding of some farms and small urban centers, on the other, it meant the creation of a resilient territory.

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Note I.II The Polder Plains, in which ground elevation ranges between -2 and +2 m, cover an area of more than 4.500 square kilometers. With the increase of climate change-related events, these territories began to be severly affected by floods, during which brackish and freshwater could remain in the cities and on the fields for days.

Topographical map of the coastline of the northern Adriatic sea and flooded areas for more than one day during the storm of November 1966.

[Sources: Geoportale Regione Veneto; Consorzio di Bonifica del Veneto Orientale]

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A Landscape of Rigidity ~1700 - Map of the Lagoon [Source: CIGNo Atlas, CNR ISMAR]

1818 - General Map of the Lagoon [Source: CIGNo Atlas, CNR ISMAR]

1847 - Topographic Map of the Lagoon [Source: Barry Lawrence Ruderman]

1931 - Topographic Map of the Lagoon [Source: CIGNo Atlas, CNR ISMAR]

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Note I.III The area of 15 km in the northern border of the lagoon is one of the main polders of Amphibia.

Historical maps highlighted the process of reclamation that took place in long time ago and the landscape of stifness that was generated by the successive interventions.

Irrigated Agriculture Fields Orchards and Vineyards Riparian forest Built Fabric Slopes and Dikes

Land use map of the northern polders.

[Sources: Geoportale Regione Veneto]

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Note I.IV The rigidity of the landscape exponentially increased its fragility. Where sea level kept on rising and flash floods intensified in strength and frequency, people stubbornly continued to build higher embankments.

Many were the hectares of land and urban center in constant risk of being flooded both from the lagoon and from the alpine and spring rivers.

On this page: Succession of sections though the Landscape of the northern Polders [Sources: Geoportale Regione Veneto] On the next page: Map of the hydraulic risk of the northern Polders [Sources: Geoportale Regione Veneto; Piano Assetto Idrogeologico - Autorità di Bacino del Sile e della Pianura tra Piave e Livenza; Piano Regolatore delle Acque - Consorzio di Bonifica del Veneto Orientale; Pericolosità Idraulica - Consorzio di Bonifica Piave; Piano Assetto del Territorio - Comune di Musile di Piave; Piano Assetto del Territorio - Comune di San Donà di Piave]

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Hydraulic Risk Stagnation Areas Built Fabric

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Stages towards Resilience

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Notes on Amphibia Note I.V Aware of this unstable condition, the people of Amphibia decided to act.

Addressing climate change as a process, they defined a series of phases as a succession of practices to develop a resilient territory.

Landscape of Rigidity

Freshwater Savings

Rooms for Water

Return to the Lagoon

Urban Retreat

Polder Plains

Using topography, retention basins are created to store the overflow from the rivers and detention basins

Detention basins are created to receive the extraflow from alpine and spring rivers

When the water at the interface between the polders and the lagoon is extended enough, the embankments are removed, allowing the brackish water back into the landscape

Smaller localities and groups of farms must move away from areas of greater hydraulic risk

From Tube to Sponge

The riparian forest along the edges of the rivers is extended, becoming a soft edge and a hotspot of biodiversity

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Main Rivers and Channels

Agriculture

Urban Centers

Riparian Forest

Barene

Alpine Rivers

Dikes and Embankments

Spring Rivers

Retention Basins

Drainage Network

Detention Basins

Infrastructures

AMPHIBIA BOOK II. Notes I.VI Throughout decades of transition, rooms for rivers’ extra-flows were created, storing the great masses of water moved by the more and more recurring storms; basins for freshwater harvesting were developed, to make the best out of every drop of water; the river meanders were restored, enhancing these cleaning linear ecosystems and enforcing the ecotone at the interface with the brackish waters; the space given back to the lagoon allowed for a reduction of the peak values of the high tides; more barene and velme allowed for greater carbon sequestration.

Waterways became the isotropic infrastructure, linking the newly formed archipelago both to the lagoon and the mainland.

The polder plains thus gradually became the inbetween territory I saw, where freshwater meets the lagoon. Topography and ground movement played a key role in the definition of the interface between these two kinds of water, a border that is not rigid and constantly blurred by the ebb and flow of tides.

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Notes I.VII Finally, the transition was an occasion to rethink the ways of producing, understanding the importance of natural resources – privileging less water consumptive cultivations as agroforestry -, lowering mobility-related emissions – enhancing public transport clean systems -, and zeroing land consumption by reducing the dry areas.

Riparian Forest

Rail Mobility

Levels of Wetness

Water Mobility

Rooms for Water

Land Mobility

Urban Green Pockets

Built Fabric

Main Rivers and Channels

Map of the Polder Plains [Sources: Geoportale Regione Veneto]

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Section A-A’ 2020 Mean Sea Level

Natural Barene 2100 Mean Sea Level

Elevated Slow Mobility Aquaculture Section B-B’

Irrigated Agriculture

Artificial Barene

Algae Cultivation

Oysters and Mussels Farming Embankment

Section C-C’

Urban Center

Sponge Urban Spaces

Embankment 170

Agroforestry

Notes on Amphibia

Irrigated Agriculture

Artificial Barene

Saline Resistant Crops

Oysters and Mussels Farming

Rural Urban Center

Agroforestry Orchards

Traditional Agriculture

Alpine River

Riparian Forest 171

AMPHIBIA BOOK II.

III. The Island of New Old Things On the Island of new Old Things I understood how the people of Amphibia built their cities on water. I took notes on some of their principles. As one of the dense islands, the island of new old things can be seen as scaled down laboratory of the capital island. Therefore some strategies on the built fabric were first tested here before they became common practice on other pace in the archipelago. The Island of New old things is a consolidated constellation of seven distinct morphologies. It is and Islands characterised by an incredible built capital of industrial heritage with an intrinsic potential for adaptation has always been present through its productivity.

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Sacca San Mattia

Dei Conventi San Donato Navagero Sacca Serenella San Pietro San Stefano

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II. note III.I.I history of industry

The island of New old things historically developed together with its industry of glass production. The creation of wealth, urban development and population was closely related to its productivity and innovation.

When the industry thrived, population grew and investments were done in the built fabric. This history shows the necessity of this island to be productive to be liveable.

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Consolidated morphologies

note III.II.I consolidated morphologies

Since the island historically developed together with its industry of glass production. The development of the island morphology and built fabric followed waves of industrial processes in their respective timeframe. For a long time interventions were only driven by the industrial activity, resulting in ad hoc additions of productive space and opposed to the Capital Island very few investment in an organised urbanity around squares and churches.

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note III.II.II 16th century drawing of the Island of New Old Things

note III.II.III oldest built fabric

note III.II.IV recent industrial sites

The oldest built fabric of the island was structured in narrow lines perpendicular to the channels. Front sides are commercial and backsides productive. (3-4 storeys)

Bigger industrial sites developed during the glass revival in a more recent period. Warehouses and workshop structures are bigger and some have access to the water. (1-2 double high storeys)

note III.II.V garden neighborhood

note III.II.VI convent sites

Most recently, undefined open space because of land reclamation during the last centuries became the location for garden neighbourhoods with standalone villa’s or apartments with gardens and wide streets. (2-3 storeys)

Convent and monastery sites developed at the same time as the oldest urban fabric but constellate open spots with gardens and greenery in the otherwise dense urban fabric.

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Period of decay note III.III.I industrial sites

The industrial structures are spread over the island in bigger sites or narrow strips. Since the decay of the glass industry the vacuum was initially filled by the tourism industry, that saw the island’s buildings as an unpolished but enormous potential. New regulations had to control this undiversified development and alternative uses that truly answered to the islands needs had to be found.

note III.III.II densities

Some areas on the island of new Old Things form denser cores of inhabitation. Each core is a centrality on a smaller island. Because of the rather ad hoc development of the island following the logics of the glass industry, these centralities did not necessarily correspond with places of public life. Public space was neither prominent nor defined. They were something in between a widened or greenified street, dead ends or a parvis.

note III.III.III services & facilities

Facilities on the Island were scarce. Because of its dependency on the capital Island most facilities were concentrated over there. The island had no hospital, no first aid, no upper secondary school, a few nurseries and a few elderly care homes.

They did have some sports infrastructures and lower education, but with the amount of empty structures and open space on the island the inhabitants realised that the old industries could become places of things to happen.

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Notes on Amphibia note III.III.IV decay

After centuries of variable prosperity, The glass industry of the Island decayed for one last time.

This left many of the industrial structures abandoned with a big question mark on what had to happen to these structures. Many of them were majestic landmarks, waiting for something new.

The ever important glass industry remained as a symbolic craft, but could never provide a new productive revival of the island.

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7 elements of resilience The Island of New Old Things is characterised by defined structuring elements. Some of the elements hold an important intrinsic value for the island, they are specific to its history and constellation. The demographic and economic decay of the island, with at the same time an enormous potential for change was a trigger for the necessary adaptation to the rising sea level. The inhabitants recognised these elements already present on their island as points of interest, starting points from where they could start adapting.

note III.IV.I perpendicular foundation lines

Many of the old industries and historical buildings are structured perpendicular to the channels. As longitudinal strips they lay as docks facing the water, often with a gate towards the channel. On the Navagero island, the most eastern part of the island of New Old Things, this structure is most noticeable. The entire Island is structured in a rhythmic sequence of structural lines.

note III.IV.II structuring orchards

The many convents and monasteries left behind sites of cultivated gardens and orchards. Weather originating from the monastic history or not, these gardens structure neighbourhoods as places of attraction around which life unfolds.

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II. note III.IV.III prominent fondamentas

Although many of the island are partly surrounded by fondamentas, three of them are more prominent. They are the fondamentas in direct relation with the lagoon rather with the channels, and therefore wider and more solid to withstand direct contact with the lagoon but simultaneously offer far-reaching views over the landscape. They are places of trade, production and connection.

note III.IV.IV (latent) green space

The island is plenty of open green space: parks, enclosed monastic gardens, inner courtyards and landfills. Most of them are latent and waiting opportunities to be activated, to be given back to nature or they can play an important role in the adaptation to rising water.

note III.IV.V sacca hill

The biggest landfill of the Island of New Old Things lies at the back of the island, the sacca San Mattia. It is a vast 29 hectares and 4-5 metre high hill standing out in the lagoon. As one of the broadest and highest grounds it is also highly polluted because of the industrial waste of which it is composed.

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Notes on Amphibia note III.IV.VI green streets

Public space on the Island used to be mainly defined by a semi-connected network of wider or greenified streets. As spacious promenades they were located in the densest inhabited cores. They hold within the capacity to be the main typology of the island’s public space although initially they were not really used as such.

note III.IV.VII sites of interest

Many bigger sites, often with an industrial past are strategically scattered around the island. In a time of local adaptation the have the potential to host necessary programs that compensate what will be lost to water.

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II.

7 strategies of adaptation To adapt to the rising levels of the sea, the people of the island found strategies on different scales and often based on the reading of their elements of resilience. They found ways to not only accept water but make the presence of water a catalyser for new activity. The adaptations intends to responds to social questions of the island in its morphological conversion to water. On the other hand many of these strategies make the island more permeable, slowing down the incoming forces for those places that need to be protected. note III.V.I navagero as permeable wall

The entire Navagero as a longitudinal strip works as a permeable wall by opening ground floors following the structural lines. Water connections traversing the island form a percolator slowing down the fastest currents coming from the eastern part of the island. The opened ground floor structures became places of revised industrial activity, manufacturing and research in which boats enter inside the built fabric.

note III.V.II orti densities

Already existing orchards and latent green spaces, often on slightly higher ground were the strategic location for new densities. Four story high structures complemented the existing fabric around the orchards. The gardens form gathering places for the surrounding community.

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note III.V.III active fondamentas

The historical fondamentas were not adapted to the rising sea level, neither high enough to protect or be productive, nor low enough to be accessible by water. Four new fondamenta typologies were introduced activating, protecting or permeabilising the existing.

1. the productive fondamenta: lowering transversal water passages and heightening productive platforms.

2. the protective/commercial fondamenta: enforcing the fondamenta to protect and preserve the entire pedestrian surface 3. the protective/connector fondamenta: heightened, stepped fondamenta as minimal accessible connector 4. the permeable fondamenta: completely opened to water where also ground floors can be flooded.

note III.V.IV catalysers of local adaptation

The sites of interest of the Island of new Old Things highlighted became the catalyser for local adaptation. Strategically located inside the built fabric they are the accessible point for the surrounding buildings, and the places for elevated public facilities, shared mobility and services. If ground floor around these sites are surrendered to water, the scale and structures on the sites of interest provide collective compensation for the lost space.

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Notes on Amphibia note III.V.V green street connectors

Green streets as one of the elements of resilience are the connective elements in the island’s adaptation. The previous disconnected streets system was completed into a continuous network that link the inner densities to the island’s perimeter and to each other. They elevated walkways extend into smaller squares and places of gathering where needed. note III.V.VI protected San Donato

San Donato is the biggest inhabited part of The Island of New Old Things. With its specific morphology and lack of inner structure it was difficult to open this island up to water. At the same time the island is enclosed by two characteristic features. On one side there is’ longest continuous fondamenta and on the backside the island has an extended park. Both elements were adapted into a fortified fondamenta and a park of manipulated topography to make San Donate the only island protected from the tides. It is the central island of gathering and plentyness of space thanks to its local protection.

note III.V.VII sacca soil distributor (cleaning nursery)

The sacca as an enormous soil storage was strategically sanitised with a tree nursery park. In a system of platform, trees were planted in cycles to clean top soil layers. Trees were replanted all over the archipelago after two or three cycles and the cleaned top soil layers were removed to reconstruct barene around the Island of new old Things. New trees were planted and cycles went on resulting in a terraced park in which low areas become flooded and high platforms preserved the advantage of the island’s original elevation open for potential new activities. The permeability of the carved out island and the reconstructed barene act together with the Navagero permeable wall as elements that temper forces of the incoming water.

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Scene of interest 1. San Pietro Connector / Frontside for urbanity

note III.VI.I frontside for living

As a previous backside, and the placid counterpart of the active retail channel fronts, the Island’s inner street is the social connector, an attractor for life to take place stitching together those places most important for resident’s daily activity. As a linear catalyser, it creates a continuation in what, heretofore, were segmented parts of the island. The inner connection turned the back ends and the closed productive backsides into a frontside for urbanity. It is towards these inner connectors that adjacent abandoned or underused structures opened up as social, cultural, productive, recreational or educational edifices.

The connector stitches together three scenes that were previously withdrawn: a monastic garden, a denser stage for urbanity and a productive alley. The linear public spaces as raised platforms are both an adaptation to the rising water and a definition of space for residents that was lacking because of industrial development.

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1. monastic garden - hortus conclusus

2. stage for urbanity

3. productive alley

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Notes on Amphibia note III.VI.II monastic garden

The previously enclosed convent garden was opened up as a place for the community. It is a garden of tranquillity and contemplation in which collective orchards are cultivated. A pathways connects the residential area with the commercial fondamenta, some parts of the garden are heightened and rarely flooded, a lower carved out pond is a collector of fresh water used for the orchards in the garden. Some old structures opened up as collective facilities with terraces facing the garden

note III.VI.III stage for urbanity

The necessary link through the monastic garden turned the denser inhabited area in a centrality rather than a back end. The heightening of two wider streets into raised platforms define a stage for urbanity. As an in-between typology, not really a square nor a street they are a place for gathering, markets or simply as a landmark, but at least something more than what it used to be.

note III.VI.III productive alley

The productive alley is a place for noise and activity. The incentive to open up structures to the heightened street turned the previous ‘backside of production’ into an active front, a counterpart for the active waterfront as the supply and retail side. The often double high glass industries host workshops, repair café, educational ateliers where ground floors extends into productive courtyards deeper inside the block.

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Scene of interest 2. Navagero Permeable Wall / Water industries

note III.VII.I navagero permeable wall

The Navagero is a peculiar island. The distinction between what is structure and what is water is blurry. A dual system of ‘water’ streets and elevated calle’s alterate, penetrating the longitudinal strip. All of this made possible by the parrallel foundation lines perpendicular to both the lagoon and the channel. They connect the two sides that have alwasy been disconected and by doing so, activaty the strip that has lost its productive meaning.

Opened structures in which water flows through are the productive platforms where boats arrive. They are the places of transfer for goods from water to building where they are processed and manufactured.

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II. note III.VII.II 0. situation before adaptation

Initially the longitudinal Navagero island, structured by perpendicular foundation lines had no no connection between the lagoon and the channel side. In the concatenation of long building strips there was no passage reaching through the island acting as a massive wall. Some exceptional calles reached halfway the depth ending up small pockets filled with ground floor shacks and ephemeral structures.

note III.VII.III 1. water street, elevated calle & shack removal

The high industrial typologies could easily be opened up to water while the small shack structures make it hard to adapt to the tides. They are removed to make open space for water and the calles alternate with water streets to form an intertwined system that connects both sides. Calles are heightened and on the channel side an elevated permeable fondamenta allows water to percolate through.

note III.VII.IV 2. strategic top-ups & industrial densification

Since the Island of New Old Things mainly consists of double high or two story warehouses, there is a capacity for topped up densification. The usual height in the muddy environment consist of 4 stories or 5 in case of lightweight structures.

Strategically, following the existing structural lines, buildings are topped-up, adding productive and residential frameworks on the same footprint.

note III.VII.V 3. roof-commons as transversal connection and energy roofs

When the ground floors are opened up to water for mobility, logistic and production, the new roofs form a potential extended public space.

Transversal connections stitch together what is today rigidly structured in the direction of the foundation lines. The highest roofs are green roofs with solar panels.

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note III.VII.VI

The people of Island find places for gathering and expression in the new adapted structures. They do not only understand the beauty of their built reality but also of their territory as a whole. Space for the people of Amphibia both has a notion of functionality but they never forget to frame the uniqueness of their landscape. As it once was culture, daily life, production an celebration all happen next to each other.

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initial situation

sports facilities

library, open garden, collective work space

production centre

theatre, culture centre

exhibition space research centre, workshops, ateliers, art production, market, food hall, shared mobility hub,...

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The whole adaptation of the built environment to the rising water levels is to be seen as a means to more, it was an adaptation to the necessities of the island, an acknowledgement and valorisation of what there was, exactly by changing it. The inhabitants found ways to overcome staticity.

They understood the value of their structures by constantly reframing their essence. The built is a permanent subject of addition, removal, elevation, replacement or repurposing, always with care for what was already there and how to build in such a territory.

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II.

IV. Notes on the Garden Island “alla città copia di herbaggi, e di frutti, in molta abbondanza e perfetti.” (To the city rich in greenery and fruits in abundance and perfection.)

Francesco Sabbadino, XVI century

The Garden Island has since long been the orchard of the lagoon. It is an agricultural laboratory where Agro-scientists of the world gather to witness the relation people of Amphibia established between brackish water and cultivation. The Island is a man-made artificial nature that learned to co-exist with brackish waters. Far from purely resisting the water condition, the Island took advantage of its peculiar condition by controlling and choreographing tides to develop means of

production and leisure. But the morphological and landscape transformation that the Garden island underwent, in addition to developing new ecological services, provided new economic purposes which in turn allowed the social structure to grow and diversify creating a virtuous cycle of development. These few notes try to define the main transformation and strategies that the people of Amphibia used to adapt and take advantage of the new climate condition.

The terrestial paradise, Kircher, 1975

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AMPHIBIA BOOK II. IV.II Past vulnerabilities The Garden island experienced an ever-increasing vulnerability with the rose of sea level. The island had progressively adopted a weak resistance system with a wall circling the island. Furthermore, resisting had no impact on the other vicious cycle that climate change, in general, was producing.

While the drainage of the aquifer was causing subsidence and freshwater shortage, temperature

increase, acid rains, soil salinization, and invasive species were progressively making the culture of fragile crops nearly impossible. As a result, the garden island was slowly being depopulated, causing the abandonment of exploitation and farmed land. As an artificial landscape, shaped by both man and natural flows, the abandonment of the island lead to the desertification of the ground un-proper for any species.

Old protection system

Abandonment land on the Garden Island

Agricultural fragility due to climate change

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Island growth, XVth century, XVIth century, and XVIIth century

XVIth cnt anthropic parcels constitutions, Domenico Gallo (1552)

Drainage systems

Scheme From Lidi to Archipelago to hinge

IV.II historical construction The historical construction of the Garden Island is necessary to understand how the people of Amphibia rethought their territory. The island grew thanks to the aggregation of sand and sediments as part of the coastal island. This natural accumulation of shallow areas started being reclaimed by settlers each forming a parcel with its drainage and protection system. This natural and human co-development gave its morphological features to the island. With the construction of the jetties, the Garden Island was excluded from the Lidi system and projected into the Archipelago.

When the port was dismantled, the people of Amphibia destroyed the jetties and shallowed the inlets. Through this process, the garden island regained its double nature, as a hinge between the archipelago system and the coastal island.

Parcels division

Natural aggregation

Human and natural co-formation of the territory

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Amphibia’s Agricultural landscape

Past system of interaction between Island

Amphibia system of interaction between Island

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IV.III The island’s interaction The Garden Island plays a central role in Amphibia.

In Amphibia, food production is omnipresent, every land available is farmed thanks to diversified models of productions, respectful of the territory’s amphibious nature. Inside of this system, the Garden Island takes on an exemplary role as a productive research park. The island used to be a provider, of food and workforce for the other

island. Today, however, it is a central place of exchange of people and goods, knowledge and leisure. The Garden Island progressively became a park on the lagoon scale. The great mobility system which characterizes the Garden Island emphasis this position. Specifically with the constitution of « Traghetto » like small-scale systems with in addition to the water buses allows this Garden to be reached from any part of the lagoon.

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II.IV Morphological transformations The Garden Island exemplifies Amphibia’s ingenuity of adaptation. To understand how the Island overcame the crisis it underwent, it is necessary to look at the morphology of the Island. The garden island sits on a shallow plain constituted by the accumulation of sediment coming from the Treporti inlets. The mean level on the island is relatively low with an average of 1.5m. With a sea-level rise of 80cm and a tidal

maximum reaching 1.5m, the Island was in peril.

Hence, only a drastic shift could allow the island to reinvent itself. In line with the tradition of co-shaping their territory, the people of Amphibia developed three main strategies, to restructure the morphology of the island and its hydraulic functioning. Soil as the most important resource of the territory was displaced through cut and field technics to develop a new relationship with the brackish waters, no longer resisting it but accepting the new potentialities it offered.

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Phases of the soft edge reconstruction and barene reconstruction

IV.IV. I Soft edges strategy The first relates to the edge system which went from resistance to acceptance. the people of Amphibia progressive constitution of soft edges systems which function as tidal parks to break tidal waves and foster the Island ecosystems and participating carbon sequestration. They understood the vulnerability of the resistance system and gave lands back to tide to better co-exist with it. This progressive transformation was also helped by the re-connected inflow of sediment from the sea which accumulated on the north side of the Island. First, the agricultural parcels on the shore were revegetated with indigenous coastal species such as cane and Tamarix, then pile traditional systems were used to strengthen and structure the accumulated sediment into velme and barene. Meanwhile, the dikes on the edge were progressively opened to adapt the new ecosystem to brackish water. The edges of the Garden Island are parks in the amphibian sense, places of education and enjoyment. The tidal parks are places of encounter with the natural ecosystems thanks to elevated paths and light structures that allow for multiple uses and practices.

Inflow of sediments from the inlet of Treporti post jetty destruction

High-tide landscape

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Case study of the previous state and current state of the soft edge of the Garder Island

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Metabolic section of the edges

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Reverting the principles of the cell, groundworks to allow brackish water to flow freely

IV.IV. II Brackish cells strategy The second strategy reactivated the historical cell division of the territory. The channel system in the Garden Island was never one entity. They were singular systems connected to the lagoon through sluice gates fruit of the individual empirical land reclamation process. With time the channel system was decaying. This particularity allowed to individuate cells containing one channel system and used the elevation of existing roads and dikes to define their boundaries. Each cell became a testing ground for agro-aquaculture practices.

This transformation of the territorial system demanded a shift in production, in the same way, it had always been done along with the history of the island. Dikes and roads were heightened to individually enclose the cells. Within each cell, the channel was enlarged to use the ground to create different sequences of beds. Finally, the sluice gates were open, and brackish water filled the cell in a controlled manner. Constituted this way, each cell constitutes a monitored testing ground where researchers and framers develop interactions between aquaculture, halophyte plants, natural de-pollution technic, and the research on crop resilience to brackish water.

Cell system invention

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Case study of the previous state and current state of the brackish farming cells of the Garden island

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Schema of the transformations from drainage system to freshwater harvester system

A capillary shallow system of channels, above the water table, connected to impermeable retention basins was implemented to harvest rainwater.

In this part of the island, the development of agroforestry allows creating micro-climate and lower evaporation while helping soil accumulation and protecting fragile corps. Production and maintenance of the system demand workforce but also attract different forms of agrotourism.

IV.IV. III Freshwater strategy The third strategy was related to the freshwater shortage. Indeed, even with the implantation of low water-consuming agricultural models such as agroforestry, the auto sufficiency of the island in freshwater was a priority. The people of Amphibia realized that in the core and highest part of the island the abandonment of the drainage system had turned the channels into freshwater collectors.

Freshwater system and agroforestry implementation

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Notes on Amphibia IV.V. City center of the Garden Island In the highest protected grounds, the core of the social life of the island takes place. This is also where the different actors that use and take care of the territory visitors, researchers, farmers, and locals meet and exchange. The progressive population decrease of the Garden island uses to threaten the few existing social structures such as the school or the dispensary, essential for the livability of the island. With the transformation of the agricultural practices and the new agro-laboratory purpose, new opportunities were offered for families to settles in.

IV.V.I Qualitative densification To host the new settlers, the city center was rethought to become more attractive. In addition to the new tidal park system and inforced connection to the rest of the archipelago, housing policies were implemented. First, the people of Amphibia reinstitute the right to expand private houses for family members, to encourage young adults to stay on the Island. Then, the row-house typology was adopted to densify the centers while complying with the individual desire to have a garden and an orchard. With a new critical mass of inhabitants new necessary amenities could be implemented, recycling first the abandoned buildings. The agro-laboratory headquarters was coupled with the development of new spaces for commerce.

Researchers’ territory

Locals’ territory

Farmers’ territory

Island amenities and population in 2020

Visitors’ territory

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Case study of the previous state and current state of the core of the Garder Island’s Freshwater and agroforestry system

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Past state of the Garden Island city center

City center past porosity

City center past porosity

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Current state of the Garden Island city center

City center past porosity

City center past porosity

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Notes on Amphibia Strategy 1 Houses extension

Strategy 2 New housing

Strategy 3 Abandoned building reuse

Strategy 4 Building extensions

Strategy 5 Soft mobility hub

Strategy 6 Road continuity

Strategy 7 Open spaces continuity

Strategy 8 Blue and green corridors

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A view from the ground For more than a year, we have roamed around the Venetian territory in order to understand both the characteristics and the relation inhabitants establish with the particular lagoon environment. The Venetian territory is a complex assemblage of parts that constitute a whole. In the precise mechanic of coexisting with water, each place has its necessity and specificity. The lagoon is the fils rouge of the exploration, on the one side a provider, a carrier which stitches the parts together, and on the other hand, a threat to their inhabitation.

This selection of pictures aims to define a horizontal vision of the lagoon in its diversity, from the polder plains to the coastal island, from the inhabited to the productive parts of the archipelago.

With this gaze, we invite to question the territory’s resilient capacity, understood as an existing structure that allows for the territory to take on extreme events but also life strategies of inhabiting the amphibious landscape. These elements are seeds of possible future and further adaptation processes.

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Polder Plains

The Polder Plains are a palimpsest in which the man-made landscape speaks about their struggled identity and imposed role within the lagoon.

Covering a wide extent of the lagoon borders, the Polder Plains mostly lay below the mean sea level.

Here the signs and remains of the rivers diversion first and of the reclamation processes then are the characteristic features. Once part of the lagoon and today used as poorly productive agricultural fields, the Polder Plains open up as landscape of flatness, perimetred by two or three-storey high embankments, resisting the waters coming from both the lagoon and the rivers.

Costant force and control are at play. The artificial hydrography and the continuous pumping systems, along with the almost impermeable soil, define a fragile equilibrium. Housing patterns reflect this vulnerability: few scattered farms are in the flatland, while bigger centers are perched on higher and more protected grounds.

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Archipelago

Placed within the lagoon, the Archipelago is a territory of contemporary interconnection and isolation. It is constituted by a multitude of islands, mostly scattered in the northern lagoon, and connected by a network of channels.

Water thus creates an isotropic territory in which the islands are per definition both autonomous and a-hierarchical, while still interdependent.

Throughout history, the Archipelago has gone through phases of inhabitation, exploitation, and abandonment. Today, it is, therefore, become the historical reminder of a long tradition of living and producing in the lagoon.

In those islands that are still inhabited, life is bounded by water and tides.

The Archipelago exists with and because of the water. The lagoon is the mode of transport, a provider of resources, the natural environment, and the structuring vector of identity for the archipelago. Water can only be tempered and accepted, never completely removed.

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Coastal Brackets

As Coastal Brackets, Cavallino-Treporti, Lido, Pellestrina, and Chioggia define the interface between the lagoon and the sea. While the sea is harsh and unpredictable, the lagoon offers a moderate and hospitable environment.

Both emerging and mediating between the two water conditions, these long strips of land are fundamentals for the protection and habitability of the lagoon, being constituted by the aggregation of natural systems and manmade devices. The two peninsulas of Chioggia and Cavallino-Treporti are more important in mass, where beach lines in the former and dunes in the latter act as natural defenses.

Lido and Pellestrina embody the clearest definition of wall-like dividing conditions. Here scattered and discontinuous natural protections, like the dunes, are integrated with man-made protheses, taking the form of the Murazzi walls, piers, sand-catchers, and sand walls. These elements reveal at the same time the islands’ outmost importance and their state of fragility.

The linearity guides the urbanization of the Coastal Brackets, where long protected roads run through them and innervate perpendicular lines, which connect the inhabited lagoon side. Here, boats run and navigate from one tip to the other of the islands, stitching them all together.

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Strategies of Resilience The story of the Venetian territory construction is the tale of the constant search for an equilibrium between economic prosperity, social and ecological well-being. Throughout time, the Venetian territory has been through faces of convergences and divergences of these realities.

This part proposes to highlight some of the strategies, regardless of their historical context, which allowed the development of social, economic, and ecological resilience.

The resilience of these strategies is understood as the capacity to foster the integrity of the lagoon as a common and enforce its potential as withstanding drastic events may they be social, economic, or ecological.

These strategies range from policies, cultural habits, governance system, territorial system, innovative or even production system which showcase a multilayered understanding of human cohabitation in an extreme territory such as the Venetian lagoon. Trial and error, redundancies, reuse, resource management, or conservation are some of the processes at play that are key concepts to the notion of resilience.

Of course, some of these strategies presented here are no longer applied or applicable but can be framed to rethink or shift actual policies and actions in the Venetian frame. Furthermore, such strategies also allow reflection on which lessons can be driven from the Venetian territory as a ‘planetary metaphor’ (Bevilacqua, 1995).

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Source: https://it.wikipedia.org

Strategies of Resilience

The Ten, Francesco Hayer, 1867

Governance One of the important lessons of the Venetian Republic is its system of Governance which allowed for the control, protection, and maintenance of the territory by entities that were counterparts to the economic and social development: the Magistrate (magistrate) and Provveditori (supervisors).

Esecutori alle Acque - Executors on the Waters - and then the Inquisitor -inquisitor. Those three main bodies constituted the Magistrato alle Acque with hence a legislative, executive, and juridic power. In addition, however, the Magistrate also employed eight fishermen as advisers and for their direct and day-to-day knowledge of the lagoon.

The members of this institution were elected and were gathering once a week. Their mission was to manage and protect the whole of the lagoon body of water as well as the rivers flowing into it. Hence they had complete control over any works, excavation, maintenance, improvement, temporary or permanent modification concerning the water system. No channel could be dredged or piles planted in the lagoon without their authorization. It is also important to understand that due to the large surface of the lagoon, the surveillance of the territory was mainly realized by citizens themselves. The process of denunciation was the only way to ensure the management of the common good which the lagoon was. It also helps to understand the collective value that the lagoon represented for each individual’s wellbeing depended on it (Bevilacqua, 1995).

The complex structure of such a governance entity shows the understanding that the Serenissima had of the fragility of the human-nature relation within its territory, and how the ecological system was the carrier of both social and economic balance.

If this Governance body disappeared with the end of the Serenissima, it was reintroduced in 1907 but was removed again in 2014.

If the Magistrato alle Acque was one of the most powerful offices, it was not the only entity of such a type. Namely, in relation to the territory, four other institutions are worth mentioning, the Magistrato alla Legna e ai Boschi - Magistrate of Wood and Forests - which lead the main reforestation policies and control of the use and trade of wood; the Magistrati al Sale Magistrate of Salt -, which managed the salines; the Soprastanti di Lidi - Keepers of Lido - which were responsible for the maintenance of the protections of the lagoon from the sea; and the Provveditori alla Sanità - Supervisors of Health-, which created policies for water and air pollution reductions (Bevilacqua, 1995).

These political entities were established by the end of the 15th century, the most important of which was the Magistrato alle Acque (Bevilacqua, 1995). This institution was in charge of the management and protection of the lagoon.

Its high importance and power in the Venetian system derived from the fact that trades, the main economic power of the Republic, depended on the health of the lagoon. They had to maintain the equilibrium between the silting up of the lagoon and the protection toward the sea. Before 1501, the Savi alle Acque (“Wise Men for the Waters”) were a group of three executors which was subordinated to the Council of Ten (leaders of the Republic). With the creation of the Collegio delle Acque - Council of the Waters- represented by fifteen senators took its relative autonomy from the Council of Ten and the Senate. The institution then grew through time, with the creation of the 277

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Vaporetto-Bus system,1963

Water Mobility As obvious as it might seem, one of the strengths of the Venetian model is its water-based mobility.

The use of boats is still the main means of transport, despite the gradual de-insularization and consequent diversification of mobility typologies that followed the construction of the train and car bridge. The vaporetto (boat) system is one of the only water-based public transportation examples. Its connection to both the train system, as well as public and private land mobility is remarkable.

Gondola was mainly a Venetian elite mode of transport for daily movement, the Traghetto was a collective mobility system. During this period, 27 different Traghetti lines existed carrying both people and goods in and out of the city. Among these lines, 15 were commuting within the city and the archipelago while the others were used for long distance mobility, toward the mainland through the river connection to cities like Mestre, Padova, Udine, Verona, and Treviso (Mancuso, 2009). Hence by then the water mobility network was not constrained within the lagoon but was a territorial network.

One has to understand as well that during this period, the earth and water mobility was not overlapping. The different islands that constituted Venice were independent pedestrian entities interconnected by water networks through the channels. The pedestrianization of the city through the bridges and the construction of the fondamenta - banks - only came with the development of Venice as a merchant city (Muratori 1960). This element also explains why in the actual state of the city, pedestrian mobility is constituted as a sort of comb structure whereas the channel forms an efficient organic network.

Today, different sizes vaporetto allow both persons, cars, and machines to move across the lagoon in 29 different lines. In addition, Venice remains one of the only examples where not only public mobility but also utilitarian boats such as ambulances, police-boat, waste-collectors, and deliveries are based on the water network on which also comes the private boat mobility.

As Mancuso highlights such a city could not fail to equip itself earlier than all the others with an efficient public transport system, based on water communications, considering that the pedestrianization had arrived late and that, in any case, the city was divided into two by the Grand Canal, with the only point of contact in Rialto. Many places in the city, for centuries, could not have been reached except by water (Mancuso, 1960). Indeed, there was a time when Venetian water mobility was yet more efficient. In the 17th century, the Traghetti system was a large network operating both inside and outside of the Venice archipelago. Traghetti were a sort of simplified and larger Gondola. If the

However, This boat’s traffic remains highly pollutant. However, since 2010, the first hybrid vaporetto using partly solar energy was put in service. Ongoing projects are being developed to create fully solar or Hydrogen battery Vaporetti.

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Material stratification, 2020

Local Materials For pragmatic reasons, such as the complicated conveying of material from the mainland to the lagoon, the Venetians used the lagoon and its surroundings as a provider of resources.

Bevilacqua argues that the main economies of the Venetian Republic were based on the use of the lagoon-provided materials, such as the wood for boat making, the sand for the glass, and the clay for the bricks. Of course, the use of those resources had to be regulated and controlled in order not to overexploit the lagoon on which the city depended (Bevilacqua, 1995).

The architectural style of Venice that is visible today comes from the disponibility of material in the Venetian Empire and slowly diversifies with the conquest of the mainland and surrounding territories. It remains an example of extremely efficient use of available material and minimum transportation. The first platforms and settlements in the lagoon were made out of floated and dry wood as well as clay and soil from the lagoon floor. Later on, in the 10th century, when the construction went from wood to stone, the material started being carried from the mainland through the rivers (Distefano, 2014). The clay for both bricks and roof tiles came from the close 279

plains of Treviso and Padova. The marble used in the palaces came from the quarries from Verona and Friuli. The trachyte for street pavement and foundations from the nearby Euganean Hills. The wood for the piles and frames came from Cadore and closed-by wooden domains. The metal, even if little used, came from Belluno. Later, the highly water-resistant Istrian stone came from Istria and Rovigo. Meanwhile, the groundwork for the foundation was still made from the lagoon floor, rich in clay, and rocks around large wooden piles.

Finally, the Pozzolana sand, one of the most fundamental materials in Venetian history, since it allowed the creation of a water-resistant cement that permitted the construction of works such as the Murazzi, is one of the only exceptions, originating from the volcanic stones of Napoli.

Fishermen in the Lagoon

Source: http://www.albumdivenezia.it/

AMPHIBIA / VENICE

Productive Activities Much like the primary materials used during the Serenissima era, the main productive activities that constitute the cultural heritage of Venice depend on the lagoon.

From this category, two are particularly interesting: fishing and hunting. During the Serenissima, they were the main providers of food for the Venetian population. Such activities were complementary and were diffuse all around the territory. Because of their importance, both activities were strictly regulated already by the Giustizia Vecchia, since the 12th century. These regulations included the control of the catch hygiene and pricing range, as well as the importation of fish from other places (Bevilacqua 1995). These two activities also had a role in the maintenance of the equilibrium of the lagoon. Indeed, the selective hunt was necessary to regulate the number of birds within the habitat and hence reducing the number of predators for the aquatic fauna. Meanwhile, selective fishing was also necessary to allow the development of younger fries, while maintaining the reproductive chain. The Venetians understood that the regulation was necessary to safeguard these resources as a common good, on which nearly every citizen depended.

Fishermen were also the “watchers of the territory” and had to inform of any illegal works or activity that took place in the lagoon. Hence through a kind of protectionism, the Venetian Republic was able to develop policies for both social and territorial protection, while developing local economies. The fishing activity had different modus operandi, some fixed nets on poles or liftable, while the “vagabond” fishermen went on small boats in the intern water of the lagoon to fish with nets. The size of the opening of the nets, which was strictly regulated and verified

by Giustizia Vecchia, could not be smaller than permitted, in order to ensure that only large fish would be caught (Bevilacqua 1995).

Another mode of fish production was the fishing valleys, artificial sets of basins, and channels in-between barene or small agricultural panes.

These valleys work as a system, combining different symbiotic functions, from aquaculture to agricultural production, to hunting ground.

During the Serenissima epoch, they worked with natural phenomena: fishes, following the sea currents, were naturally entering the valleys during the spring season, then the valley was closed to let them grow. The valley activities were strictly regulated. Back then they constituted a real gain for the fauna biodiversity thanks to the exchange they had with the lagoon, thus working as a laboratory-reservoir of biodiversity.

Hence the fishing valleys were part of the lagoon system, monitoring, and harvesting biodiversity, and worked in symbiosis with traditional fishing and other lagoon activity in order to maximize both economic profit and natural equilibrium, showcasing an example of healthy management of a collective good.

Nevertheless, due to the general loss of biodiversity in the lagoon and because of private interests, the fishing valleys are today almost permanently closed or abandoned.

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(Mancuso, 2009, p. 18) of adaptation policies with deep respect and understanding of the need for symbiosis with the territory. The channel that bears this specific name, the “Scomenzera channel”, is the result of one of such a long-term process.

Scomenzera channel, Lorenzo Bulo,1983

Scomenzera Method With the term, “scomenzàr” is identified as the Venetian name given to the sort of trial-and-error method used by the Serenissima when acting on the Venitian lagoon territory. This method demonstrates the simple century-old management technique of human experimentation in the lagoon context (Mancuso, 2009).

The Venetians were deeply aware that any change could have unpredictable effects on the fragile equilibrium of the lagoon. Hence, the main reason for the use of this method is the necessity to never create dead-locks that would negatively impact the hydrologic mechanism of the local ecology. This means that when any action, such as the digging of a new channel or the extension of a piece of land, was taken, the operation had a trial period in which the effect related to it was monitored. If the effect caused by the intervention was endangering the lagoon or its inhabitants, the process was reverted; if not, the work could continue. In this method, we understand as well the modern use of the palancole, as an ephemeral system of water retainment. That is to say that any adaptation work that was done had to be reversible. In this sense, the Venetian lagoon was an “ever-evolving testing laboratory” 281

This method highlights the dynamic nature of the human relation toward the lagoon. But more than a status quo method or equilibrium conservation, this method showcases the strength of the Serenissima in being able to apply such a mechanism. Indeed, the “scomenzàr” shows the fundamental subordination of individual interest and profits to the collective future good.

Sport facilities in The Scuola Grande della Misericordia, 1970

Source: https://www.misericordiadivenezia.it/

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Built Fabric Reuse As Mancuso argues ”Venice teaches how not to waste space, since to build a new house means to build the soil first” (Erbano, 2009, p. 15). For the obvious reason of the infrastructural work needed to create and expand “dry” areas in the Venetian lagoon, early in its history the culture of recycling buildings that were underused began.

same perspective, we would have to consider the story of the convents, intended to house the new public or military institutions and the administrative offices that are beginning to spread throughout the city” (Mancuso, 2009, p.

67). Other examples are the private palaces that became libraries, universities, or museums. The Scuole also underwent such types of radical use change such as for example the Scuola di Maria della Misericordia which became the gymnasium of the Reyes basketball team for a time or the Scuola Grande di San Marco partially turned into the current hospital of Venice (Mancuso, 2009).

As Muratori perfectly describes, in Venice, the urban development did not work with radical substitutions of existing fabric with a new one, but rather with the juxtaposition of new elements to the existing ones [along with the re-use of them].

Nothing is destroyed in the original environment but is transformed into new elements, able to change the overall meaning, implying the conservation of the ancient elements. This allows for coherence and continuity of values and takes away relativity from the historical process.

It is a tradition that updates by conserving and conserves by updating (Muratori, 1960).

This ingenuity of re-use of course comes from both pragmatic factors such as the particularity of the foundation works of each building making them hard to replace and from the intricate value attributed to the built fabric. This tradition of re-using buildings differs radically from the contemporary preservationist understanding of the built fabric of the Venetian lagoon and shows a path toward the reconciliation of preservation and living city.

“In the nineteenth century there is, therefore, the dense sequence of churches reused as factories: San Girolamo which became a steam mill and then a candle factory; San Cosmo houses salt and tobacco warehouses, later the Junhans and then the Herion weaving mill; Santa Marta is the warehouse of the tobacco factory, and then the warehouse of the Free Port; San Bonaventura houses a steam laundry; San Nicolò della Lattuga part of the Neville foundry, before being demolished, Santa Chiara in Murano glassworks; on the Giudecca, Sant’Angelo first houses a glass factory and then the Junghans; San Biagio becomes a warehouse before yielding to the intrusiveness of Stucky; San Giovanni yard depot before being demolished too. Santa Maria Maggiore becomes the warehouse of the Tobacco Factory before being recovered - a very rare case - to its original function. In this 282

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Postcard: Inauguration of the Aquaduct, 1930

Source: http://www.albumdivenezia.it/

mixing with saltwater, clay was used to block the water fillers during such time. In addition, the typology of the wells evolved and was often placed on an elevated square (Distefano, 2014).

This programmatic typology and its importance for common survival also took on social and symbolic importance. The well-square at the center of a square, most of the time adjacent to a church, defined the center of the common life, of social interactions.

On the other side, some palaces crowning acted as gutters, designed to convey rainwater coming from the sloped roof. This water was channeled into brick pipes inserted into the wall and stored into private cisterns, placed in private courtyards or basements (Bevilacqua, 1995).

The water system however did not only rely on small neighborhood communities, it had another lagoon scale management principle. Indeed, even with such devices, during the dry season, the risk of water shortage threatened the entire population. During this period, the Acquaruoli, namely those who had the tasks to supply the city with water, used to go to collect freshwater first at the estuary of the Brenta river, and later in a constructed derived channel from the same river, in order to fill the 6.782 wells of the archipelago.

They carried such enormous volumes of water on specific boats called Burchi. In addition, extra water tanks were created in the sandy dunes of Lido, where it was easier than in Venice to carve the soil, to store some more freshwater (Distefano, 2014). Water management in the city of Venice, as a matter of survival, was put under the authority of the Provveditori alla Sanità and the Provveditori di Comun (Bevilacqua, 1995).

Drinkable Water An important particularity of the Venetian settlements is the fact that they did not have access to any direct source of drinkable water. As the historian Marin Sanudo wrote: “Venice is in water and has no water” (Sanudo, 2008).

For this reason, the Venetians developed a system of rainwater collectors. The wells were placed in an enormous hole dug into the ground of the Campo, then filled with sandy layers retained by a clay wall that serves as a water tank. The square above it was worked in slopes leading the water into the Pielle, filtration holes placed at the four sides of the well and connected to the main tank.

After being filtered, the rainwater was stored, ready to be drawn from the central well. This technique allowed to provide fresh water most of the year. The well had to be strictly maintained, as well as the square around it in order not to contaminate the water (Distefano, 2014).

Today, the city is connected to an aqueduct, inaugurated in 1884 and the wells are no longer used.

A designated person was responsible for the management of the well. The water distribution was available twice a week and managed by the head of the district. The most peril to this indispensable resource was in the times of Acqua Alta. In order to protect the freshwater from 283

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Source: http://www.albumdivenezia.it/

soil was used to create new pieces of agricultural reclaimed. Instead what was done since 1869 was to dispose of the material in the sea, as far away from the coast as possible. This practice further enhanced the sediment outflow and the depletion of lagoon matter (Bevilacqua, 1995).

Canal dreadging in Murano, 1960

Channel Dredging Since the beginning of the development of navigation inside the lagoon, one of the main problems has been the progressive silting up of both natural and artificial channels. Indeed, naturally, sediment and organic matter coming partly from the city sewage, accumulate on the bottoms of the navigation channels. For this reason, and in order to protect the trades, the channels have to be dredged. Today as already discussed, the dredging intensified, due to the size of contemporary boats which demand larger and deeper channels, and has become a threat to the existence of the lagoon, specifically for the artificial channels.

Apart from the negative aspects of the mechanization and scale of the process, another main difference appears between the contemporary techniques and the one used during the Serenissima era: the disposal of the dredged material. During the time of the Serenissima, it had been understood that the material constituting the lagoon floor was an important resource. Hence the dredged sediments had to be relocated within the lagoon to create a new barene, which was of course a long and difficult process. Instead, during the Austrian period, this 284

Another problem today is that this dredged material is considered to be too polluted by both industrial and human activities. Policies thus forbid its use to create lands, however, they could still be used for barene reconstruction.

Source: https://www.scuolemaestrepie.it/

Strategies of Resilience

Medival watermills, 11th century

Floating Mills During the Serenissima epoch, the lagoon water body was not just understood as a navigable plane, its currents were also a resource in themselves.

Back then, the tidal and fluvial currents were used as energy sources to put in movement the mills that were used to produce flour. These mills appeared since the end of the 10th century under several names: Molendini, Aquimoli, or Sedila, depending on the source of water movement they were using. They existed in two different types. The first one was the traditional static mill positioned in a channel, adjacent to a factory, like the ones of the Biri neighborhood, in the northern part of Venice, that benefited from the specific currents of the Rio Terà dei Biri to produce flour. The second types of mills were the mobile ones. They were built on large flat-bottomed boats and could be carried to places along the rivers where the current was stronger. It emerges clearly that there was a form of diversification in the provision of energy, in order to palliate any possible failure of one or the other system, for such a critical resource on which one of the main economies of the lagoon depended.

However, it seems that the mills disappeared at the end of the fifteenth century. There is no 285

explanation on why they stopped being used.

One possible answer could be that during this time, most of the river diversion works were getting completed and that the modification to the lagoon current made them too weak to efficiently produce the necessary motive energy. Other possibilities are that their increasing numbers were starting to compromise the quality of the lagoon habitat and that they were forbidden by Magistrate alle Acque or simply that the migration of the agricultural activity toward the mainland made them obsolete (Bevilacqua, 1995).

Source: Author’s picture 2019

AMPHIBIA / VENICE

Dunes of Cavallino-Treporti, 2019

the natural dune cordon and the protection policies toward them were enforced. Indeed, where walls such as the Murazzi are resistance devices, dunal cordons do not just block water until it overflows, but they absorb part of it and slow down the wave flow, being far more resilient. Furthermore, the dunal cordon value is not limited to the protection against storm and seawater intrusion, it also has a high geological and biodiversity value and works as a source of sediment supply. Nevertheless, to sustain all their ecological services, dunal cordons need a complex succession of dune types that require large spaces and minimal disturbance.

Until the 1950s, the Veneto coast was almost entirely fronted by dunes up to 10 m high, but only a small portion of these natural features survives (Bezzi et al, 2003).

During most of the Serenissima era, the coastal defense from the sea depended only on the sand bars and vegetation of Cavallino, Lido, and Pellestrina. The Soprastanti di Lidi was the institution in charge of the maintenance of this natural barrier. Already by 1282, tree removal on the coast was forbidden. Then in 1334, laws were approved to forbid the dislocation of sand from the coastal brackets. Meanwhile, throughout the 14th to the 16th century, work was done continuously to maintain and reinforce the natural dunes. This was done by supplying chalk rocks and sand, the plantation of Tamarisk trees, for wind protection and erosion prevention, as well as construction of wooden hurdles and piles, called Palade (Bevilacqua, 1995).

Since the 1990s, the Magistrato alle Acque di Venezia - Consorzio Venezia Nuova (MAV-CVN) has carried out a series of beach nourishment interventions, protection activities, and it has monitored the evolution of the coastlines throughout surveys. These renourishment projects were done with sand from the seafloor.

The technique was to create cells for sand catching between stone groins. Submerge sills were then created to hold the sediment in place.

In Pellestrina, 4.6 million m3 of sand was used to fill cells. Then, in 1999, sand trapping fences were placed on the new backshore and Tamarix Gallica trees were planted to form a windbreak.

In the northern peninsula of Cavallino, the beach was nourished from 1994 to 1999, using 2 million m3 of sand and 32 stone groins. For the first time in Italy, a protective dune was constructed for flood protection, constructed using bulldozers, and then planted with European beach grasses.

Elevated dune walkovers were built for access to the beach and sand fences were placed on the seaward side (Bezzi et al, 2009).

In 1751, thanks to the rediscovery of the pozzolana cement, the Murazzi were erected on the pieces of land too eroded by natural forces, in Pellestrina and Lido (D’alpaos, 2010).

However, these walls were never meant to replace

The nourishment and restoration action allowed the recreation of the beach of Pellestrina and its stabilization, as well as the partial reconstruction of the Cavallino dunes. In Cavallino, buried fences were successfully used as sand catchers to

Dune System The Venetian lagoon is at the interface between land and sea. Hence, coastal defense has always been a major preoccupation for the safeguard of these shallow wetlands.

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Strategies of Resilience regenerate the foredune system. However, the lack of space, human pressure, and mismanagement forbade the implementation of natural species and the formation of embryo dunes (Bezzi et al, 2009).

However, in the meantime, the dunal cordon has also been strongly damaged. The main reason for this is the land-use pressure applied on the territories of the primary and secondary dunes, respectively by increasing tourism, along with relative demand and implementation of campsites, and construction. Nevertheless, the Liferedune project, in the frame of the Natura 2000 project, some pieces of the dunal cordon have been put under strict restrictions to protect their integrity and restore their natural habitat (LifeRedune, 2017).

Another complex element in today’s situation is the uneven repartition of sand coming from the sea current and from renourishment intervention which is due to the presence of the jetties. This means that, while some places accumulate sand which allows the dune cordon to grow, others are in a precarious state of erosion (Bezzi et al, 2017).

In the parts where the sand bars have completely disappeared, they have been compensated with dykes (Bezzi et al, 2017). One of the other techniques applied today in the thinnest parts of the coastal brackets, for example in Lido, is to temporarily create piles of sand on the beach by dragging most of the beach sand to its edge with a machine, making artificial temporary dunes during the acqua alta period.

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Source: http://www.lifevimine.eu/lifevimine.eu

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Barene re-enforces edge

Barene Reconstruction As Luigi d’Alpaos showed in his research, the As Luigi d’Alpaos showed in his research, the barene ecosystem has been decreasing sharply since the beginning of the modern era due to both human and natural processes. Those ecosystems are fundamental for both the survival of the lagoon and the archipelago (D’Alpaos, 2010).

Since 2013, the project LIFE VIMINE has been working for the protection of the remaining barene. The project was funded by the European Union through the LIFE program for a total of 2,024,295 euros. The LIFE program contributes to sustainable development and to the achievement of the objectives and targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy, towards climate adaptation and mitigation.

of the local communities to ensure the long-term follow-up of the program, after the completion of work in 2017. The project aims to be a first step toward the re-evaluation of the socio-ecological importance of such structures, by providing simple actions all strategically aligned in one direction and therefore able to produce a real, practical change.

The pilot projects were realized in the northern lagoon, in the areas of the island of Burano, Mazzorbo, Torcello, and Laghi. By the end of the project, 96 hectares of salt marshes were hence protected from erosion as well as 171 hectares of Velme and 387 hectares of shallow bottoms.

In order to do so, 4.200 fascines were created to retain the added soil, 1.900 m2 of sediment were brought to nourish the marshlands, waste and polluting elements were removed, and finally, plants were replanted as well as coastal woods. These activities were calculated to help sequester 21.5 tonnes of CO2, while, thanks to protection, avoiding the emission of 674,7 tonnes of CO2. Moreover, the research found that salt marshes can reduce the amount of nitrogen entering the lagoon from its watershed by a third.

Furthermore, Life Vimine led to the creation of green local jobs in soil bioengineering and in the short supply chain of wood. More than 1 500 days of labor were paid to local fishermen and other workers throughout the whole project. One of the outcomes of the research is the Chart of the Sustainable Tourism of the Northern Lagoon of Venice to promote local businesses related to responsible tourism, which has so far engaged 22 companies in the network.

To raise awareness of the environmental challenges facing the lagoon, the project team produced educational kits for schools and carried out teacher training. A total of 32.500 pupils were reached through the project activities. The project also produced and promoted new guidelines for protecting the target sites. The strategy deployed

by LIFE VIMINE showcases that such ecological works, in addition to their direct interest both for human and natural processes, can also be a strong social enhancer providing works in the long term, strengthening the social fabric and

The aim of the LIFE VIMINE project is to define a new integrated approach to reduce the erosion which is destroying those ecosystems, by constructing micro low-impact soil-bioengineering works in key areas where the depth of the lagoon is still reduced to tackle directly the erosion principles.

The practice focuses on design, monitoring, and regular maintenance of the works. The project relies on both stakeholders and the involvement 288

Strategies of Resilience promoting education (LIFE VIMINE, 2017).

The process of barene restoration used by VIMINE aims to develop existing barene. The first element to produce and reinforce is the edge with wooden pile supports that are stabilized in the Caranto layer of the lagoon soil. Then, in between the two rows of piles are stack elements called fascines, which are wood branch bundles, raped in a geotextile fabric. They can be made directly on-site and the wood is taken from forest management on the mainland. The space between the newly created edge and the existing barene is then filled up with sediment from the lagoon floor and rapidly colonized by new plants.

Another process, used for example by the MoSE restoration program, allows creating new barene in places where they have completely dispersed.

However, this technique is largely criticized by ecologists. The action is similar, but the edges are made of metal Palancole - sheet piling - and the area is filled up with pumped rocks and sediment.

This process is very rapid but does not allow the barene ecosystem natural succession, leaving out the phase of progressive re-vegetation. One of the possible alternatives would be to create boundaries and to let the sediment naturally accumulate.

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Map of the Venitian Archipelago, Vasalius, 1573

Source: https://mapsof.net/

AMPHIBIA / VENICE Lagoon territory. Both islands also had military purposes, to store the valuable gunpowder.

In this sense, islands were at the same time highly specific entities and hosted a functional redundancy. Moreover, the island’s structure also demonstrates high flexibility in its ability to change function through time. The Lazzaretto Nuovo Island was first a religious congregation, then the quarantine island during the 15th century, while it was transformed fully into a military base during the Austrian era. Finally, it has today been turned into a museum and educational space. The same type of functional changes can be seen in most of the Archipelago, alternating between diversified usage among which: medical use, military use, religious use, industrial use, productive use, and disposal use.

If in today’s situation most of the islands are abandoned or privatized it is important to acknowledge the strong potentiality they represent, as a counter-power to Venice.

Functional Repartition The Venetian islands constitute an archipelago sutured by the lagoon body. More than a morphological figure, the archipelago constitutes an a-hierarchical structure of relation, in which each island constitutes an autonomous place, indissociable from the whole.

The archipelago structure has been an essential aspect of the Venetian ability to deal with an ever-threatening environment. Through time, the merger of the territorial form and human activities are showcased by the programmatic repartition on the islands of the archipelago. The role of each island was -and still partly is- related to the network of functions it integrates into and its geographical position. Within the system, the islands were not monofunctional, but rather a superposition of activities and practices.

For example, the Lazzaretto Vecchio island hosted the first modern hospital for the treatment of plague. To safeguard the inhabited area from this infectious environment, the island offered a perfect isolated location. The Island also constituted a network with the Lazzaretto Nuovo island: the quarantine island for both people and goods coming from outside of the 290

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Typologies of Resilience The archipelago territory has been inhabited for more than sixteen centuries.

All along with its history, from the first settlers from the 5th century until today, a large culture and knowledge were constituted to coexisting with water and adapt to the tidal rhythm of the lagoon body. The traces of this empirical knowledge is still present and very much alive everywhere across the lagoon.

The selected typologies illustrate the accumulative resilience and inventiveness that the water-dominated territory of the Venetian lagoon showcases. These typologies exemplify the adaptive capacity of Venetians going from the small to the large scale, from ephemeral devices to permanent monumental structures. We believe that such typologies are not only deeply entangled with the ways of living the territory but are also the base to imagine any future for the Venetian lagoon from within.

Our research leads to identify a non-exhaustive catalog of resilience typologies.

We propose to divide these typologies into six categories:

• • • • •

The temporary devices which respond to exceptional events, namely the acqua alta phenomenon but also the necessary maintenance of the submerged part of the city; The food production system and its adaptation to cultivate in a tidal and continuously at-risk environment; Water communication, which is the hinges between water and ground and a key element to understand the relation between water and pedestrian mobility; The freshwater collection systems, fundamental in a territory with no connection to freshwater sources; The built fabric, stretched between water, earth, and air.

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Temporary devices

Food production systems

Freshwater systems

Built fabric

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Water communications

Territorial structures

AMPHIBIA / VENICE Temporary devices

Door protection boards

Acqua alta walk-boards The acqua alta walk-boards are wooden boards of different lengths which are placed on fourfoot stands in the main pedestrian routes. These rudimentary elements allow to rapidly create an elevated dry circulation all around the city of Venice during floods.

Door protections are permanent metal frames, fixed on the Venetian door’s thresholds. They allow to temporarily fix a wooden or steel board during times of acqua alta, in order to block water from entering the ground floors. Sometimes they are doubled with electric pumps.

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Sandbags

Palancole

Sandbags are used as emergency devices during times of acqua alta to protect houses by simply stacking them on each other.

Palencole are long metallic U-shaped profiles that, once joint, allow to temporarily block the water in a channel in order to operate maintenance works.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Food production systems

Elevated fields

Light greenhouses

Fields on the islands are elevated by a cut and fill process to allow for efficient drainage as well as to enforce the protection of crops from tides.

Because of climate variation, crops around the lagoon are more and more at risk, from acid rain, parasite invasion, or temperature peaks.

The use of plastic-made light greenhouses allows protecting the crops while having little impact on the ground.

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Street orchards

Garden Boxes

In the urban areas of the archipelago, any non-permeabilized soil is precious. All around the lagoon, tree pits and leftover spaces are converted by the inhabitants into street orchards.

Garden boxes are used in collective orchards in order to both provide extra cultivable soil within the city and protect the crops from brackish water.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Water communications

Lifted passages

Rive

In order to adapt to the rising sea level, through time some of the lowest Venetian pedestrian ways have been heightened by just adding a new layer of pavement, sided by a small wall of bricks towards the water.

The rive are the hinges between pedestrian mobility and water mobility. They take on very different shapes but always allow access to water without making the pedestrian path vulnerable to tides.

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Boat carriers

Water doors

Mechanical cranes of different types and sizes are used all over the lagoon to transport goods from boats to land or even to bring boats themselves to the ground.

The water doors are a reminder that the main entry into the Venitian palaces used to be from the channels and not from todays’ streets. Those doors let boats enter into the palazzo while keeping the ground floor dry.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Water communications

Channel closing systems

Small gates

Some channels have a permanent closing system which allows them to frequently close them for different uses, going from maintenance to enforced protection.

The gate system allows closing the channel connection with the lagoon during times of acqua alta. It works like a sluice gate, open during normal times to allow flows of boats and closed when the building fabric is at risk of flood.

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Typologies of Resilience Freshwater systems

Wells

Water harvest systems

The wells in Venice are both water collection, harvesting, and distributing devices. Their large underground tank also acts as a filter in order to clean rainwater before being stored and used.

In addition to the public water collection of the wells, most palaces also had an individual water collection system. Rainwater was collected on the roof, then passed through brick pipes inside the wall, and then into an individual water tank.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Built fabric

Fisherman cabins

Elevated houses

Fisherman cabins are individual houses built on the lagoon in order to allow them to fish by night and have a place where to store the equipment.

Standing on wooden piles, these small huts are often made of recycled materials.

Elevated houses on the edges of the islands are present in the territory in many types, either on poles or on bearing walls.

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Typologies of Resilience

Decks on piles

Embarcaderi

Wooden decks are simple wood structures on piles, covered or not which usually allow extending the space of the piers.

The embarcadero is an example of the floating elements used in the lagoon. Mostly used as stops for the water busses, they allow for an easy transfer from land to water, even with tidal variations. Even though they are anchored to deep poles, they allow flexibility since they can be easily detached and moved.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Built fabric

Boat shops

Foundation system

Boat shops are the only shop type that does not suffer from acqua alta in Venice. They are also vectors that allow making a direct link between producers and consumers, both the means of transport and the selling stand.

Foundations of buildings in the lagoon are the roots of their capacity to coexist with water. They are a combination of a protective layer of Istrian stone, a layer of bricks, and rubbles to fill the gaps between ten-meter-long stonified wooden poles that reach the hard soil layer.

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Typologies of Resilience

Floodable ground floors

Floodable ground floors

The ground floors of traditional Venetian palaces were intended for minimal functions, organized with dry elevated areas in order to store goods even during acqua alta events.

Some modern buildings and rehabilitation like Carlo Scarpa’s Quirini Stampalia library have rethought the traditional Venetian ground floor with pools and elevated elements, in order to control water while allowing it to enter during acqua alta events.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Built fabric

Inudstrial buildings

Inudstrial buildings

For the carrying of merchandise, industries and commercial buildings developed elevated warehouses in continuity with piers to directly load and unload boats.

Some industrial types, such as the boat industries, use the flexible shed structure to be partly in water and party dry. Ramps systems allow connecting the different parts and heights of the building.

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Typologies of Resilience

Elevated squares

Elevated squares with well

Elevated squares were developed to create public spaces which do not suffer from floods.

The elevation influences also the surrounding buildings, whose ground floors are heightened by half a level.

Some elevated square types merged with the well typology to prevent fresh and brackish water from mixing.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Territorial structures

Edges

Earth edges

Some edges made with earth blocks are an attempt to find a hybridization between soft walls and edges where space is limited. This device allows greater porosity and vegetation growth.

Many types of edges in the lagoon mark and guide the transition between land and water.

In the low urbanized areas, some soft edges typologies allow breaking waves without only resisting high tides.

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Murazzi

Dunes

The Murazzi are a continuous system of walls that run all along the coastal island. They are humanmade infrastructure that comes to support the dunes in the most fragile parts, integrating the defensive role with leisure, also being a pedestrian promenade.

The dunes are the most important territorial device to protect the lagoon from the sea. Their natural growth and vegetation allow them to efficiently break the waves and reduce the influence of wind while fostering primordial ecosystems.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Territorial structures

Barene

Fishing valleys

The barene are natural ecosystems that in addition to participation in carbon sequestration and fostering important ecosystems of the Venetian lagoon, act as breakwaters for the tidal waves, reducing their strength and speed.

The fishing valleys are models of production adaptation to the amphibian context of the Venetian lagoon, with the alliance of aquaculture and agriculture. They work as controlled but not extensive production, as well as regulators and testing grounds.

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Actors of Resilience As an extreme territory, the Venetian lagoon demonstrates what can be identified in the importance of social resilience, that is the capacity of people and communities to deal with external stresses and shocks. Social resilience contributes to the community’s preparedness toward disaster as well as its capacity to recover from a disaster (Becker, Doylea, Johnstonc, Kwok, Patond 2016).

Social resilience is also a pillar to the ability to take care of an environment and all the lives, both human and non-human, that depend on it. Even if often considered a dying city, the many associative networks across the Venetian lagoon showcase the collective implication of its inhabitant with their territory.

Those associations address different aspects - like heritage valorization, craft protection, environment reconstruction, culture, and social assistance - but all constitute a network of care, mutual help, and solidarity. Such a condition is fundamental not only for today but to imagine a collective future for the lagoon. This social resilience in Venice emerges from a strong sense of identity nested in the territory. This resilience also develops from bottom-up reactions to the peril in which the Venetian lagoon is today both in terms of ecological threat - with the progressive destruction of the lagoon ecosystem - and social threat with the ever-expanding mass tourism. But the necessity of an organized social fabric also comes from emergency situations such as the yearly acqua alta phenomenon which the Venetian territory is experiencing.

Among the many interviews that we have carried out, we have decided to present three. All three are with associations that demonstrate the many ways of caring for the territory and its heritage while strengthening the social fabric. With very different scales and purposes, these initiatives provide another frame to read the resilient capacity of the Venetian territory and the people which inhabit it.

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Map of the Association network in the Lagoon

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE ards included, he got the idea to constitute an association to be able to ask the municipality to rent this space. The municipality accepted and this place was born as you see it today. The objective, therefore, went from educating children on the traditional productions to producing wine with an educational purpose. This, of course, took a lot of learning, and progressively the quality improved, so much so that today we make a wine that is considered to be good.

This space is a laboratory in a sense. The wine we make is completely natural, so it depends on the climate and many other things for both quality and quantity. That is to say that we do not use any chemical product neither in the wine nor in the vineyard, only natural fertilizers. Industrial wine can be corrected to fill into the right categories including taste; for ours, it is not possible.

To respect the environment is part of our mission, this was the will of our president, even if now the association is subdivided and each vineyard has a person responsible. The association is quite international, we have more than thirty nationalities among the associates and volunteers. Here right now we have a French person, a Spanish, a Korean, and a Finnish one too. They are associated, that work here and participate because they live in the lagoon of course. This is also a symbol of the openness of the association that provides work to whoever wants to join the project. So it’s an international interest for something that is extremely local.

Laguna nel Bicchiere Cultural association

How was the association born?

The association was born from a school project, and we keep going on that road, still working a lot with schools. We have programs to work with children, for example, to make olive oil or harvest grapes. But now most of it is canceled because of Covid19 since schools are closed. The point is to show the kids how the process is done, participating in different phases, to make them understand that the oil or the wine is not done in supermarkets. The scholar project was born in the ’70s, no let me think… in the ’80s.

This idea came from our president who died three years ago, Flavio. The idea was to tell the story of the Venetian tradition and revive it. And so he started this work. What happened then is that, thirteen years ago, he came with school children here, to the cemetery island of San Michele, by then still inhabited by the Camaldolese monks.

Getting to know that the monks were almost closing the monastery and leaving the island, viney-

And how many people work in the association?

We have two hundred people enrolled in the association; then you have the active associates that work, with hands in the ground, and we are around fifty. Out of these fifty, ten work here full time. There are the hardcore ones which are mainly the ancients of the association and then we have younger people that work at the same time and give more punctual help mostly physical work on the culture.

So at the beginning the association only had one vineyard, right?

Yes, this vineyard [in the island of San Michele] 314

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE plorations. In Mazzorbo, you have Venissa, then in Sant’Erasmo a vineyard called Orto, which is the one we like more because it is truly local, all the others are working on the mainland and just use the lagoon as a showcase. There is also the consortium Vini Venezia, but they are between Treviso and Venice, but of course, Venice sounds better!

was the first, then step by step, we added some others. Our mission is to revitalize abandoned vineyards and to give them a new life. This year we also recuperated the vineyards of Sant’Elena that haven’t been verified for many years. The place was more or less maintained by the parish but not in a productive manner. You have to understand, we have a lot of varieties of vines in each vineyard. The big parcels with only one sort of grape are a modern concept that facilitates harvest but before the monks were trying to find a kind of equilibrium between the species of vines, depending on what they were offered. We take care of the vines for them to produce again, and we also slowly replace the vines that cannot produce anymore. The vines are resilient species with or without human intervention.

What is the particularity of the wine of the lagoon?

Well, there is the Dolina that is the traditional vine of the lagoon that we use in Mazzorobo, then vines of our Venetian countryside that is Merlot, Cabernet, Bianchetta… Those are our vine, present here and in Terraferma. Also because the vines that the monks were plating were the ones they could find near. Those vines are also well resistant to the salinity of course. We as Laguna nel Bicchiere we are part of UVA, Urban Vineyard Association, which is an association that groups various small-scale European vineyards, most of which are in France and Italy. It was constituted one year and a half ago, between us, La Vigna della Regina of Turin, one vineyard from Siena, and the vines of Mont-Martre in Paris. Then also the Canu vines of Lyon, the Vines of the Pape in Avignon, the vine of the Orto Botanico di Palermo, and the vine of Leonardo in Palermo joined the association. And now we are in contact with Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Salonica… So we are growing! The point is to promote the capacity of production of quality wine in local urban environments and to enforce a European network that could also lead to fundings, and finally, also to create a touristic interest around this production. Of course, it is a specific kind of tourism, but food and nature have become a new kind of tourism of quality. And for quality I mean not just in terms of what you see or price, but also in terms of attention and of learning, a kind of slow tourism if you want.

So from the vine to the wine how does it work here?

The harvest time depends on the years since it gets hotter every year, the harvest also happens sooner. However, we always do late harvest, since, working with no chemicals, we need mature grapes. But this is not hard science, the only way to know when to harvest is by testing the grape. After the harvest, we do the press here with feet or hands. All the grapes from all the vineyards come here by boat, we do it all here in San Michele. Then the wine is placed to vinify in the seller. The fermentation is monitored closely, then the wine-to-be is put into barrels or amphoras, but, when we have a bigger production, we also use recipients in steel. But we do not have a specific method, we learn in the making and every year you need to relearn. We are a small cellar, we make about 1.500 bottles a year. You have to consider that we do not sell our wine.

The way it works is that partners of the association get bottles, and we make tastings in different places to get the association known and find new associates since we live on their donations. We are also often invited to events and manifestations. The association has no intention of selling its products cause it would become something else, it just needs to auto-sustain.

In the lagoon, for what concerns the wine production, you of course have other types of ex-

How did Covid19 impact the association?

Well in truth apart from the months of full lockdown, our activity has continued the same since it is more than anything local, we kept working.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Hopefully, the lockdown happened in a period where nothing was to be done on the vines.

When we came back after two months, it was a bit of a jungle here but that did not cause any damage of course. This fits very well within our methods, since, in some periods, we prevent ourselves from overworking on the vines. Because we want to maintain a major variety of essence but also of stages, I mean nature is more sacred and more diversified than what we do, so sometimes there is just nothing to do!

And how do you deal with the Acqua alta phenomenon, and most specifically with the one of last year?

Again the acqua alta, in general, is hardly a problem for us because vines are resistant species and the water does not remain for such a long time. But the one from last year did a bit more damage to the buildings. The brackish water deposits and infiltrates the salt. For us, since it rained for a few days very strongly after the acqua alta the salt did not remain in the ground. But for example, the vineyard of Le Vignole remained underwater for a few days, because the water got stuck. So they had to use a hydraulic pump to get the water out. But if the water can flow in and out, truly the vines have little problems with it. All the vines in the lagoon can manage high salinity, but if you think about it, it is also the kind of salinity that you can find in Sete or other sandy wine.

And do you have any new parasites or problems in recent years?

No, not really, we haven’t had any new parasites also because the vine is a resistant species. The olive tree however has been attacked by a new type of fly but I don’t know where it comes from.

But last year we had zero olives. Anyway, climate change has affected our work the temperatures are always higher. We have to adapt our practices… that’s all. Vineyards in plains are already starting to move higher to reduce the temperature, in Carnia for example, to prepare for the future. So yes the impact is already showing for everyone that works with nature.

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE Cooperativa Sociale Laguna Fiorita for example.

Then space was born more or less as you see it. I say more or less because for example the wall of plants that you see behind me was done during a workshop by IUAV students. They had subventions from the school to contribute here. They also worked on the plant boxes. The boxes are where we grow most of the plants. They are filled with a stratus of stones and terracotta for the water to percolate and then different layers of earth. Of course, they also serve to protect from the acqua alta. Before the MoSE started working we had quite a bit of water here. Still, now water enters with 1 meter, 1 meter and 10 through the water door in the back that leads to the canal. But for now, the MoSE works, even if we waited for it a long time. It is important to say that now it works.

Orto del Campanile Community Garden

What do you do with what you produce here?

The idea of the Orto is to be a social orchard, to serve people who come that can take something if they need it. The idea is that the orchard is open to anyone, anyone can take something, and then those who come, if they can, can leave a donation so that it helps to continue to add some new plants and new cultivations, and if not it is fine as well. This is a social place: people that had a hard time finding their place in the social fabric also passed through here and thanks to the network of volunteers they found a place to breathe here, by finding work here and slowly introducing themselves to society. Of course, it is not a huge thing, we have a small contribution, we are just an association so we go on the tips of our toes let’s say.

How was Orto del Campanile born? What is the story of this place?

Once upon a time, this place was a patronage where children came to play. Then the patronage left for a bigger space because there were more children in Venezia, and this place became a sort of rubbish dump. So people who had to get rid of a fridge or furniture would bring it here to dispose of it. So it had become a dumpster we could say. We are in the property of the parish, as you can see we are under the campanile. So people who were doing catechism to children saw the situation - this must have been seven years ago - and they asked if they could use this space as a sort of social orchard to create a space where people could meet each other, people from different backgrounds and different origins. The parish gave them the freedom to do whatever they wanted. These people got to work and created this space, kind of like you see it today. They got help and collaboration from associations like

Are there other examples of such space in Venice?

I know others such as Laguna en el Bicchiere. I’m very fascinated by the spaces they have inside the cemetery. In Sant’ Elena, they also had a beautiful orchard, on which volunteers are working, but it is associated with the parish so only people of the parish work there.

How many people are working here?

Working properly, nowadays we are three, but 320

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE there are people that come and go. Right now we also have young people that work or study, so they do not have that much time, but they come to help with work when we need it. For example this weekend we have a craftsmen market during the weekend, and they will come to take some time slots. So three teachers more or less and then some students here and there.

day. I know they also have it in Milan. So I think a lot of towns are starting to pay attention to this kind of collective activity, which is projected and supported. The thing is that in Venice, there is no general projection on this theme. You have the island, like sant’Erasmo, which is the classical Venetian orchard and then you have those small things like us that were born spontaneously we can say. What is missing is a global vision from the administration and a way to create a real network. Because for me Venezia has immense potential. Actually, Venezia has a lot of greenery, just look at it from the top! But most of it is private of course and most of it is also underused and undervalued. We need to re-valorize it! The valorization of the territory, even urban, is important. And these kinds of activities are part of it. In Venice specifically, with the old population and isolation, it could be yet another argument to strengthen the social fabric.

How do you manage the cultivation?

We have a system of rainwater collection and a big compost box in the back. We don’t have a clear guideline, we learn by doing, and with what people tell us; for example, we have tried two types of compost, one in a box and one directly on the earth to see if it reacts differently. We have vegetables, fruits, flowers, and aromatic herbs.

We are in between two art high schools, the Istituto Marco Polo and the Guggenheim. The two of them proposed to their students to do things for the orchard. So they did a project during their class and they will do small sculptures that will be given to the orchard or shown in an exhibition, it is still to be decided, but this will happen this year. Another group has proposed to start doing permaculture here, a spiral for aromatic plants that will go there in the corner. We like to keep some space available for the initiative because space is for everyone. We have exhibitions, book presentations, social lunches, they are really diverse initiatives that take place here, small concerts, last year some young people had done the AperiOrto.

Are the boxes the only way to cultivate here?

Well, first there are the events of acqua alta that more than damages, take away things like compost or earth. And then some spots are covered with concrete slabs from previous use. And finally, I have to admit that the boxes are really practical. For us old people but also for children.

How is your relationship with the city? and do you see possibilities of expansion for the Orto?

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE treasure of historical value. The island has three main importances for which its preservation is necessary. The first one is its historical and archaeological importance: the Lazzaretto Nuovo is the second stable hospital in the world, after the Lazzaretto Vecchio which was the first public hospital for contagious diseases in Western history. With the Lazzaretto Nuovo hospital, the quarantine system was born; a system which after 2020 the whole world was able to experience and understand the importance of. The medical system of the Venetian archipelago works as a network, a public policy approach that was born half a millennium years ago with this island. The island has experienced different uses, which in some way is something common to the history of all the islands of the Venetian lagoon, from agricultural use to religious one, and then from sanitary to military use. The last purpose of the island was to be a fortress for the Italian army within the lagoon.

The project “for the rebirth of an island”, is a pioneer project, because at the end of the 70s, early 80s, no one was looking after the abandoned islands of the lagoon. In about 40 years, hundreds of volunteers, thousands of people, and dozens of local, and now national and international institutions, have helped transform the Lazzaretto into a museum for the community. This island is the only one, of the sixties or so present in the lagoon, given back to the Venetian community with a non-profit project. It is an eco-museum that has guided tours and workshops as its main activities, but in reality, being a modern museum, it produces a lot of research activities, exhibitions, and projects, opened to the public, and connected with the territory. It is a modern museum also in being a territorial device, a gathering place, a meeting place, for schools and other people, collectives or associations as a common good.

Lazzaretto Nuovo Eco-Museum

What is the history of the association?

The voluntary associations Ekos club and the Archeoclub of Venice are the first actors of the recovery project for the island of the Lazzaretto Nuovo, from its state of abandonment to the enhancement of a new purpose. The project is also linked more broadly to the Venetian lazzaretti network. The Ekos club has a statute mainly devoted to the island’s recovery project. While the Archeoclub has joined the Ekos club on the way, they propose other activities and workshops related to the city’s cultural value.

The project was born in 1977, with the first concession of the island, which is currently owned by the municipality of Venice, given in use to the Ekos club. The first phase was to literally discover the island, deforest it, gradually solving what had turned out to be an impenetrable jungle, because of the neglect the island had experienced.

Meter by meter we discovered an extraordinary

How many members work in both associations?

The two associations have more than a hundred members, with a constant generational turnover.

There is a complete generation that literally grew up with the island because it is made up of women and men who rebuild it from the ground.

They arrived here with the most diverse moti324

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE vations, maybe just for a visit or a workshop as young people, and today they have developed disciplines and skills thanks to their experience on the island which also allows the project to go further.

The island is an example of how the management of environmental cultural heritage, or common goods, in Italy underwent the 1900s and is experiencing the transition into the new millennium.

From twentieth-century volunteer work with a lot of belief and very little skills, which was a mirror of a certain type of society. Now, we are moving towards a society with a new generation which on the one hand has less free time available, but also far more skills.

The Lazzaretto Nuovo is an island that on the one hand tells a story and on the other hand is also made up of people, who make a difference.

Our concept of heritage relates both to the notion of patrimony but is also to be understood as a tool for the common management of the territory, for its transmission in terms of identity. Heritage is fundamental when one thinks of history as a run-up to leap further into the future. Heritage is not only a key to read the present, which has become increasingly complex but also can be a space to address the critical issues of our period and to ensure greater sustainability in the future.

The island in its history, even in the individual activities, in the permanent or temporary exhibitions, has a very strong relationship with the craftsmanship, with the activities of restorations but also with a particular traditional profession such as blacksmith, stonecutter, or that which concerns the seafaring traditions of lagoons.

One of the pieces that we present in the museum, for example, is a bragozzo, which was once a fishing boat and allows us to make the lagoon’s traditions better known to the general public within the great story of the eco-museum. Surely this is one of those places where the difference between history and nature, or between crafts, traditions, and future technologies evaporated, there is no distance, it is all part of the same story. It is part of the same identity that, in a city like Venice, it is increasingly important to be able to tell and to pass on. Because if over-tourism creates depopulation, the children of Venice need more than ever to see and understand the territory to which they belong, not only for pride but for their own heritage, to find their roots, to be able to grow from them.

The association is also largely devoted to the natural environment, and more specifically to the Barene, Velme, and channels. What is your definition of the lagoon’s ecological value? Do the environmental actions come within the scope of the association’s frame?

The island is connected to its territory because it has three main importances. The first one is the historical and archaeological importance, the second one is the environmental value and the third one is the recovery project. All three actions are strongly interwoven with the territory, that is, with the city of Venice, but above all with the lagoon as the base layer of our identity. One of our favorite phrases, as a slogan, is: “Venice is its lagoon”.

We look at the city from the islands, from the fact that Venice has chosen to preserve its island shape, and its relationship with a lagoon that would otherwise naturally have buried itself.

Seen from the islands, the same city, stressed by over-tourism, is very different. The historical and environmental importance after the pandemic, inadvertently for everyone, collided. We now know that the link between the two is very close. We know that our actions leading to climate change and the stress to which the environment is subjected can directly impact our ways of living and our health system. The Covid19 crisis proves it.

What were the association responses and implications facing the exceptionally high tides of 2019 and the Covid19 Pandemic?

In 2019 we re-set up the nature trail of the island, called “the path of the barene”, which follows the ex-military patrol route. We have depicted and developed, together with the museum of natural history of Venice, of which we are an outpost, so to say, in the middle of the northern lagoon, the most particular environment of the lagoon ecosystem which are the salt-marshes.

The salt-marshes are on the one hand a precise test-bed in describing the state of the relationship 107 326

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AMPHIBIA / VENICE between man and nature, between man and the environment. We have lost 70% of the natural salt marshes since 1900.

The salt-marshes were involved, and even protagonist, of the acqua alta event, both of 1966 and 2019. In this last one, Venice was greatly affected in its southern part because of the sirocco wind which was blowing at 100km/h and was pushing the water from south to north. This violence of the acqua alta phenomenon was because there were no more salt-marshes in the south and central lagoon to act as breakwaters. This is because of the wave motion, the increase in the average depth of the lagoon, the excavation of channels, especially the oil channel, which altogether has destroyed the lagoon’s fragile ecosystem. The consequences of which involve the marinization of the lagoon, which is naturally brackish, with a balance between the freshwater coming from the river and seawater that enters through the inlets. The salt marshes are critical in this story; the island serves as an outpost to raise awareness. After the pandemic revived the concept of quarantine and after the large water, which demonstrated the violence of climate change, the Lazzaretto Nuovo imposes itself as a place of actuality. The island then becomes more important, not only for this territory but worldwide.

During the Acqua grande we, as an association, have further demonstrated the importance of the social fabric. We were also volunteering and being available as active citizens, and because we have a consolidated relationship with many city’s institutions. Our volunteers went to be of help to the other museums, to help safeguard the art pieces or the state archives, and also taking part in the restoration works. During the high waters, as people of the lagoon, we launched missions to help many citizens in protecting their homes by carrying bags of sand or helping the police in different parts of the territory. Surely if one thinks of a museum in a modern and contemporary sense, we are truly a territorial device.

just like in Italy in general. Everyone prefers to be the emperor of their own backyard, rather than aiming and producing something greater than themselves, because they are too afraid of losing sovereignty. Europe itself has shown with the Covid crisis that it is still to be done. Certainly, this island takes part of its strength and importance from the multiple collaborations it fosters, with many different realities, whether institutional or not.

For example, half of the main building houses the materials for archaeological research of the superintendency of Archeology of the Venetian lagoon, free of charge, because they need to be cared for somewhere, while the other half of the building is the actual museum. We also have partnerships with schools, other associations, artists, ecology-related programs. The island has a great storytelling power and, being connected to public transport, even schools can come and see the salt-marshes particular ecosystem, in just a boat ride.

How do you, as a representative of the association, envision the role this place has to play for the future of the Venetian lagoon?

We are today in a critical moment for our territory. In fact, when problems start to arise, the fact that you can’t go anywhere alone emerges with great arrogance and with great criticality. This is why for us, cultural institutions have a critical role to play. Our museum, and here I use the word museum because I believe in the contemporary sense of the term, demonstrate its territorial importance. The territory is a set of parts, of realities, of actors, which if they are not put together in a moment and period like this, and in the face of a millennium dictated by multiplicity and complexity, will finish under, not just underwater in our case but also with a destroyed social and ecological fabric. Certainly, Venice and the lagoon are a very exposed testbed, but in this sense, every crisis, in the Greek sense, is an opportunity for opportunities. Perhaps after these twelve months, which for Venice began on November 12, 2019, it’s time to rethink. It is said too often and still very little is done. Now let’s just do it!

What is the network that is created between your local association and the local institutions?

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Conclusion

Conclusion This thesis started with a statement: Venice is at a critical point. As outsiders in this city, it has been a constant struggle in understanding what is at stake and for which actors. Piece by piece this complex reality became a little clearer.

The knowledge we gathered both through our research and interviews but also by simply living in Venice for nearly two years confirmed the urgency to rethink the Venetian territory. Through the reluctance to provide a coherent perspective for the peculiar place Venice is, clear forms of injustice whether social or environmental are threatening the lagoon’s mere existence. On the other hand, we perceived a form of ‘stubborn’ persistence of life, that despite the situation still finds or rather takes its place in the archipelago. We would then like to conclude with some final remarks on what we truly learned through our work, on the Venetian lagoon, on our approach with Amphibia, and for ourselves as aspiring urbanists.

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AMPHIBIA First of all, it was remarkable to see how in such a unique territory, in which current and future threats - highlighted by the scientific community are multilayered and omnipresent, there still does not seem to be any form of long term political envisioning. Throughout our research, we found little or no political will in terms of coherent projects of a general interest for the main issues of demographic decrease and ecological destruction. No clear proposals are put on the table concerning the central lagoon and projects for the industrial port are not fully supported.

Projects that do find realisation on the ground such as Life Vimine, Life Lagoon Refresh, Life Seresto, Life Re-Dune, or the wet area contract require support from European initiatives such as the Life project, Interreg, or Natura 2000 and compete with titanic economic interest. It is a governmental responsibility - and any form of omission is pure negligence - to provide a structure that monitors and envisions today’s and the future situation. The municipality has no commission, no public body, no investigation, no competition, no debate that imagines a future for the Venetian territory. The only possible project of adaptation in such a situation is the hierarchical, mono-orientated project as we have seen with the MoSE, rather than a careful understanding of the environment. This political negligence of a true vision for Venice was remarked by Professor Barausse as follows: ‘The last official, publicly accessible bathymetry survey of the lagoon with the extension of saltmarshes and depth of the lagoon bed, is dating from 2003. This makes you realise that there is an issue, how can you manage something of which you don’t have the measures on a bigger scale. If the erosion problem was so important in the public opinion, we would have those data.’ There seems to be political inertia, strongly influenced by private interests, unable to rethink itself, and unable to balance the demographic reality of lagoon and mainland with the environmental precarity.

Closely related to the lack of future ideas for Venice is the lack of the city as a generator. Both for people who already live here and newcomers who might consider staying, there is a lack of perspective in the undiversified economy.

Because or despite its extremity and uniqueness

the city is incredibly liveable, but not enough lived. Life displays at a pedestrian pace, nothing faster than strictly necessary. Venice as a city grows on you, every day a little more and this should be translated into the possibility to be active as a resident and have reasons to stay.

The archipelago is able to host a vast amount of inhabitants with the structures and organisation to sustain a wide variety of activities already in place. It is today’s constricted paradigm of a static city and the inability to respond with alternative models that prevent new things from happening.

Nevertheless, next to these pressing dynamics, Venice has a decreasing but persistent community with a strong connection to the territory. A stubbornness and voice from the ground that opposes forces against the archipelago’s livelihood, although because of the existing systems of governance often reduced to a minority.

It seems to us rather rare, in the European context of today, to see such a residents’ engagement and care for the place they live. There is a broad network of smaller associations, NGOs, activist groups often working together with research centers. These voices should be acknowledged, they are no marginal opposition but a true driver of projects and policies. Perhaps with the recent pandemic, we can finally come to some point of agreement that the current situation is no longer liveable and that it is today that, from the political side, there must be clarity if we want to support Venice as a living city or completely fade away as current dynamics are pointing towards. It is then no longer enough to only state that life in the lagoon should be supported, but it is necessary to put forward clear proposals on how Venice can be a lived city again. Venice has to be able to undergo change to remain a city, for this we have to stop considering Venice as the simulacrum, not only ecologically on the lagoon scale but also as the built city.

Hence, if it is clear that the Venetian territory has intersected values from both a heritage, ecological, and economic point of view, it still seems that the actors at play - both human and non-human - are not clearly defined. The question of “Who are we saving Venice for?”, is never truly addressed. However, to start outlining the project of the transition defining all the actors 332

Conclusion at play is crucial. As critical is the definition of the Territory of intervention. In Amphibia, we describe a Territory, that is a collection of entities unbounded by institutional frontiers which are all defined by their relation to a common ecosystem: the lagoon. In such a fragile environment as the Venetian lagoon, the notion of care and maintenance appears to us as one of the main issues. Such values are clearly put forward by some of the bottom-up initiatives we encountered in the territory but meet no institutional counterpart, except maybe for the maintenance of the built fabric in Venice. The underlying question raised

by Amphibia is the ability to rethink an economy of maintenance and care not through individual action but through organized political initiatives and governance systems, for which the old Magistrati alle Acque is an important example.

In the moment that the main issues might lie in the governance of the territory, the usual urban or landscape project might seem insufficient. We learned from Utopia that this type of narration can act exactly as the critical tool, not only giving a glimpse of what the territory could be but revealing critical points of the actual paradoxicality of governance. Thus utopia as an epistemology, which is the way in which we gather and produce knowledge on the situation, has proven to be a relevant tool for us to go beyond the territorial project we are used to and question things that today seem unchangeable. Next to epistemology, the tool of utopia was also a useful and clear way of communication. The work has allowed us also to research, understand, and go beyond the generic and often misleading meaning given to the utopia. The utopian project and narration that we propose does not fantasize about faraway places. Amphibia, using Bloch’s terms, is a concrete utopia that takes its first steps from the everyday reality of the Venetian territories, defines new conditions - as accepting water as a fundamental element -, and imagines how it is possible to live and produce in it. Amphibia does not contemplate a wide gesture but is a radical project to define a reliable vision for the Venetian lagoon and this is only possible since the territory is already a living utopia. It is the embodiment of Lefevre’s ‘everyday utopianism’ in which routine and imagination, the trivial and the extraordinary,

collide rather than oppose. Rather than a vision that has to be, a utopia can be seen as a vision that aspires and inspires. This became very clear in the feedback from people who were involved in the gathering of our local knowledge. The utopia was able to gather all different fragments of knowledge into an image that could be shared and discussed. To avoid a banal utopia, it was not per se complicated as an image but rather complicated in the understanding of reality as a base for it. It was necessary to understand what activities and processes are already happening on the ground, what are the broader dynamics of the city, and what priority questions have to be asked.

The reactions therefore mainly came from people who are invested in the territory and were able to perceive the underlying meaning of interventions included in Amphibia. Lastly, we could see some limits for the tool of utopia. Perhaps these limits lie in the way we approached it, which was not entirely able to convey a ‘strategic project’ and what to do next. The tool of utopia can blur the lines between what can easily be achieved and what requires more drastic restructuring. For the sake of coherence in Amphibia, it seemed hard for us to include dimensions of time and phasing that can give credibility to such ‘project’.

However, it is perhaps in this dimension that lies the strength of the utopia as a ‘Leitbild’, the desired path to follow rather than the concrete realisation.

However, the question of MoSE in relation to the future of the lagoon remains. On this point, two perspectives are conceivable. It is a given that the project is today almost completely finished, it is operative and it has significant costs. On the one hand, the MoSE can be seen as a system that provides temporary relief that could allow putting in motion the necessary adaptations of the Venetian territory. However, this perspective demands immediate actions and desire to go toward a collective future which we did not witness.

On the other hand, we could see the MoSE project as intrinsically incompatible with an adaptive future for the lagoon, in which, as radical as it might seem, the only solution to still aspire to a future lagoon as an open system is 333

AMPHIBIA by dismantling the MoSE as soon as possible.

This view is no cynical doom-mongering, but rather a no-nonsense objectivity with the belief that we have two options: or we keep the MoSE and accept the slow shift toward a closed lagoon system, or we stop it now and make some form of Amphibia possible (at least until conditions become too extreme for inhabitation), both can be seen as a valuable future for Venice. As long as the MoSE is in place, the inlets have to remain deep, the jetties have to stay and erosion processes will be difficult to stop and certainly hard to be inverted. It might be possible to work on wetland reconstruction projects as is done today but it seems hard to imagine that there can be vast sedimentation and un-deepening of the (central) lagoon with the current inlets.

Besides the physical limitations of the MoSE, there is the human question. To live with the rhythm of water is something that is passed on in Venice, it comes with daily experience and confrontation. People in Venice are used to floods and know how to respond to them. An interesting insight was given at a symposium on commons, commoning, and cooperation at the Catholic University of Leuven. Professor Bruno De Meulder questioned whether true cooperation should not be seen as ‘people deciding to work together in an ideal situation’ but rather ‘people working together under a shared threat or a shared difficult situation’. This brings in a notion of ‘necessity’. Venice always had strong cooperation amongst governance and inhabitants to make life in the lagoon possible out of strict necessity.

Taking away the connection and therefore the ‘threat’ of the sea, is taking away the necessity to cooperate, leaving everything to political will.

Next to the ‘necessity’, we could question the ‘ability’ of people to accept floods again after decades of protection from MoSE. As said, living with floods is cultural, it is passed on and it is part of daily life. Living with floods is also not ‘for the sake of it’, but rather an anthropological acceptance of natural conditions and our ability to adapt. Therefore we could state that there can be no Amphibia after MoSE. Finally, we always have to look at the future by searching where to go from here. Let’s take a rather simple exercise. We know today that

since the start, 5-8 billion euros went into the MoSE project, a cost which will increase with maintenance. With some retrospect, we can start wondering what could have been done with this money if used differently and what investment will represent the lagoon adaptation. Imagine that instead of having invested all this money on perimeter protection, it would have been used to invest in the adaptation of the city itself. With 5 billion euros, spread over the 8.000 to 10.000 buildings that stand inside the lagoon, 600.000 euros could have gone as an adaptation subsidy to each of these buildings. With this we could imagine quite some adaptation works, ecological and technical improvement on the building scale and today we could even think of energy efficiency improvement. This would have meant an investment of 5 billion euros directly into the city, making it possible to reimagine and truly prepare for the future. The interesting point is that this is not only retrospective, we are today only one ‘hurdle’ further and certainly not at a final point. With the future costs, the temporality of the MoSE and the knowledge on climate change, we can now question again, where will our next 5 billion euros go? Again pumped into the perimeter project? Or used inside the lagoon for adaptation of the built fabric, stimulation of alternative economies, ecological restoration of the lagoon, projects of self-sufficiency, in short, a project for the city. It is exactly the lack of debate and envisioning that generates the closed path scenario we have seen in the past, in which once a decision is made, there is no way back, regardless of the constantly changing environment, knowledge, and needs.

To refer back to the intermediate conclusion ‘rationality and aporia’: in a time in which the rising sea level is a global threat and places all over the world will face the same problem, wouldn’t it be an incredibly missed opportunity for Venice, as perhaps one of the most adapted cities to water, to close itself off from the sea. Who are we today to decide for the incredibly costly polder paradigm imposed on many future generations, a model that is irreversible. In this, the MoSe is only a specific and tangible symbol of the technocratic, subsidized, protective, centralised, 334

Conclusion hierarchical and holistic project but stands for a wider attitude. As Bevilacqua titled his book, Venice is a “planetary metaphor”. Venice is an interesting condensed and complex reality acting as a miniature global laboratory. It is up to us now to decide what our attitude will be towards the future challenges as this planetary metaphor.

Venice situation could be described in Latour’s term, as a Territory which need to redefine itself, as a system caught in global interaction both economic and ecologic and which hence can no longer turn toward the Local, and as a system which has endured modernisation and that can no longer aspire to the Global of the modern dream. In this situation, the Venetian lagoon only has the ability to try to draw the outline of a third way. To allow such a shift of imagination to happen, it is crucial to develop the capacity of resilience of the territory to include all of its actors and values and develop a system that allows for openness and potentialities.

335

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