Within the framework of the many initiatives of the Second International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, there is a young but lively and already very prestigious appointment curated by the NAI (Nederlands Architectuurinstituut), which this year is hosting a section called Three Bays (27 May – 4 September, Rotterdam, NAI building, Gallery 1). The exhibition and consequent meetings focus on the historical, urbanistic and architectonic analysis of three cities, geographically very far but surprisingly similar as to territorial morphology, urban development dynamics, periods of colonization and urban foundation. The three cities in question are Amsterdam and the area of the IJ delta, Edo, that is to say Tokyo with its big bay, and Venice and its lagoon; curators of the sections are respectively Maarten Kloos, Hidenobu Jinnai and Marino Folin(headmaster of the IUAV, the Faculty of Architecture of Venice).
The three sections in which the curators have analyzed birth and colonization of the three coastal-lagoon environments show, through a simple comparative observation, conspicuous historical similies and also similar dynamics and strategies of territorial antropologization and urbanization, in territories almost technically and intrinsecally difficult and not immediately suitable for settlement.
Reclamation technics, settlement rules and urban foundation dynamics are very similar, sometimes completely alike. Observation of the three cities and their territory shows, between other things, that reclamation through building of coves and sandbanks (the famous Dutch polders) is not an exclusive of the Dutch tradition, as it has often been theorized right in Holland, on the contrary it is common to the three lagoon environments, where it takes, since remote times, surprisingly similar shapes and technologies.
The section dedicated to Venice was curated, as we said already, by the headmaster of the Faculty of Architecture of Venice Marino Folin, and is concentrated on the following main conceptual and documental cores: historical development, reclamation and the city’s settlement and foundation dynamics on one side, strategies of administration and infrastructural intervention which are now planned and active on the other side.
The lagoon of Venice is around fifty kilometres long, approximately in the direction north-south, and it is around ten-twelve kilometres large, divided from the Adriatic sea by slender stripes of sandy coasts, which start north at the Cavallino peninsula and end south in Chioggia, going across the island of the Lido of Venice and the island of Pellestrina. It is the result of an ongoing natural change and, partly, artificially brought by the originary and enourmously wide system of the delta of the Po river and of minor rivers to the north and south.
The very existence of the lagoon and its delicate balance have always been the main and unavoidable condition for the existence – and now preservation – of the city of Venice and all the multitude of minor centres, island and monasteries that form the urban Venetian “galaxy” settled in the lagoon. We cannot indeed forget that the lagoon has always been a place of settlement not only of the city of Venice as we usually think it – now identified with the historical centre – but also of many agricultural and fishing units, monastic communities, several islands characterized by old and specialized settlements (basically monasteries and hospitals).
The fact and the consequent deep consciousness that the lagoon is engine and defence system of this wonderful and fragile settlement tissue has always brought the city, its institutions and population to a continuous and unwearied work of maintenance, alteration and control of the system lagoon that, contrarily to its aspect of natural primordiality, is a deeply anthropologized territory, shaped for the above mentioned aims. They have always looked after and watched over the fragile balance, continuously menaced by the sea’power and the idraulic systems and of transport of debris of the wide and varied in shape fluvial system which flows into the lagoon.
The beautiful documental and illustrative work by Folin outlines the historical evolution of Venice and its lagoon, spotting five consecutive periods characterized by different territorial and structural conditions, with consequently different strategies, peculiar technologies and intervention approaches.
The first period, located between the birth of Venice – around the 7th century – and the 15th century, has seen many interventions on the idraulic balance of the lagoon, through partial excavations in order to dam the rivers that ended into the lagoon and to strenghten the stability of the system of coastal sandy stripes, external limit of the lagoon. Those interventions, done with the precarious and backward technologies and knowledges of that time, occurred mainly with wooden elements (driving piles into the ground) and requested a constant supervision and maintenance.
The second period (15th -17th century) is characterized by more huge and structural interventions, in order to dam rivers and to deviate them, so that they would end directly into the sea; this need had became more and more urgent, basically for higienic reasons, since the putrid water of rivers caused serious epidemics and made the lagoon’s water unhealthy, hindering traditional and essential activities such as hunting, fishing and cultivation.
The third period (18th century) stands out for a new attention to the protection of the lagoon from the sea. Once the problems coming from the fluvial system has been solved, great worries were given by conditions of scarce balance of the protections against the sea; massive erosion hit the sandy stripes that should serve as defence of the lagoon, invaded more and more by sea-storms. In this period the Venice Republic began a huge work of coastal reinforcement through the building of the murazzi in Istrian stone, a reinforcement system made with artificial reefs going from Pellestrina to Malamocco, until the southern ends of the Lido. The works, initially thought for the whole lagoon borders until the northern offshoots, was interrupted in 1797 by the fall of the Serenissima Republic.
The fourth period (1797-1966) is characterized by radical changes in the dynamics of sea-lagoon balance. In that period Venice was largely developing towards the inland, where areas for industrial and portual development are tracked down. The lagoon underwent big changes, basically due to the digging of deep navigable channels, in order to reach the lagoon branch, where industries and their port terminals were placed. The hydro-dynamic balance of the lagoon came out profoundly distressed, like the morphology of the lagoon branch.
New, impressing infrastructures were built - like the railway bridge (1846) or the new commercial port at the city’s western offshoots (1870), but the most important artificial change of the lagoon came starting from the 1920’s, when the first industrial area was built at the western end of the lagoon – Marghera – with a new reclamation of over 200 acres. Around the 1960’s a second industrial area was built and 500 acres were reclamated. In the same period two new navigable channels were digged (the Vittorio Emanuele III and the channel of Petroli) and the openings of the lagoon towards the sea were modified and made deeper, thus definitely unsettling the lagoon’s hydrodynamic equilibrium.
The consequences were dramatically clear in 1966, when the whole city was in danger to be swept away by the fury of sea and rivers. br> The present fifth period began after the flood of 1966. Since then, Venice has become a national issue, tackled with a special particular legislation. Several supervision and structural intervention activities were started, aimed at re-establishing in the lagoon a possible new condition of balance on one hand, while on the other hand futuristic and often over-ambitious hyper-technologic studies have begun, in order to find new technical solutions to protect the lagoon borders against the sea.
The solution has been recently found, consisting in a system of mobile bulkheads placed at the three port entrances – the connections between sea and lagoon – that should work in case of exceptional tides (higher than 1,1 metres on the level of the sea), protecting the lagoon and the city from the fury of the sea. This technological system of dams – know as Mose – was presented in the Three Bays exhibitions, mainly in those parts inherent to accessory works, i.e. the contour urbanistic and architectonic adjustments which complete the dams’functioning.
The Mose is now being built and it is raising a burning debate in Venice and not only, since there are doubts on its real efficacy and, most of all, it seems to be a solution that will just check the tides’level, without a detailed evaluation of the repercussions that these interventions will cause on the global naturalistic balance of the lagoon. The level of tides is indeed just an aspect of this delicate issue. The biological and naturalistic balance is running a serious risk, since they will modify the natural breathing system of the lagoon, which has in the continuous mixing of salt and fresh waters, in the periodical exchange of streams and tides and in the union between natural systems of salt and fresh water, the reasons for its wonderful and amazing uiniqueness.
Another important conceptual core around which Folin’s documentation work took place, is the analysis and description of an important and interesting urbanistic and anthropological fact, which has been happening in Venice since one hundred and fifty years. Venice was born and developped, until around the half of the 19th century, with forces completely centered on the lagoon. As we said, the lagoon is reason and power for the birth and development of Venice. Commercial, economic and human flows coming both from land and sea found in the lagoon environment a right place for refuge and to begin an exceptional development.
The age that came after the industrialization of this part of Italy has completely undermined the basis of these dynamics. The birth of the first industrial area in Marghera, and from there the uninterrupted spur for development and colonization of the inland, has substantially knocked down the region’s and Venice’s social-economic-cultural balance. From that moment, Venice has profoundly grown in the inland, absorbing its urban centre (Mestre, Marghera, Campalto, ecc.) and deeply extending its influence, much further than the antique and original borders of the lagoon.
The metropolitan area of Venice, which in the short run will also have administrative recognition, nowadays goes much beyond the lagoon borders, embracing a region with a big geo-morphological variety, from the deep plain to the coast, the lagoon and the lagoon branch. This changed deeply the lagoon’s role and its needs for defence and safeguard. Today the lagoon has a new and different role in the dynamics of connection inside the metropolitan area. Now there are new problems, which need different approachs and solutions: pollution problems due to the inland that faces the lagoon; the future need to face the theme of the shift of the navigation of oil-vessels; the problem of cohabitation between natural life, men and city, particularly connected with the existence and development of the port terminal for passengers and goods; the touristic vocation of the city; the naturalistic vocation of the lagoon; the need for a good inter- and trans-lagoon trasport system, etc.
Venice is alive and the system is constantly changing; man will have to act accordingly, in the best possible way.