Especially in our country is never easy to conciliate quality and good architectonic and urban characteristics with the creation and operation of public infrastructures. Then if giving good living conditions to the weakest part of the population is at stake, the situation becomes even more complicated, because efficiency and excellence are expensive and would require more consistent public investments in housing plans aiming at the implementation of high quality projects.

Anyone, even the non-expert, while looking at Italian suburbs can acknowledge the dreadful outcome of the last decades of public housing projects in Italy.

Over the last years the debate around housing projects has been focused on social housing, a practice not univocally definable, but quite widespread and tested especially in the Northern European countries. In Italy Social housing could constitute a good alternative to the more traditional ways of dealing with public building plans.

As usual the main risk is for social housing to become just empty words for politicians and not a real effective tool to solve with new solutions the problem of housing availability for the poorest and weakest parts of our society.

In general, if correctly developed, social housing should combine low-cost and good-quality housing with the accessibility of important collective spaces and services (in some cases self-managed by the residents).

More “extreme” and maybe more interesting cases of social housing (but also more difficult to apply to large-scale projects) are inspired to experiences of “self-building” of the houses and of the public spaces; more common are instead examples of house sharing (temp workers, students, young couples, senior citizens etc).

Speaking of which is interesting in Venice the attempt to recover the used material from the architecture Biennale in order to use it for other initiatives of self-building.

Initiated on the occasion of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition (Biennale), the project brought together various associations already committed to recycling and self-building, in order to reuse the material employed for the Biennale’s installations.

Aiming at improving public urban spaces in various parts of the city, new projects of self-building will be designed together with citizens, students, institutions, artists and architects. In Italy we usually witness to co-operations between public and private institutions that work together, according to their specific skills and goals, in order to give shape to public housing projects.

Public-private partnerships usually prove to be the best solution in order to satisfy, in a reasonable amount of time, the growing need for houses of the poorest citizens and families. Within this framework are found several examples of social housing promoted by public institutions financially supported by banks and foundations.

A good example of such co-operation is the agreement between Comune di Venezia and Fondazione IUAV aimed at recovering Ex-caserma Manin, a building located in the historical centre. In this structure dorms for students (174 sleeping accommodations in rooms and mini-apartments) and 37 council flats will be realized. The project also comprises the construction of various public services on the ground floor including: a restaurant, a cafeteria, a launderette, a library, a gym and an Internet room.

The entire operation should be completed by 2011 and will cost 20 million euros: 13,5 million will come from the government, 2 million from regional funds, 2 million from Fondazione Venezia and the remaining 3 million will be gathered by IVE through a loan. IVE is the municipality’s real-estate managing company the same company dealing with all social housing projects in Venice, ex-caserma Manin’s recovery included. One of the first projects promoted by IVE was located in Via Pertini in Mestre. In the future, according to the city administration’s intentions, several other areas will be involved in social housing projects: Via Vallenari, Via Ca’ D’Oro, Via Asseggiano and Italgas Area among others.