Il Paesaggio Produttivo dello Zattere

Historically, the Zattere has operated as a productive seam within the urban grain of the city, a threshold between dense city fabric and open lagoon-scape and point of arrival or raw materials and goods feeding through the district of Dorsoduro and into the city. The influx of mass tourism and consumerism has slowly eroded this traditional landscape and infrastructure of merchants, small-scale craft industry and artisans who’s roles are steadily being replicated and imitated by foreign imports to the city, leading to a gradual decline of the once commercially important district of Dorsoduro.

The proposal consists of reinstating this lost world within Venice through a choreographed interchange of city’s fabric, elements and fragments are each identified for their experiential or crafted qualities and reinterpreted into a new seam of production along the Zattere. This in turn forms a new urban strategy, a gateway for the passage of goods and materials to dissolve into the city and encouraging a return a re-growth of craft. This in turn will begin to generate a cast of skilled craftsmen with which to propagate this landscape.

The concept model explores the potential of the Zattere as a productive linear landscape. Within the landscape are highlighted three interventions that thread into the productive seam.

The Post Office and logistic hub exploits the logistical potential of Venice from the scale of a postcard to the internet mail order world, appropriating the landscape and Venice with several functions integral to a 21st century post office – from the sorting and filtering of mail; to the location of merchants and global businesses to take full advantage of the Post Office portal.

The Foundation works and Scuola of craft addresses the need for constant repair of city as fragile as Venice, exploring the potential of the Zattere as a point of arrival for raw materials, logs, clay and recycled glass from Murano and a point of departure into the network of smaller canals that thread through the city.

Lastly a collection of fleeting residences offers a framework for the storage and transfer of property functioning within the motions of cranes. A vertical boathouse provides storage and workshops for the maintenance of small boats within the historic core of Venice. A Scuola of the lost and found provides storage and archival functions for objects ranging from the scale of a lost photograph possessing value solely to its owner to piece of priceless furniture. Functioning in conjunction with a number of flexible residential spaces.

These example projects begin to re-appropriate the Zattere in it’s historical function as a place of exchange but in their programme adapt to the 21st problems and opportunities faced by the city of Venice.

This project represents the collected workings of all group members working together within the context of the proposal.