Retrieve the roots of the local agricultural tradition of Venice Lagoon
The project envisions the Venetian lagoon, a fragile and endangered area, as a tree with its roots in the past and aims to reconnect to the hortus conclusus, an agricultural tradition that has been forgotten. It is seen as an expedient that aims to re(n)trace it as a means to mend the community fabric. The project proposes a collective garden restaurant that educates in slowness and exchange between individuals and with nature through cultivating, cooking, and consuming together.
Local
Italy
Venice, Italy
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Aurora Last name: Mion Gender: Female Age: 23 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy If relevant, please select your other nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via del Calto, 1 Town: Galzignano Terme Postal code: 35030 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 347 866 2921 E-mail:a.mion2@stud.iuav.it
First name: Daniele Last name: Rolli Gender: Male Age: 26 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Tumo, 81 Town: Mesagne, BR Postal code: 72023 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 340 728 7207 E-mail:d.rolli@stud.iuav.it
First name: Gabriele Last name: Pastore Gender: Male Age: 23 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Roma, 10 Town: Cesate, MI Postal code: 20031 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+393492689810 E-mail:g.pastore2@stud.iuav.it
Imagining Venice through a metaphor, we can see it as a tree with its roots hidden in the past, far different from the present. Those roots lived in a terrain suspended in time, in a local grammar made of history and traditions to this day forgotten. Rising to the surface, we encounter a frenetic and fragmented community, often inattentive to what it leaves behind. One of these roots takes us back to the hortus conclusus, an agricultural tradition that, in its apparent simplicity, becomes a pretext for re(n)tracing the local and mending the community fabric. Cultivating, cooking, and consuming together result in a collective garden and community kitchen that focus on the importance of slow living and encourage a dialogue between people and people and between people and nature.
This project is located in one of the most fascinating islands of Venice’s lagoon, known as Vignole’s island. While visiting the site we thought how this rough natural area, mostly abandoned, could be the perfect opportunity to help reimagining the future of Venice that struggles amid a destructive tourism and a fragile ecosystem. In our preliminary research we paid attention to actual Venice’s problems both people-wise and space-wise, as a result one of the most recurring themes was the need of a quiet, slow and natural place as a way to escape from a hectic lifestyle. This change of direction isn’t totally unexpected, as the last state of emergency really strained people mentally and physically and the idea of a new and improved environment became a priority.
Re-tracing local identity
Community building
Circular economy
Slow living
Adaptive design
The theme of sustainability is the pivot of our project, defining our boundaries while thinking about solutions in terms of architecture, spaces and services revolving around Roots.
We thought about how to interlace the new European guidelines with local-based solutions. These key objectives are pursuit in different fields such as promoting an alternative to the disruptive tourism that Venice has been experiencing since decades ago. Tourism comes along with negative repercussions such as the over crowded places, pollution and the progressive deterioration of common green areas. The idea of useful waste is a fundamental idea: as the fruits and vegetables scraps became a precious waste in the garden, in this sense two of the pre existing brick ruins that are restored and used as two of the main buildings in the concept, enhancing their historical value. This kind of approach is taken into account in the landscape planning. We decided to preserve the vegetation that characterized the island, seen as an opportunity to convey a story rather than an obstacle. As for the structures we designed a simple and functional way to assemble/disassemble each component thinking about an appropriate material easy to recycle or reuse.
Since our project works on the existing without overly adding buildings into a natural context, we contained the costs in the architectural department focusing more on the land reclamation and clean energy system such as a photovoltaic system on the kitchen’s roof. Sustainability is pursued even in the basic service: we opted for sustainable paper packaging, wood boxes and reusable shoppers in order to encourage people to adopt eco-friendly behavior. Lastly the vegetable garden helps convey the necessity of rethinking the local agricultural system, biologic food and reducing the emissions related to transportation.
Roots is a project that aims to open a window on new scenery in crowded cities where the rural and natural environment is oppressed by capitalistic and dangerous dynamics. Since the first stages of the planning we’ve taken in consideration the idea of a warm, playful feeling of familiarity that are typically associated with farmhouses and the rural world characterized by a slow rhythm and open nature-filled spaces. The idea of identity that could be easily catched just by looking at the environment and aesthetic choices were fundamental; the visual restitution is a result of a research on patterns, graphics, chromatic palettes, historical signs and historical architecture of Venice. The concept of continuity between interior and exterior is delivered through curved and wide doors and windows that allows great natural light and the choice of local woody materials and textures enhance that sense of belonging. Another focal point is the idea of community spaces in the vegetable garden where intergenerational dialogue could be a way to reconnect people with far different backgrounds and ages, especially talking about food and sharing a topic rooted in Italian culture. The collective activities of cultivating, cooking and eating together is both an interior and exterior experience since the legacy with nature is highlighted throughout the service.
Ultimately that sense of satisfaction and joy given by the fruits of a work done by yourself over time adds another awareness in relation to the importance of slow living.
The city's many bridges and its narrow, irregular streets make it difficult to navigate for people with mobility or visual impairments. For this reason, in the planning of Roots’s spaces, the focus on this issue held a great importance and resulted in interventions that facilitate movement and total enjoyment of the space such as nearby docking areas, wide access points, ramps, walkways, and platforms.
Accessibility is also visible in the project in economic terms; everything produced in the garden can be picked up for free by members of Roots, who are aware of this and are spurred to collaborate in its maintenance.
The project has the important role of being an archiving space of the island's memory thanks to the meeting of generations who exchange memories, experiences and knowledge with each other.
The sharing economy is proposed as a new economic and cultural model able to promote conscious forms of consumption through the use and exchange of goods and services. Roots, acting on the local, wants to become the pretext to highlight this new and emerging way of conceiving the economy and society; through the service provided, users learn and accept an intrinsic ideology that can, in the long term, become a solid foundation for a sustainable model.
The sense of belonging becomes a key element of the project that drives members to actively participate within the lagoon city and to recognize themselves in a community with the same needs and interests, to share and exchange even intangible assets such as time, space and skills.
The community is built from an urban garden that offers 0 distance goods in order to educate people to make conscious and careful purchases that prefer quality and sustainability over markets linked to large-scale distribution that cause waste and pollution.
The associated members are the real core of Roots, they are indeed both the beneficiaries but also the direct benefactors of their own work, in this logic of collaboration and exchange they can also have an active role in organizing workshops in the culinary field. The latter becomes an opportunity to bind relationships with external stakeholders such as Venetian restaurateurs working in the food and wine field and associations that organize traveling events related to this field. Workshops can also be a time for sharing with agronomists who can pass on and teach traditional and current cultivation techniques. These moments of education also aim to raise awareness with respect to specific environmental and social issues by involving schools and groups of tourists who want to discover Venice with different eyes.
The nonprofit association Veras, formed by a group of inhabitants of the Vignole Island, could be part of the contributors, in fact in their future vision there’s a space meant to produce healthy food in a natural environment using 0 km energy, the surplus could be shared with the citizens of the island.
In the future, we do not exclude the possibility that this green oasis will be exploited to promote activities and meetings related to cultural realities that want to take advantage of the natural suggestions to corroborate their contribution.
The fields of research that have been investigated during the progress of the project are numerous and range from more theoretical and research-based subjects to more project-based ones.
A key point is related to anthropological phenomena and the study of two particular categories concerning the social sphere relating to individuals and their behavior within society (consumption, lifestyles, the phenomenon of frenetic tourism) and the cultural sphere with respect to customs, forgotten practices, food and traditions.
The study of the urban fabric of the lagoon city and its archipelago, flows in and out via land and water allowed us to identify a specific site in which to graft the project initiative. At the same time, expertise in architecture helped to delineate the intervention by taking into consideration the pre-existences and urban voids present at the Vignole, which then found formal representation through expertise in interior and product design. Finally, to ensure easy walkability of the space, wayfinding and graphics were key elements of the design.
Venice is undoubtedly one of the best-known cities in the world, a true bestseller of international tourism, with data showing that about 12 million people visit the lagoon city annually. While tourism brings with it positive traits such as wealth and employment, at the same time it strips it of its traditions, making way for a homogenization of the taste.
In fact, tourists, intrigued by the cultural heritage the city has to offer, buy without distinguishing the true quality of local crafts, and the citizens, aware of this, feel even more detached from their roots and hindered by the logic of tourism.
In opposition to the dynamics that are slowly devouring the city, a slow vision is proposed, made up of typicality and reclamation of the local, whose goal is to redeem lost traditions, a sense of belonging to the city, and to enhance the archipelago of minor islands that is overshadowed by Venice's fame.
The redevelopment of the architectural pre-existences on site is another design choice that highlights this desire to recover the past to this day distant and almost forgotten. Unlike what typically happens, the project does not stand as a process of addition but seeks to reuse and redevelop what is already present.
In this context, the abandoned area of the Vignole becomes an ideal space in which to sink the roots of a community that preserves and passes down the knowledge of the past.
The collective vegetable garden is based on the active participation of locals and the principles of sharing, giving importance to access rather than possession.
Roots aims to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of a place, the associated identity and its traditional goods by focusing on their reintroduction into today's context in a sustainable way. This line of inquiry being pursued in the project is applicable extensively to other contexts, proposing a new model in the middle between the urban and the rural fabric in a spirit of rediscovering these legacy.
Moving into the details, the design of the elements that are part of the project, the use of standard
modules in shape and size calculated on accessible anthropometric measurements, allow their
adaptation to different spaces by varying their number without affecting the site or functionality.
In regards to today's challenges, the project aims to act locally by trying to identify a key to change with respect to global issues that can no longer be overlooked. The three dimensions - sustainability, experientiality, and inclusiveness - become engines that animate Roots's thinking, translating into specific concepts such as collectivity, slowness, recovery of identity, education for conscious choices, and attention to energy sources.
The first challenge posed by the project is to build a bridge from a fast-paced reality that is inattentive to the typicality of the place and its citizens to a civic space based on the concept of slowness that is strictly eager to give back a voice to past traditions through sharing. Through community, individuals detach themselves from the idea of individuality and absorb information from anyone who has something to tell. At the same time, the collective vegetable garden wants to inspire the passive education of its members, thanks to their participation in the process they gain awareness of their food choices, preferring the seasonality of products in the food chain.
The project action represents a fertile ground in which planting the roots of a present with new rules and perspectives that establish the advent of a new paradigm, a new normality in which all possibilities are open.
