Heritage of Water as Resource and Infrastructure of the Landscape

The use of water in history produced many singular situations, determining quality and value of landscapes. In particular, the water made useful for productive processes built the soil of vast territories realizing specific infrastructures where features and potentials are progressively layered, defined by rules and restrictions of a crucial morphological structure. The land reclamation landscape, configured by the process of drainage and irrigation, shows a composition of elements articulated as a production system, where the constituting form appears both resource and heritage for a sustainable development. Those lands are part of a landscape realized by a qualifying shape designed for the water control. Architectures and technical elements together with the network of canals, embankments and roads, that generated them, included some unusual stratification but they now need to assess their compatibility with future scenarios. Places of land reclamation interpret minimum gradients outlined by canals, embankments, draining pumps, drainage basin described by rows of trees, different textures of fields, dotted with farmhouses, silos, factories or broken by villages and some urban centres, which often overload the artificial soil over its mechanical possibilities, sometimes producing critical situations. That cultural legacy, that still has an active form in the transformation of landscape, will be investigated through the eyes of the architect that aims to highlight and systematize multiple values since they can be articulated in a singular integrated balance. The re-reading of some Italian reclamation landscapes identified in Veneto and Lazio regions finds in the comparison between different geographical and cultural contexts, a relationship of the heritage values with the systemic-infrastructural ones among places, architectures and technical constructions, useful to outline strategies and practices for a sustainable transformation and enhancement of water landscapes.