Venice from Water: Bridging Porto Marghera to Venice Island Against Floods and Sea Level Rise
摘要
The presented abstract discusses the project of thesis in Architecture and Landscape Design, proposing an interconnected protocol that interplays human activity and nature. The project intends to define adaptive strategies to reinforce landscape resilience against climate change. According to the IPCC in the theoretical background, projections highlight a considerable rise in the global mean sea level, potentially reaching 5–6 m by 2150 in a high-emission scenario. It was necessary in the methodology of work to develop site-specific actions to conserve, enhance, and manage the landscape of the studied site, in this case the Italian city of Venice, where flooding and sea level rise are the most frequently occurring environmental disasters. The concept was a “Whispered Idea” from Venice itself; after analyzing the structural technique in building the city, it was discovered that the city is made on a strata system of wooden piles, sourced from forests in the northern Adriatic region, known as the “Venetian Terraferma” at times. The aim is to bring out the “Dead Forest” under the city, illustrated by the wooden piles used as foundations, and make it visible and alive again. Those specific tree piles represent the hidden history and the landscape identity of the city of Venice. The application of the workflow integrates regenerative design to enhance the resilience of the city on water, implementing NBS by restoring coastal vegetation to protect from erosion and developing SUDS to control the tidal waves in the Venetian territory. For this, Porto Marghera is the site that will act as an open laboratory for our landscape experimental solutions and architectural proposal intended first for the community. The architectural complex is programmed under a speculative structure, with a regenerative landscape design surrounding the structural elements that bring out the history of the city of Venice, from reviving the “Dead Hidden Forest” on which the town was built to reconciliation with water that is seen as a threat to the future of Venice, while in the model it is treated as the main element to define the configuration of the urban space and revitalize its biodiversity to fight against flood nuisance and climate change.