Promenade della città lagunare = Lagoon City Promenade

The island city of Venice in its different parts declines many conditions and characters of open space, in relation to pedestrian mobility, collective activities and landscape values. Where the urban quality of the historic city is broken and infrastructure systems for the exclusive use of transport are imposed, the anomaly of walking is also emphasized. The workshop aims to transform the edges of a road infrastructure into a series of multifunctional spaces that accommodate and qualify a walkway. In particular, the program identifies the case-study between the water city and the mainland at the southwestern edge of the bridge across the lagoon. The Ponte della Libertà – an essential infrastructure for Venice – ensures the necessary separation of the different modes of transport: rail, road, tram line, while the bicycle and pedestrian routes present various criticalities and limitations. Conceived as an ‘infrastructural canal’, the Ponte della Libertà is hardly practicable for pedestrians, also because of the lack of resting places and the difficult environmental conditions. However, the approximately four kilometres of the bridge could be rethought as a linear park contributing to the resilience of the lagoon city. From this perspective, the design study defines redevelopment scenarios to promote pedestrian walkability along the south bank of the bridge. The promenade, with its rest areas, green spaces and supporting services, is designed to make a pleasure walking in a new infrastructure of urban well-being, reducing the polluting factors of traffic, but also enhancing the Lagoon City landscape.