A small municipality in north-eastern Italy acquires ownership of one of the largest disused military areas in the Veneto region in 2019.
Ecological consciousness, sense of community and management skills come together in a multidisciplinary project, inclusive and extendable to other cases of military decommissioning.
The project objective is to reconnect the facility with the social fabric, bring out the rich biodiversity preserved and create a profitable coexistence between man and nature.
Local
Italy
Municipality of Volpago del Montello, Veneto, Italy
Mainly rural
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
In 2019, a former military area the size of 100 acres became property of the municipality of Volpago del Montello, IT.
This old army facility is the expression of two features: the natural component and the artifacts left by the human presence.
Built in the middle of the wood to hide its presence, greenery is its actual treasure hidden in plain sight. Surely, the state of abandonment ensures its natural preservation, but it also poses questions on its future.
The concept behind my projects lies on three principles:
The first one is the reconstruction of an identity link between the community and this place, to be re-established through visits and meetings.
The second is the approach adopted. This is based on minimal design. Small gestures, but with a radical character. The goal is to provide accessibility to the site that is not in opposition to environmental protection. Given the vastness, a gradual intervention, a gradual approach to objectives, and a sustainable management over time is necessary.
The third revolves around biodiversity and the dissemination of these themes. Abandonment has created the conditions for a spontaneous evolutionary process of the plant component that has contributed to consolidating the habitats within the magazine, making it a treasure trove of biodiversity.
Direct experience, facilitated by project interventions, can become a tool to highlight the uniqueness of the area compared to the territorial context in which it is located. This role as a guardian and promoter of biodiversity can also help to fill the void of meaning that military areas produce for the communities that host them.
The project goal is to gradually reconnect the powder magazine structure with the Montello hill network of trails and roads. In the perspective of gradualness, the project foresees in a first phase to act on the former patrolled perimeter, and only in a second phase to recover the artifacts inside the powder magazine.
Biodiversity
Community
Co-existence
Multidisciplinary
Re-use
The economic aspect is a manifestation of sustainability that is of particularly interest for a municipality. However, this project puts ecological significance at the center of its action.
The new life that the project envisions is based on the recognition by the community of the value of the powder magazine as a container of biodiversity. The project, therefore, brings the visitor closer to these themes, following a new common sensitivity, through interventions that facilitate and promote direct experience. However, the design minimalism is inevitable, given the problems related to the overall extension of the spaces.
Each structure is therefore designed to:
-Be durable;
-Require minimal maintenance;
-Be composed by modular elements, of standard sizes, easily obtainable, replaceable, and disposable;
-Have a neutral impact on the environment;
The project aims to recover the area through a sequence of objectives, according to the criterion "from the perimeter to the inside". This will allow the administration to gradually implement the project and thus postpone interventions and expenses over time. The exception is the first design objective that must be carried out unitarily and urgently.
All the others depend on this: the recovery of the lawn on the perimeter path and the constitution of the habitat 6510 meadow.
The municipality operates here an episodic and technically incorrect management of vegetation. This results in a waste of resources used to fight the reforestation of a lawn.
This intervention allows to reduce current management costs, as well as having an extremely positive ecological impact for pollinators. 1m² of meadow habitat counts up to 40 floristic species.
The project, at an initial cost, allows to create value over time and attract private actors in its management. The hay of a habitat 6510 meadow is a high-quality product that is used in the stables of the area.
The powder magazine provoke a dual feeling in the local population: on one hand fear fueled by stories related to the storage of nuclear weapons inside, on the other hand it refers to feelings of peace, as a space that has been taken away for a long time from the transformations that have instead affected the Montello hill. Overcoming the negative prejudice about the place is an effort that this project must undertake to make a positive contribution to the community.
Interventions must be planned in a way that can be functional to a strategy for the area, but that are also impacting on a symbolic level. It is not a coincidence that the recovery starts from the military paddock.
This limit, which has been repulsive and unattainable for over 50 years, is made permeable.
Breaches distributed along its development have the power to undermine the insurmountability of the military paddock. At the same time, the trace of this historical artifact is maintained. The perimeter is no longer a barrier, but becomes a threshold, inviting entry.
More generally, on a symbolic level, the project gives a new sense to this abandoned place as a repository of biodiversity. The powder magazine is a characteristic fragment of the habitats and potential vegetation types of the Montello. Education and knowledge transmission is a pillar on which the project is based.
The intention is to introduce the visitor to the determination of vegetation, creating with direct experience the opportunity to practice recognition and naming of Montello plants.
A booklet will help the visitor in recognizing the plant species of the powder magazine.
In 1m² of habitat 6510 meadow, up to 40 different species can be recognized. In this way, the walk around the perimeter will become an educational experience in a playful form.
The elevated paths, on the other hand, will make the immersion in the woods comfortable and safe, improving accessibility even for users with reduced motor skills.
The project was inspired by an inclusive initiative conducted by the administration in 2018: interviewing local associations to re-imagine the future of the area. Although the facility is still closed, there’s no intention to disperse these data and the model of recovery and governance of the buildings also includes the local associations.
In fact, the design does not deal with the functions of the artifacts, which have already been received from the community.
The project defines the minimum and essential technical interventions to reuse some building artifacts and obtain spaces: safe, accessible, and usable by everyone and flexible to adapt to the needs of use by the administration and/or by the associations involved in the management.
In addition to protecting the habitats, the raised paths, made by modular grid elements, eliminate the irregularities of the terrain, allowing all types of users to safely traverse the forest. These have standard sizes, are easily obtainable, and are relatively cheap. Slopes and progress are adapted on site through adjustable legs.
The recovery of the habitat meadow 6510, in addition to having an extremely positive ecological contribution, makes the 4 km of the former perimeter path walkable. Currently, a spiny shrub layer impenetrable to the passage is cyclically reforming, and that’s because the administration applies improper techniques to oppose reforestation. Operating like this represents a waste of resources and does not create any value. The proposed intervention restores accessibility, a quality product (hay) and an inclusive model of management of the private interests.
In addition to having interventions that improve the overall accessibility of the military area in its parts, the creation of the gaps on the perimeter fence allows connection between the whole infrastructure and the outside.
The project aims at restoring an abandoned, unused public space and returning it to the community. Since its construction in 1963, the powder magazine functioned as the physical and perceptual interruption of the geomorphological, landscape and naturalistic pre-existing elements. The boundary fence hinders the small trails built to stroll around the hill and the old road network inherited from the Venetian domination. The first goal is thus to reconnect the magazine with the surrounding road system, built to welcome a slow-paced mobility:
-Creating some openings on the fence to make the military paddock permeable
-Recovering the meadow along the border making the older outer limit, that used to be patrolled by the militaries, walkable. The meadow seeded will be Habitat 6510. This habitat is typical from the Montello hill and it is threatened to disappear due to the loss of agricultural practices and the progress of the wood over the meadows.
As a result of these two operations, a 4 km walkable ring will be obtained, which will amplify the public space and benefit biodiversity, pollinators, and benefit the didactic experience of the visitors.
After the realization of an accessible and permeable fence, it will be possible to turn on the inner area and start the second phase which is, again, divided into two stages:
-Elevated paths to cut through the wood
-A way to recover the armouries
The elevated paths will allow strolling through the wood (hab. 91L0 and 9260) in a safe way for man and nature.
The project entails the restoring of some of the armouries through an architectural framework that allows flexibility and adaptability. The local administration will provide a legal and functional framework to use the requalified area, while the local private partners that comply with these standards will take care of the activities hosted.
This type of intervention does not attract private capital, thus the project is based on the action of the local administration and inspired by a public ethic. The public actor is tasked with removing the obstacles that hinder the use of public space, as well as promoting the quality of its territory.
The designer has the task of defining a recovery vision:
-Economically sustainable for the public client (first stakeholder),
-Able to involve the local economic fabric (second stakeholder) in the management,
-Open to the needs of the community (third stakeholder),
The project strategy must continuously intertwine:
For example, intervening against the reforestation of the former patrolled perimeter keeps it accessible. At the same time, the aim is to protect the 6510 habitat meadow, which is at risk of disappearing in the hill. This action plays a didactic role for the visitor, a project objective, but also a management of the intervention by the private sector: this meadow produces hay appreciated by local stables that will collect it.
Designers, administration, private sector, associations, volunteering, and civil society play a complementary and essential role for the success of the project.
The formula implement include:
-Public-private partnership, the management of the 6510 habitat meadow concerns local stables;
-Recovered property management, the administration identifies the subjects and modalities of management of the buildings to associations and public entities requesting them;
-Community participation, the project recovers some buildings by making them adaptable shells. The functions that must be used must reflect the requests of the community;
-The EU funding, the powder magazine is a Natura 2000 Site. The action of recovery and consolidation of habitats and biodiversity for pollinators can be eligible for LIFE funding;
Operating the recovery of an anthropised area located within a protected Natura 2000 site requires an integrated design approach, combining ecological knowledge and landscape or architectural interventions. The project strategy aims to achieve objectives through specific interventions. The designer must be aware that vegetation is a living, changing matter. Any proposed intervention, whether at the level of structures or vegetation, must be linked to technical knowledge and management of the results obtained over time.
For example, Project 1's goal is to recover the perimeter path's lawn that is going toward reforestation and make it accessible to visitors. Specific techniques must be implemented to achieve this result and provide sustainable management methods to preserve the desired outcome. Otherwise, in a few years, the un-mowed lawn due to lack of unplanned resources will revert back to a forest, making the access points created on the fence to enter the meadow from surrounding paths useless.
Operating in established habitats requires evaluating changes that are compatible with protecting the context in which they operate, while also benefiting people. For instance, Project 2's goal is to allow visitors to walk through oak forests, a vastly spread habitat among the powder magazine, but which has been reduced on the hillside due to indiscriminate logging. It is necessary to minimize the visitor's impact on the habitat and provide an elevated path.
This protects the soil (an integral part of the habitat) and the safety of people. Otherwise, the ground would have to be cleared to prevent obstacles for people, but dead wood on the ground nourishes the decomposition cycle, and the mechanism on which forests live and the growth of new plants would be at risk from trampling.
Space stripped of its meaning, vegetation dynamics, and state of neglect. These features characterize former disused military facilities placed in marginalized territories. The impossibility to apply urban regeneration techniques to these suburban venues requires us to test new approaches. The innovative element of this project resides in the central role of biodiversity. The project reflects on the state of abandonment condition, highlighting these venues as promoters and gatekeepers of biodiversity.
In this temporal and spatial suspension condition, vegetation and animals have been able to thrive. Recognizing the intrinsic value of these privately owned places, can help restore meaning to emptiness and reconnect this abandoned public space to the hosting community.
The proposed working method merges deep ecological awareness, a sense of community, and political and administrative management skills.
The design vision aims to rebuild a sense of identity through a story that has as its common thread a constant dialogue between vegetation and man.
A series of design interventions (architectural, landscape, and ecological) will facilitate a direct experience of biodiversity and highlight the uniqueness of the area in relation to its surrounding territory.
Given the vastness of the case study, the design takes into account minimal design, gradual intervention, ecological and economic sustainability, and active involvement of the administration, stakeholders, and the local community. Ecological issues are increasingly central to social sensitivity. For this reason, they must be recognized and used in the search for meaning that these abandoned spaces require.
A study of the territory of the Veneto region reveals the extent of the militarization that has taken place since World War II in this border area between the Western and Eastern blocks.
Out of 175 highlighted military areas (26,504,180 sqm), 105 are post-1954. The majority of post-1954 areas are located in small or very small towns (under 15,000 residents). Of these 105 areas: 17 areas are small (0-10,000 sqm), 33 areas are medium-sized (10,000-50,000 sqm), 47 areas are large (50,000-250,000 sqm), and 8 areas are territorial-sized (250,000->1,000,000 sqm).
The Volpago del Montello powder magazine was chosen as a case study because it summarizes all the main critical elements: a large area (>1,000,000 sqm), located in a small town (10,000 residents), in an isolated and protected environmental context, economic constraints, a high number of low-quality structures, and disruptive vegetation. This recurring set of problems limits the reinterpretation of these abandoned places.
Abandonment and disuse have created ideal conditions for a spontaneous evolutionary process of the vegetal component, the very wealth of these areas. Emphasizing the function of "evolving laboratory" allows: to erode the prejudice on the abandoned condition, to design a narrative of the places in a didactic manner, to develop a multi-disciplinary ecological-maintenance approach, and to strengthen an identity bond with the local communities.
The project macro-actions aim to: physically connect the areas to the social fabric, create paths that protect humans and potential or consolidated habitats, and intervene on the military artifacts with an active role of management between the administration and the community. The design has a project vision that can be extended to all the cases highlighted by the research and the implementation of the project takes into account the graduality of implementation, with replicable techniques and standardized solutions.
In abandoned, separated places, in the large voids resulting from the dispose of buildings and infrastructure, the extension and nature of a seemingly unproductive soil will, in a few decades, be the starting point of a sense of belonging and an unprecedented project, born from a state of spatial and temporal suspension.
A mentality and a way of working emerge, in which a deep ecological awareness, a sense of community, and political and administrative management capabilities are combined.
From segregation a coexistence project generates, places explored in secrecy develop moments of social aggregation. Fences that have been impassable for decades open up, showing extraordinary territories, also for their biodiversity.
The Volpago del Montello powder magazine project looks at an ever-increasing number of experiences that are starting in Europe (e.g. the Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände in Berlin)* and returns these new cures to the local dimension that the new generations of professionals are addressing to the maintenance of territories. This mind-set is spread to suburban territories, denying the prejudice that avant-garde experiences are possible only in urban realities.
The care of public space is a common challenge of equal importance everywhere, especially in sites already protected by the Natura 2000 Network. Public space must become the privileged plan for environmental protection. The loss of biodiversity is indeed a problem closely linked to the quality of life of individuals, from which directly and indirectly depends the maintenance of society and community cultural and social values.
The sharing of the environmental values promoted by the project and institutions can lead to the creation of an environmental culture in individual actions.
