The Resilience of Small Numbers

At the end of the sum­mer of 2022, the thresh­old of eight bil­lion human beings on earth was crossed. The stag­ger­ing increase in inhab­i­tants, cou­pled with increas­ing con­sump­tion and trav­el, decreas­ing mor­tal­i­ty and dom­i­nant urban­iza­tion, implies a vision of the space in which we act dom­i­nat­ed and gov­erned by the unlim­it­ed num­bers of mass soci­ety. How­ev­er, for the past 30 years or so, a con­trary trend has been emerg­ing, espe­cial­ly in the most crowd­ed places on the plan­et. Begin­ning with exam­ples from minor, ver­nac­u­lar and local his­to­ry, this paper attempts to rea­son through a few projects about the per­son­al need for soli­tude, the gaze, and the thought of the sacred and sym­bol­ic through mod­est­ly sized but no less nec­es­sary projects.

Self-Construction

The so-called ​‘Adri­at­ic room’, the sea called on maps until two cen­turies ago ​‘the Gulf of Venice’, is one of the few places in the Mediter­ranean where com­mon cul­tur­al, social, spa­tial traits are found along its shorelines.

The rep­e­ti­tion, with small vari­a­tions, of sim­i­lar build­ing modes, func­tions, and set­tle­ments make it a unicum that has no equal both on land and water.

One of its archi­tec­tur­al (and poet­ic) con­stants is the pres­ence of fish­ing huts called ​‘Tra­boc­chi’: a design theme of which we find built exam­ples dot­ting the coast from the Venet­ian lagoon to Apu­lia, and which com­bine the appar­ent con­cep­tu­al oxy­moron between iso­lat­ed object and deep root­ed­ness to a genius loci not already only local but of the Adri­at­ic basin as a whole. [ 1 ]

Not only that. The essen­tial­i­ty and fierce inter­de­pen­dence of the parts with the whole; the dia­gram­mat­ic sys­tem of assem­bling and join­ing the ele­ments; the resis­tance and flex­i­bil­i­ty to sta­t­ic and dynam­ic stress­es; the clar­i­ty of the tech­no­log­i­cal ele­ments and the ran­dom­ness of the over­lap­ping of the parts com­ing from a poor and imag­i­na­tive but nev­er pal­try or ragged reuse; the vari­ety of tech­ni­cal­i­ty and for­mal­i­ty — typo­log­i­cal? — dic­tat­ed by dif­fer­ent modes of fish­ing and exper­i­men­ta­tion com­bined with knowl­edge acquired and con­sol­i­dat­ed by cen­turies of prac­tice, make it a pecu­liar, but by no means minor, archi­tec­tur­al and land­scape theme. [ 2 ]

If the ele­ments are reduced to their pri­ma­ry func­tion­al essence, the vol­umes dis­ap­pear, the homo­gene­ity and pover­ty of the mate­ri­als is dis­arm­ing, oth­er cat­e­gories take, with a new and com­plete­ly autonomous force, the place of the tra­di­tion­al ones: the lines of the cables, the sequences of the pil­lars and poles that sup­port the nets, the mate­r­i­al grains of the woods and iron, the shad­ows that are nev­er extend­ed and sharp but always formed by series of sim­i­lar but not equal objects, the reflec­tion on the water. [ 3 ]

The local­iza­tion of the hut at the bound­ary of the land­scape, at the tran­si­tion point between land and water also marks its fate as an archi­tec­tur­al lim­it, of soli­tude, of non plus ultra. [ 4 ]

Urban Origami

On the con­trary, there is no doubt that tourist pres­sure is increas­ing­ly chang­ing the face of the ​‘Venice Sys­tem’. The near­ly thir­ty mil­lion pres­ences a year are going to impact, almost with­out any kind of fil­ter or cor­rec­tive, a sys­tem in pre­car­i­ous bal­ance of only — as the count­down of the dis­play of the now famous Rial­to phar­ma­cy inex­orably recites — 49,999 res­i­dents in the his­toric center.

Quick­ly chang­ing the pic­ture are added phe­nom­e­na unknown or numer­i­cal­ly insignif­i­cant until very few years ago, such as Bed & Break­fasts, which have in fact deci­sive­ly trans­formed the struc­ture of hos­pi­tal­i­ty in the lagoon city, or the ​‘dis­cov­er­ies’ by mass tourist itin­er­aries, of new areas in the fab­ric of cer­tain ses­tieri (Ghet­to, Mis­eri­cor­dia, the Greeks, San­ta Mar­ta, etc.) to be trans­formed and ​‘put to income’.

How­ev­er, new phe­nom­e­na, new ways of spa­tial and social use of the city and the extra­or­di­nary nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment that con­tains it, are slow­ly spread­ing in the edge areas, in the bor­der ​‘fringes’ between land and water that so pro­found­ly influ­enced the whole his­to­ry of the Venet­ian territory.

Venice, the city of the per­fect super­po­si­tion of sys­tems, described by Le Cor­busier by resort­ing to the anatom­i­cal metaphor of blood cir­cu­la­tion, man­i­fests its most com­plex reality. 

It used to accu­mu­late wealth through the con­stant mobi­liza­tion of goods from one place to anoth­er. Now, with the replace­ment of the tem­po­rary stopover of goods by the per­ma­nent pres­ence of mass tourism, the city-muse­um-the­ater of itself wit­ness­es its dis­in­te­gra­tion through the con­tin­u­ous rein­ven­tion of its past. 

The city has lost its iden­ti­ty (and part­ly its appear­ance) and has turned into a place where decay becomes a nor­mal­ized con­di­tion and what was once its per­sua­sive trag­ic­ness los­es its charm. 

The fig­ure of the tourist and his pres­ence become a cru­cial fac­tor in its exis­tence, mono­func­tion­al­ly a total­iz­ing con­di­tion. The tourist-col­lec­tor col­lects frag­ments of images and mem­o­ries with the sole pur­pose of being able to prove that he ​‘was there’. But mem­o­ry is not a Carte­sian space, and per­cep­tion, often parceled out and dis­tort­ed by flows and num­bers, has become a ​‘dis­pos­able vacuum’. 

The stone city par excel­lence tow­ers above, as Fer­nand Braudel reminds us, a sunken for­est. Stone is above wood, but wood emerges from the water steadi­ly in numer­ous places and is still the for­mal and per­cep­tu­al medi­a­tion between stone and water. In the Lagoon, the Larch of the bricole draws the net that sep­a­rates the ten­u­ous bound­ary between prac­ti­ca­ble paths and shoals, while in the city it becomes the three-dimen­sion­al­i­ty of land­ing points. Also made of larch is the ​‘tem­po­rary’ bridge of the Accad­e­mia, built by Euge­nio Miozzi in 1933 and nev­er again removed or rethought in mod­ern forms (the 1985 Bien­nale was a train­ing ground for inge­nu­ity to feed the infi­nite ​"anal­o­gous Venices" that still inhab­it our mind, but oper­a­tional­ly it does not count…). 

The ​‘urban folds’ in Larch wood imag­ined for Cam­po San­to Ste­fano are the tools for a rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of places that are now over­whelmed: cap­sules for soli­tude, where one can regain the pre-emi­nence of being over mov­ing. The place­ment of the urban origa­mi, light objects declared­ly unre­lat­ed to the design of cur­rent street fur­ni­ture, allows a dif­fer­ent per­cep­tion of space, today char­ac­ter­ized by cross­ing and pri­vate rest areas (bars, restau­rants, hotels…). Around each origa­mi, an envi­ron­ment is cre­at­ed that is inte­grat­ed with the cur­rent field, which can func­tion as an area of rest and fric­tion to the flow, allow­ing the cit­i­zen and tourist its own priv­i­leged cor­ner, which man­ages to slow­ly focus on the ele­ments that make up the enti­ty of the urban space, in a vision that goes against the cur­rent per­cep­tion of the field depen­dent cur­rent­ly only on the eco­nom­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties and time avail­able. The few, sim­ple ele­ments employed con­front the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of urban activ­i­ties: stop­ping, move­ment, meet­ing, infor­ma­tion, exchange, com­merce, pub­lic transportation.

The two ​‘water gates’ that sig­nal the arrival on the south­ern side of the Cam­po of the two canals act as real thresh­olds that com­bine, like motion­less kalei­do­scopes, the water and land sys­tems. Fold­ing in on them­selves, they draw seats and shad­ed areas, a very rare and pre­cious com­mod­i­ty in Venice. [ 5 ] [ 6 ]

On the side of the San­to Stefano’s church rests, tak­ing up a cen­turies-old Ital­ian and Euro­pean tra­di­tion (just think of the cathe­dral in Fer­rara and Pia­cen­za, but also of the Stephans­dom in Vien­na), the arti­fact that-con­tain­ing the news­stand, pub­lic toi­lets and a small garbage tools deposit, com­pose the new back­ground of the cam­po for those arriv­ing from the Accad­e­mia Bridge. Like a Leonardesque machine, the kiosk changes shape and arrange­ment with the pass­ing of the hours and sea­sons: tor­toise lock in the humid Venet­ian win­ter, it lets light leak from its inte­ri­or only at night [ 7 ]; while in fine weath­er it opens its ​‘flap’ dis­play shelves toward the cam­po, inte­grat­ing with the pub­lic space and becom­ing one of its main pro­tag­o­nists. [ 8 ]

The Lagoon of Incessant Change. 

Then there is water, the found­ing ele­ment of Venet­ian iden­ti­ty and the con­tin­u­al­ly shift­ing thresh­old from which every­thing start­ed and which, even in con­tem­po­rary times, marks the point of tran­si­tion between the two worlds, the urban and the lagoon, which are so inter­twined and inter­sect­ed that even to this day it is dif­fi­cult to define their bound­aries with certainty. 

The ter­ri­to­ry of the Lagoon, a true leben­sraum of the Serenis­si­ma, has always housed with­in it very strong con­trasts of func­tions and modes of use, seem­ing­ly irrec­on­cil­able with each oth­er. From the splen­dor of its mar­ble city to the unsta­ble, self-built fish­ing huts of Pellest­ri­na, at first glance so puny and brit­tle; from the agri­cul­tur­al crops of Sant'Erasmo to the mus­sel and shell­fish farms; from the glass mak­ers' fur­naces that have been churn­ing out frag­ile mas­ter­pieces for cen­turies to the heavy met­al and chem­i­cal indus­tries allo­cat­ed in Marghera; from the del­i­cate flat-bot­tomed wood­en boats to the steel giants built at the root of the Ponte del­la Lib­ertà, the lagoon space has always man­aged to hold every­thing togeth­er, often even against com­mon sense.

The jour­ney, or rather, the explo­ration we have attempt­ed through our projects is a crit­i­cal and syn­thet­ic rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of this world in which for­mal­ly any­thing can hap­pen, held togeth­er by the com­mon denom­i­na­tor of water and infi­nite and chang­ing light, which has as its only orog­ra­phy the arti­fi­cial fig­ures of human pro­duc­tion and the dis­tant back­ground of moun­tains and which makes the Latin mot­to con­traria sunt complementa effec­tive and visible.

The dif­fer­ent names of the lagoon desert (velme, ghe­bi, motte, barene, sac­che, val­li, casoni, etc.), have the same toponymic vari­ety as the dense stone city (calle, cam­po, campiel­lo, corte, pisci­na, fon­da­men­ta, riva, ruga, soto­portego, ses­tiere, rio, canale, rio terà, etc.) and togeth­er they form iden­ti­ty con­stel­la­tions capa­ble of pre­cise­ly locat­ing spe­cif­ic places in the inex­tri­ca­ble and con­stant­ly sur­pris­ing labyrinth of the Venet­ian territory.

The term mot­ta or mota (small hill, hump) is gen­er­al­ly used to refer to an arti­fi­cial mound of land in the mid­dle of the lagoon, change­able and with uncer­tain con­tours, exposed to the sud­den vari­a­tions of the weather.

The two small motte di Cà Zane are locat­ed in the North Lagoon, about four and a half kilo­me­ters north­east of the island of Tor­cel­lo. These two small strips of land, a few dozen meters apart, may rep­re­sent the thresh­old of a new way of under­stand­ing the rela­tion­ship between nat­ur­al and artificial.

On the one hand, the built, which by its dis­ci­pli­nary statute is sub­ject to the iron law of tec­ton­ics, on the oth­er hand, the Sel­va as a phe­nom­e­non of envi­ron­men­tal autophagy, as a mech­a­nism of vio­lent re-appro­pri­a­tion of ter­ri­to­ries, as an aggres­sion against the arti­fi­cial to can­ni­bal­ize it in an anti-roman­tic way. [ 9 ]

The two islands are inhab­it­ed by two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent arti­facts: the first, Des­de­mona, is an arti­fi­cial soil super-ele­vat­ed on 13 shaped beams of three dif­fer­ent lengths sup­port­ed by inclined pil­lars with cubic plinth of the same shape as the base­ment ele­ments that con­sol­i­date the ground of the motte, a small ter­ri­to­ry that is con­tin­u­al­ly invad­ed by the waters that erase the traces of its pre-exis­tence, and that accom­mo­dates the spon­ta­neous veg­e­ta­tion that, grow­ing over time, will make Des­de­mona a roman­tic ruin: on its arti­fi­cial ground, built in such a way that it can also be prac­ti­ca­ble in its intra­dos between water and con­struc­tion, the ash­es of Ezra Pound and Igor Stravin­sky, two great foresti (for­eign­ers), one Amer­i­can and the oth­er Russ­ian, both buried in Venice, could be scat­tered. [ 10 ]

Instead, Iago is a com­plex machine in per­pet­u­al motion: 15 small exca­va­tor buck­ets are mount­ed on thin met­al rods, about 15 meters high, anchored to the cubic con­crete plinths of the base­ment, the same as those sup­port­ing Desdemona's tra­di­tion­al struc­ture. The buck­ets accu­mu­late storm water, wind-blown dust and debris, bio­log­i­cal remains of birds nest­ing in them, and go into ​‘peak load’ when the weight of the debris that accu­mu­lates there reach­es 2 kilo­grams, spilling its con­tents into the lagoon, which, as it accu­mu­lates over time will build a new mot­ta that grow­ing on the old one will slow­ly block the rods and buck­et mech­a­nism, erase the traces of the pre-exis­tence, turn­ing the machine into a rusty and anti-roman­tic ​‘sylvestre ruin’, a reminder of the nec­es­sary alter­na­tion between arti­fi­cial and natural.

Iago and Des­de­mona trans­form them­selves by look­ing at each oth­er: they are per­fect bach­e­lor machines, the Pil­lars of Her­cules of the mean­ing, poten­tial­i­ty and spa­tial­i­ty of the rela­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and land­scape; dis­tant points in the rar­efac­tion of the sub­ur­ban hori­zon of the Lagoon. [ 11 ]

Thus the two ruins, sim­i­lar yet very dif­fer­ent in their rai­son d'être, stand out in the appar­ent empti­ness of the Lagoon, in the cease­less muta­bil­i­ty of its light and reflec­tions, against the motion­less back­ground of its dis­tant hori­zon. [ 12 ]