If you think about the town of Mestre and its possible representation, you could use the image of Mestre as "a space in the middle" for two reasons. Mestre is "a space in the middle" because it is placed between two distinct areas, Venice and Porto Marghera, two strong polarities, characterized by a considerable appeal that has given a decisive boost to development, especially real estate one, in Mestre’s urban area. But there’s also another reason, more general, to consider Mestre as "a space in the middle". Let’s take into consideration other italian towns, being them small, medium or big. The spaces that make this cities recognizable, with a special character and a specific identity, are those you find in the historical centre or in the non-urbanized areas outside the city, for example their rural landscape. Everything you find between this two systems (historical centre and rural landscape) is usually a proliferation of settlements without any architectural or urban quality; they are "spaces in the middle". Also in this way Mestre has been for a very long time "a space in the middle", a territory with mediocre architecture and scarcity of public spaces, situated between Veneto’s countryside and Venice’s historical centre.

But something is changing. Mestre in the last few years has been subject to many urban requalification actions, infrastructural improvement and rearrangement, all aimed at providing better living conditions for the inhabitants as well as creating a new public image for the city itself. The main scope is to transform Mestre into an urban space that can take active part in the development and reorganizing of the whole Venetian metropolitan area. The projects for "Passante di Mestre" and for "Bosco di Mestre" are good examples that give an idea of the new leadership imagined for the town. The intervention to requalificate the area where the "Umberto I" hospital is now located, recently subject of a specific projects competition, is also part of the strategy to renew the image of Mestre. The project presented at the competition had to be aimed at a general architectural and urban reshaping, able to give back to the old hospital area its value as an urban and social connector. Giorgio Lombardi’s "Studio Glass" won the competition, its founder Giorgio Lombardi untimely departed in 2006. The project was chosen by the judging commission not only for its architectural proposals, but especially for the great attention directed at the creation of public spaces and connection zones between important areas of Mestre, such as Piazza Ferretto and Piazzale Olimpia. In the second and third place positioned the projects proposed by architects Eleonora Mantese and Giovanna Mar ("Gian Paolo Mar Studio"). From an architectural point of view Giorgio Lombardi’s project is characterized by the presence of three towers, 100 meters high at the most and a central square that will host a wide range of activities: commercial, residential, cultural and for leisure and free time. Lombardi’s project according to Massimo Cacciari, the mayor of Venice, is succesful in combining many different architectural, urban and economic elements thanks to a highly sophisticated architectural strategy connected to a precise urban project. [ published on the 19th of march 2007 ]