BEPI innovative accessible sustainable boat to slowly discover Venice and its lagoon from the water
BEPI: innovative, accessible and sustainable boat to slowly discover Venice and its lagoon from the water, to give equal access to both "able and disabled" persons, for citizens, scholars and visitors. BEPI offers a learning alternative to the poor mass tourism experience, and to the vectors polluting the lagoon ecosystem. Designed by a team of Italian professionals including the key constructor who will invest the 75% of the cost, in a inclusive process with local and international stakeholders
Cross-border/international
Italy
Italy
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Venice and its lagoon
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Venti di Cultura Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Francesco Last name of representative: Calzolaio Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: president and architect Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Morelli 23 Town: MC Postal code: 62100 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 380 305 3078 E-mail:f.calzolaio@culturnet.net Website:https://www.ventidicultura.it/en/the-patrimony-of-the-lagoon/
The BEPI project, "Barca Elettrica Per tutti Italiana," represents an opportunity to integrate Venice's cultural tourism offerings with a sustainable lagoon boating experience, a training strategy aimed at small groups of people, including and especially for those who are somewhat limited in mobility.
BEPI aims to educate and train both the broad public of visitors and citizens to a slow, sustainable, and authentic experience of the lagoon ecosystem; and the community of Venetian stakeholders to mutual dialogue towards a joint strategy capable of maintaining the complex and fragile balance of the lagoon in the long run.
BEPI's preliminary project was presented at the e-village of the Venice Boat Show, in the extraordinary setting of the Arsenale, as part of the e-regatta. The organizing committee of the world's first regatta for electric boats decided to invest the entry fees of the first e-regatta to finance the BEPI preliminary project, entrusted to Venti di Cultura (VdC).
BEPI has been designed by a group of Venetian professionals and companies, overturning the conventional approach to the issue of accessibility; in fact, not only architectural barriers will be broken down, but also psychological ones. Accessibility on board is guaranteed without complicated and expensive devices for many wheelchair-bound guests, putting everyone, "able" and "disabled," on an equal footing. The innovative and asymmetrical design allows assisted access to all from a range of the shore heights, either from floating docks or from the Venetian banks. In addition, the multi-hull configuration and electric motorization will also lower waves and pollution. The opening roof and large living area allow for the sheltered and easy transportation of people and wheelchairs.
Such a Cabotage will thus be an extraordinary opportunity for meeting and discovery off the beaten track, as the Venice lagoon offers itself only to the most attentive visitors
learning
accessibility
Venice lagoon
mobility
slowtourism
Venice today faces multiple educational and training challenges to make its tangible and intangible heritage sustainable, including:
1. recovering the central role of the water system, in fact over the centuries it has gradually transformed from a city of water to a pedestrian city, as attested by the fact that 80% of the bridges were built in the last 200 years, after the fall of the Serenissima
2. consolidate the residents’ sense of community; in fact, the island city loses a thousand inhabitants a year and is at risk of becoming a theme park even though it was built and is now maintained using skillful techniques and endangered crafts
3. reshape the impact of over-tourism on the citizenry, recalibrating for example the impact of large ships and instead promoting cultural and sustainable cabotage
4. make it accessible to all categories of people, including the disabled: whereas three centuries ago it was considered ‘a paradise for the crippled’ (J. Swift ca. 1740) because, once they reached their rowing boat, they could move throughout the city, slowly but independently
5. enhancing the polycentric lagoon system: educating and training in the constellation of natural and man-made landscapes that constitutes the inestimable wealth of the UNESCO site ‘Venice and its Lagoon’
6. Venice has always been a port-city therefore it is necessary to rethink the founding role of the port of Venice, enhancing it also from a cultural point of view, where the Arsenal was the first proto-industry in the world and Porto Marghera the first industrial port in Italy
7. enhancing the widespread museum network in the lagoon; in fact, tourists too often overlook the extraordinary cultural offerings constituted by the network of existing museums
Far from wanting to solve these problems at once, BEPI represents the seed of a new model of tourism-cultural development, a tool for education and training that is both sustainable and accessible.
We think of architecture as a space for dynamic interaction between people, as a ‘stage of movement’ (Moore-Yudell). The role of the architect then is no longer just, as Le Corbusier said, to design ‘from the spoon to the city’: today in Venice it is also about designing the experience of movement, from the boat to the landscape. The method is based on the tentative project (G. de Carlo) capable of pushing the limits of each profession and, at the same time, pushing stakeholders to adopt complex and innovative solutions.
Today, moreover, it is necessary not to indulge in design as an end in itself, but to focus on the participatory process, involving users in the design process. For us, ‘beauty is a promise of happiness’ as Stendhal proposed, because we refer to an idea of beauty that is not only ecstatic and contemplative, but also the product of the degrees of integration between the individual and the space, of how the individual feels at ease and of what multiplicity of uses and interactions the space allows and stimulates. BEPI takes up this challenge to complexity, not entrenching itself in isolated specialisms, but drawing on various disciplines and various institutional subjects at the same time.
The microcosm of a boat thus becomes a tool for education and training in the complex experience from the water of a thousand-year-old city and its historical invariants and its current contradictions. The Venice case thus becomes an emblem and test of timely solutions capable of involving institutions, businesses, associations, and even schools and universities in the process of enhancing cultural and environmental heritage through adult education and student education.
The cabotage is based on our experience of tourist services for weekly cruises, design of mobility for all, planning of the network of slow tourism landings in the lagoon, and enhancement of the diffuse museum system. (See links and attachments)
Integral accessibility is the goal of the BEPI project, to face the broader world of needs, represented also by people with mobility disabilities (with a walker, in a wheelchair, with a power chair,...), people with sensory disabilities (people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people who are blind or visually impaired), people with cognitive disabilities, people with autism, obese people, the elderly, parents with strollers, children, pregnant women, people with special dietary needs (for physical or cultural reasons).
The Accessible Tourism segment is not a niche market, since it represents about 15 percent of the European population. Furthermore, according to research sponsored by Deloitte & Touche, Laurel Van Horne, it is found that 70 percent of people who are part of the Accessible Tourism segment have both economic and physical possibilities to take a vacation.
People with disabilities often need a companion to get around. For every person with a disability there are two others accompanying them, regardless of whether they are friends, relatives or actual companions.
Veneto citizens historically refer to Venice as their cultural capital and frequent it on a continuous basis. But the elderly have to give up visiting their places of affection because of the limitations to movement imposed by transportation, which is precisely what BEPI overcomes by making accessible and sustainable personalized itineraries available to them.
In a participatory process, citizens and professional associations as high school and univeristies, are in the multiple role of verifying the project's assumptions, to contribute to its refinement, and of becoming knowledgeable witnesses of its cultural content and thus able to communicate it to end users.
They are facilitators of the experience of slowly navigating the lagoon to unveil its smells, tastes, glitters, narratives, testimonies, etc. : an active involvement that might be exported to similar contexts
In the 1990s, there were about fifty million people with disabilities in Europe, which was about 14 percent of the total population, but only six million of them were able to travel for tourism on a regular basis. Today however, the number of people with disabilities or special needs in Europe has grown to 130 million, of whom as many as 50 million travel for tourism on a regular basis. In Italy about six and a half million people have a permanent or temporary disability and to these we add, from the point of view of accessible tourism, three and a half million elderly people over 65 with special needs. We thus arrive at about ten million people in Italy who are potential users of services of accessible tourism.
This is the audience of education and training aboard BEPI, which will no longer be able to be considered ‘accomplices at the scene of the crime of the city of Venice’ as a National Geographic survey says for Venetian tourists, but on the contrary interpreters of the ancient values of the Serenissima and witnesses of a sharing experience with citizens and facilitators.
Equally important is the user base within the Venetian community, as interpreters of its values, willing to participate as witnesses and facilitators, after the training process dedicated to them. Venetian civil society thus becomes an active protagonist of an experience that may seem limited by the small number of people admitted on board, but on the contrary constitutes a reversal of the trend, the start of a new process that can lead to a kind of community contagion and open the way to multiple similar experiences of participation in the formation of the cultural and environmental values of the lagoon ecosystem.
On board a skipper/guide, expert on both the lagoon and accessibility, will accompany guests who wish to discover the most authentic Venice. BEPI proposes an education and training project for electric mobility, for a new slow and accessible cultural tourism.
Venti di Cultura launched the idea of the e-regatta three years ago, which was picked up by a number of Venetian, national and international associations in the e-regatta organizing committee (see attachment). Together, they financed BEPI's preliminary project.
● The final design, construction, and operation of BEPI are the responsibility of a pool of companies and professionals (see attachments):
● arch. Francesco Calzolaio (FC), a specialist in integral accessibility with experience in cultural/tourist services in the lagoon, president of VdC,
● Studioplast, leading fiberglass boat builder in the Venice area, with the huge experience on any kind of lagoon boat for the lagoon, and also accessible,
● Transfluid, leading company in electric marine motorizations at the European level,
● Sailability, Italy's leading company in accessible navigation and management of related nautical services,
● Inland Waterways International (IWI), the worldwide association of inland waterway operators, for the internationalization of the services offered,
● Iuav University of Venice, the university of architecture for coordination with teaching and research, active involvement of his students and other universities, and coordination with the ‘Venice world capital of sustainability’ strategy,
● Liceo Bruno-Franchetti di Venezia-Mestre high school, for the dissemination of teaching and training methods, and active involvement of its students and other schools: VdC has been running ‘school-work alternation’ and Social Learning courses.
They are investing their expertise in BEPI, for the innovative factor of social and humanitarian value of the services offered in the Venetian cultural and tourism framework, for the education and training strategy, and for launching of accessible boats in the global market of cultural and tourism cabotage in inland and coastal waters
Integrated design between different founts of knowledge and different disciplines is the starting point of BEPI, bringing together scientific, humanitarian, psychological, historical, environmental, and technical skills.
BEPI is a cultural boat project that was born and implemented through a participatory process between the different disciplines and the end users, where different skills are already involved in the outputs achieved so far, and will be confirmed and expanded in the implementation:
● Designer for integral accessibility, expert in the history of the Venetian lagoon and cultural and tourist services (arch. Francesco Calzolaio),
● boatyard specializing in the construction of lagoon boats (Studioplast),
● leading company in the production of electric motors (Transfluid),
● association for accessible navigation (Sailability),
● international association specializing in services for private and commercial inland waterway navigation (IWI),
● the university of architecture (Iuav Faculty of Venice),
● a high school bordering the lagoon (Bruno - Franchetti).
In addition to these, of course, are the members of the committee for the e-regatta, the permanent event of the Venice Boat Show promoted by the City Council.
This participatory process is not only the added value of the project as already drafted, but also consolidates and expands into the future, both in the path of realization of the boat and in the training of those involved and the audience in the services it offers. Each of the subjects, in fact, can extend its involvement in the process to its reference panel, made up of businesses, professionals and experts
The lagoon is not all navigable but is traversed by a branched system of canals, and is sailed by a variety of vessels, but there is a lack of boats that are fully accessible to all and provide transportation services and touristic cabotage to citizens and visitors that are equally adapted to ‘able and disabled’ people. In fact, water taxis carry 12 people on board, but few have a working pantograph for a single wheelchair mount, which moreover clutters the passage to the cabin for others. Even large boats are accessible to only one wheelchair at a time (as shown by lines 4-5, even though they have more than a hundred people capacity).
Actually the public and private boat system is poorly or not at all accessible; people with disabilities turn out to be a hindrance to nautical mobility: BEPI is the beginning of a sustainable transition in this regard.
Addressing a huge audience, the prototype that would be built by winning the prize, thanks to the co-investment of the operators involved, would be only the first of a large fleet, serving the thousands of potential disabled visitors and citizens in need.
The innovative character of BEPI also addresses the challenge of two substantial problems of water mobility: air pollution, with combustion engines contributing heavily to the emission of CO2 into the air; and wave motion generated by semi-displacement hulls and their excessive speeds, which erodes the precious sandbar. So, BEPI has a multiple hull, the catamaran has a very shallow draught, and therefore causes very little wash. The design is ‘wave-eating’: the unique asymmetry of the hulls produces a ‘Venturi effect’, capable of further increasing sailing efficiency and zeroing out wave motion.
BEPI has the most innovative electric motors, silent and sustainable, consolidating the need to make everyone comfortable with ease on board, without differentiating access between ‘able and disabled’, breaking down physical barriers as well as psychological ones
BEPI activates a cluster of experimental strategies that to a large extent can be transferred to other contexts, both in process and design.
The BEPI process is participatory at every stage, involving stakeholders, citizens, and end users, and is an innovative model of their interaction. Therefore, it can and should be tested in other water contexts, to test limits of application, and increase its effectiveness. For example, it could interact with cultural participatory strategies for inner or costal water managed according to international Conventions such as those founded by the COE and UNESCO. VdC is already involved in some of them such as Council of Europe’s Faro Convention, and Venice and its lagoon UNESCO site.
The competences put in place for BEPI ensure a global interaction of the BEPI-generating process, both as a good reference practice, and as a strategy to be effectively implemented in other sites.
The BEPI project and process is a prototype that gains meaning in being adapted to different contexts, as is the nature of any prototype. The first outcome will obviously be a boat placed and operated in Venice to provide cultural and tourist cabotage experiences for citizens and visitors. Then it will be placed at other sites in the lagoon to reinforce its water accessibility. As such it may be deployed for water itineraries elsewhere in lakes, rivers and bays worldwide. As well as pertinent in other territories and cultures that have sprung up in history like Venice, precisely because they too overlook water, in ways that are always different, but always in contexts similarly generated by an indissoluble interaction between land and water. Thus BEPI, together with local cultural, tourist, and welfare associations, will enable a rediscovery of the way water unites communities and the places it bathes, then, now and in the future.
The BEPI methodology based on the participatory design process involved numerous stakeholders as well as end users. In fact, its rendering and model were presented on board an accessible electric boat, during the e-regatta presentation parade at the Boat Show, from the Arsenale to the Grand Canal. The brainstorming with the focus group of stakeholders and expertise, mostly handicapped themselves, confirmed the validity of the design approach, The method implemented involved so many stakeholders – as described above, at each stage of the process – through focus groups, which advanced the project by successive approximations.
Continuing our work, the principle of listening to and involving stakeholders and citizens will be maintained, and in addition, the high schools of the lagoon and Venetian universities will be involved in the educational and training process, thanks to the propulsive role of the selected high school and university. These will help not only to verify BEPI in its implementation process but also help to train new professional figures, such as board service operators, with a bottom-up and inclusive methodology, to become witnesses to the cultural and environmental values of the lagoon.
Moreover, the professionals and companies involved in defining and implementing BEPI not only ensure its technical feasibility but also engage in supporting its financial feasibility. In fact, they are willing to add to the New European Bauhaus award what is needed for the final launch of the vessel, co-investing 75 percent of its cost, given the high ethical and cultural values it represents, and given the possibility of replicating it to constitute an efficient fleet capable of coping with the enormous possibilities of the global market. We put into practice a truly multistakeholder and participatory methodology at every stage of the process, to achieve the environmental touristic and financial sustainability of BEPI.
Venice is a worldwide kaleidoscope of the conflict between local and global, modernity and history, citizens and tourists, mass and experiential tourism, natural and man-made environment, centralism and cultural plurality. Indeed, the Serenissima managed the co-evolution of its ecotone by centralizing all political, hydraulic, planning, management, etc., competences on itself with strict centralism, based on expertise perfected over centuries, a centralization of powers that is now unworkable.
Today, none of the many meritorious institutions, that attempted to put in place such complex concertation, have succeeded. While it is necessary to continue in this synergistic strategy at the highest levels, it is also necessary to propose ballons d’essai, tentative projects capable of probing the limits of each discipline and provoking cohesion among institutions, progressively putting many public and private actors around the same table, to incubate strategies and synergies to be applied at gradually higher and more complex levels.
This is the reversed perspective that BEPI represents: the seed of an accessible and sustainable development of the ecosystem, starting with the most ‘disadvantaged’ categories of users, which can initiate a much more ambitious process. Our challenge is to start from the edges, from the small, from the marginal in order to turn the telescope upside down and envisage solutions that can make the disabled become true protagonists, along with all citizens or visitors interested in a slow, pleasant, interactive, gentle experience of the city from the water.
BEPI is able to provide an alternative to hit-and-run tourism, to darting across the water as fast as possible, to clogging central pedestrian streets, to air and wave pollution. A seed of a new interaction between citizens and visitors: for environmentally and culturally friendly tourism in Venice, and becomes good practice to be extended for other such fragile and precious heritage sites.
The participatory process that led to the definition of the BEPI project allowed for a maturation of the project, which is now capable of effectively responding to the multiple questions expressed along the way.
BEPI costs €120,000 including VAT, including construction and launching (70,000€), motorization and batteries (34,000€), design and permits (16,000€). Should the prize be won, the operators involved are willing to invest 75% of the cost each, given the extraordinary European visibility involved. So, the prize would allow the full implementation, and BEPI would be inaugurated at the next Venice Boat Show 2024. Playing in the coming season its role as a condenser for a unique accessible and sustainable sailing experience in the lagoon, it will be managed by VdC in collaboration with the associations involved, and with schools and universities to ensure the training of operators and stakeholders.
The BEPI operational first year budget is positive. The overall management costs are €57,000 (VAT included), including boat (mooring, maintenance, recharging: €13,000), marketing (websites, webmarketing, famtours, brochures: €11,000), management (coordinator, interns, skipper/guide, accountant: €33,000). The incomes are based on tours planned for the first year (135), underestimated at 3 per week during the 9 months of the tourist season, and considering an average tour price including VAT of €500 per 4-hour (ca. €50 per head), also underestimated, which turns out to be very affordable when compared to the gondola tour cost of not even one hour (also ca. €50 per head). The positive balance will be reinvested in marketing for BEPI sales, so that the effective global dissemination of the process and project can be ensured. BEPI is a project that is not only environmentally and culturally sustainable but also financially sustainable, thus ensuring consistency and durability to the process initiated, capable of offering a permanent new experience of the Venice lagoon
BEPI contributes to the development of new skills in both the method and the substance of its action; in fact, the participatory method is a tool for educating the students of the schools and universities involved, for the ongoing lifelong learning of the stakeholders, and finally for the training of new professional figures dedicated to cultural, accessible and sustainable tourism.
