Final Exhibition W.A.Ve. 2014 • Workshop Morpurgo de Curtis "The Over-Exposed Archaeology. Architectural interactions, memory and new uses for the post-industrial spaces of the lagoon city - first industrial settlement of Marghera"

Regenerating an urban archeology The wedge of land, concrete, metal and memory that establishes the first industrial settlement of Marghera, stretches out into the lagoon imposing as a primary “off-scale” within the venetian archipelago. The dimension and variety of the site's fragments and interspaces affect the impact on environmental and settlement morphology, and influence deeply the relationship between city and water, modernity and urban landscape, history of a boundary space and memory of its use. The settlement's morphological consistence, the industrial volumes' plastic and evocative value, the place's identity as total memory of a urban story, define this huge find an over-exposed archeology, an architectural plurality that can be regenerated modifying the under-utilized, deserted, under dismission areas within the Marghera port and the prospect toward Venice. This urban heritage can be reactivated with a reuse project based on the acknowledgment of a common ground unifying a wide range of morphological samples: the reading of the traces left on the ground by use, the buildings, the industrial and the port structures allow to purpose new and necessary architectures. The project's site The combination of morphological and spacial codes of the former Agrimont area, its intrinsic environmental variety and the prospects along the canals are the base of critical interaction between new and existing structures. The deep dialogue between the past and the present occurs through additions, graftings and insertions. The ground project organizes public and green spaces, gives new sense to dismissed places: landscape design is the base of every transformation, a tool to balance the relationship between architecture and site. Project work's articulation After the initial inspections across the area, the work will proceed with a stratigraphic reading of the site, in order to select architectural and urban elements to keep or modify, to acknowledge the archeological substrate that establishes the site's identity and foundation. Sketches, plans, sections and models will allow to verify at different scales the guidelines for the new foundations and the architectural relationships between interventions and pre-existent buildings. In order to regenerate the area - a morphological and cultural connection with the city, its emerging elements and port architectures- with precise interactions with the post-industrial context, it will be necessary to study the modalities to settle in the context the components of a new urban pole, including exhibition, research and art spaces, laboratories, facilities, temporary housing.