Book Description

Dispersed throughout the Venetian lagoon, the city’s fortifications still leave traces indicating an impressive military war-defence system dating back to various periods that need projects geared towards their safeguarding and valorisation. From this viewpoint, military abandonment can be seen as an extraordinary occasion for the recovery of such places for the general public; and this of course does not only apply to the area of Venice. Concurrently however, it is the very desertion of these military structures that also represents the serious risk of a rapid and progressive decay and decline due to a lack of programmed interventions for the recovery of their physical and cultural values. The single actions of restoration alone will not suffice in generating a consistent flow of visitors to the military garrisons if there is not also a cultural project capable of setting forth reflections on the historic reasons that brought these unique structures to becoming part of a true system of defence to protect the lagoon. Therefore, inverting these viewpoints, such places can be seen today as garrisons for those values of culture and landscape upheld by Venice and its Lagoon. The Venetian forts can, in this sense, be viewed as a constellation map of places to be jointly configured as an extraordinary system of great potential, relating both to the understanding of the lagoon’s landscape and to the experimentation of new methods and strategies for sustainable tourism. From places tied to war (or defence), the forts can be transformed into places for an education of history; as places to develop one’s knowledge of nature and perception of the landscape, ultimately becoming opportunities for the economic revitalization of the areas in which they reside. The experimentation, albeit conducted for didactic purposes, could act as an innovative reading of the role of abandoned military buildings, not only in the immense planar waterscape of Venice’s lagoon, but also in those European regions that are so strongly marked by abandoned, or soon-to-be abandoned military facilities. Authors Lamberto Amistadi, Marco Ballarin, Alessandro Bonadio, Primož Bizjak, Renata Codello, Alberto Ferlenga, Chiara Ferro, Mauro Marzo, Maria Salerno, Alessandra Taverna, Claudia Tessarolo, Giulio Testori.