The Venetian City Garden

IX.1 Carlo Scarpa’s garden for the Fondazione Querini Stampalia.

Possible gardens: grounds for change

In Venice, even today, we feel ourselves to be partakers of a dramatic version of a wider history than our own under the aegis of so many good objects seen about us....

Chapter Nine

Adrian Stokes 1

That the Venetian garden cannot readily be subsumed

marvels“ (fabrication and the marvelous being the

into the modern narrative of the giardino italiano was

two poles of possible and impossible): there was its

clear to the magazine, Rivista di Venezia, in 1931. Re-

plentiful fresh water amid the salt sea, its abundant

viewing the big nationalistic garden exhibition held at

fertility amongst so much unpropitious “sterility“, and

Florence 2,

its author rejected the

its own solidity in a “più instabile Elemento“ (A3 ver-

umbrella term “Italian“ and remarked that it would

so). Napoleon‘s promotion of public gardens against

be easy to put together an exhibition room which

the grain and certainly over the ruins of much exist-

demonstrated how, from the 15 th century “at least

ing urban structure was yet another example of the

until the gardens of Romanticism“, the Venice garden

impossible or at least the unthinkable made possible.

had established its own identity and forms. The previ-

And the city continues to come up with an astonish-

ous chapters have had to perform the role of that dis-

ing range of proposals for its plausible continuance

play (as well as to suggest that the “romantic phase”

amidst conditions that seem on the face of things

itself did not lack particularly Venetian interests). But

wholly impossible. The control of flooding in the la-

the last chapter here needs to attempt something fur-

goon, the debates about the Moses project, and the

ther.

endless interventions to counter acque alte are but

The Florence exhibition was mounted in large part as

one obvious instance, not to mention more recent

a means of promoting a renaissance of garden art in

plans to dig twelve holes around the city’s edge and

Italy along nationalistic lines 3; without succumbing to

pump seawater underneath to raise the whole city by

the invidious political agenda of that endeavour, it is

one foot, or to create a metro system under the la-

perhaps useful to suggest some ways in which Venice

goon to bring tourists to the Fondamenta Nuove in

might draw upon its own particular garden traditions

the north of the city and relieve congestion on the

the Palazzo Vecchio in

for the

21 st

century, when the future of the city and

west 6.

its physical structure and habitation are seriously chal-

Venice has always seemed to attract visionary, and

lenged. Such an invocation of the past for present or

sometimes very immodest, proposals. They have gen-

even future purposes has an ancient Venetian prece-

erally run foul of those admirers and historians alike

dent, since a

15 th-century

historian of its lagoon ecol-

for whom Venice is unchangeable, those who endorse

ogy, Marco Corner, urged a knowledge of the past as

and encourage the “trope of ‘Venice-as-past’” 7. The

a means of understanding the

future 4.

“intoccabilità di Venezia“, the untouchable essence

The potentialities of a future Venice are indeed end-

of Venice as far as new architectural and urban in-

lessly raised, though not many of them have devoted

terventions go, has often been a major cry of those

much thought to a role for gardens in any visions of

who wish to preserve what they see as its historical

a future city. A book published by Electa in 1985 on

“authenticity“. Palladio’s Romanizing architecture

historical projections for Venetian urban development

was mistrusted by his contemporaries, while Ruskin

and experimentation, edited by two distinguished

hated Renaissance intrusions into an essentially Byz-

art historians, Lionello Puppi and Giandomenico Ro-

antino-gothic city. Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for a

manelli, was entitled Le Venezie Possibili da Palladio

tiny palazzo was turned down by authorities nervous

a Le Corbusier. The city has always existed – and even

about its appropriateness next door to the enormous

relished its existence – between the impossible and

Palazzo Balbi. Napoleon‘s public gardens have been

the possible, as with Sansovino‘s admiring celebra-

much denigrated, not least for their destruction of

tion of the very paradoxical founding of Venice “nello

former green spaces. Even Calatrava‘s exhilarating

impossibile” and its many subsequent and altogether

new bridge across the Grand Canal linking the Piaz-

possible achievements, “le Venezie possibili” 5. In

zale Roma with the railway station has its detractors

1666 Michelangelo Mariani‘s Le Meraviglie della città

today, who cannot accept that its lazy curvature is an

di Venetia gushed over a city “entirely fabricated of

elegant rebuke to the nearby stiff climb of the Scalzi

175

bridge. In short, the city can manifest a determinedly conservative streak in face of modern suggestions: Gino Damerini once noted that every time improvements were proposed for the greater “viability“ of existence on either land or sea in Venice, there was a sudden outcry, protests arose, strong emotions were called into play, and (at the very least) debates were initiated 8. Sometimes, anything new was dismissed outright: when the Frenchman Sergent-Marceau proposed a plan for the streetlighting of Venice in 1807, he reported that the local response was that citizens had always been able to see clearly at Venice for centuries, so there was nothing to gain from his proposal 9. Not too long afterwards, however, gas lighting was introduced, and the building of gasworks at San Francesco della Vigna entailed the loss of yet more gardens.

It is as if the city‘s very untouchableness makes it an especially inciting challenge for those who wish most to enhance its scope, facilities and amenities. From Cornaro in the 16 th century, to Bettini in the 18 th, down to Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Carlo Scarpa, Eisenman, and now Kathryn Gustafson and Neil Porter as well as Calatrava, Venice has attracted or called upon a cluster of designers with visions of the possible future city. And what is also most interesting is how many of these projects, realized or not, have invoked gardens, including the competition sponsored by 2G, the architectural review published

by Editorial Gustavo Gili: indeed, for Mariani in 1666,

IX.1 Frank Lloyd Wright, Project for the Masieri Memorial, 1953. Balconies draped with foliage take up the habitual Venetian love of windowboxes and roof terraces in this unexecuted proposal.

among the impossible miracles of the city, among its extraordinary and astonishing amenities like bridges

– perhaps with reminiscences of Cornaro’s proposal

and cloisters, was to be counted, above all, “l‘amenità

and anticipating Napoleon‘s work by fifty years – a

di tanti Giardini“ (A4 recto). Napoleon considered he

series of tree-lined promenades. One of these would

was doing the conquered city a favour by introducing

have stretched from the Fondamenta Nuove across

new forms of public park and promenade, and some

the lagoon to Murano; then from Murano another

have agreed with him.

promenade jutted in a series of elbow bends, touch-

Cornaro‘s

176

16 th-century

proposals for the Bacino di San

ing another island, probably San Secondo or maybe

Marco, as we saw in Chapter Three, were deemed in-

Campalto, before finally rejoining the western end

appropriate, including as they did a permanent island

of the city near San Giobbe 10. In the early 19 th cen-

theatre, another island landscaped in the latest ir-

tury Luigi Casarini thought the ruin of Venice could

regular style of layout, and the whole city surrounded

be arrested by joining it to the mainland with a wide

by a ring of walls topped with public gardens. In the

road and sidewalks, planted with trees 11. Then in the

mid-18 th century Francesco Bettini, one of the most

20 th century Le Corbusier’s project for a new hospital,

inventive and experimental of European garden de-

also at San Giobbe, drew upon traditions of Venetian

signers and technological inventors, drafted a scheme

corti, calli and roof gardens, and certainly indicated

for the cleansing of the canals by the ebb and flow

that trees would be planted in the first, while Wright‘s

of the tides that also seems to have incorporated

design for Cà Masieri on the Grand Canal, also un-

built, would have had “gardens“ or green balconies

work in the south of France 14. And yet Bac makes fun

and Murano glass on its angle pilasters Figure IX.1 12.

generally of those who perceived the need to mod-

Louis Kahn also produced plans and a model of a con-

ernize Venice: one of the fictional anecdotes of his Le

Biennale 13.

mystère Vénitien of 1909 begins as “M de Guerande,

Scarpa, more luckily (a native Venetian, after all), ac-

rendu à sa solitude, se dirigea vers le palais sanseveri-

tually created a new garden at the Palazzo Querini

no, restauré somptueusement par la princess, née

Stampalia, drawing (as we shall see) upon an eclectic

Jonathen de Philadelphie...(M de Guerande ... made

repertoire of Venetian garden ideas.

his way towards the palace at San Severo, sumptu-

At issue in almost all those urban “possibilities“ has

ously restored by the princess, née Jonathen from

been the degree to which the “authentic“ and old

Philadelphia)“. This American lady waxes eloquently

city of Venice could or should be modernized. But at

on various modern amenities that would do the city

least with gardens, modernization had been creeping

a world of good, including motor cars, and a landing

in all along. We think now of the picturesque gar-

strip for aeroplanes at St. Mark’s ! Bac is fairly unsubtle

gress hall intended for the gardens of the

IX.2 Two photographs of gardens destroyed by the excavation of the Rio Nuovo, 1933. Urban work, largely to bring Venice into the 20th century and accommodate its ever-increasing visitors, frequently necessitated the elimination of considerable open and cultivated spaces in the centre.

IX

den as a historical, old-fashioned style; but for Selva

in his ironies about “une santé nouvelle infusé à ces

and contemporary garden theorists like Pindemonte

ruines“, a modernizing rehabilitation of a ruined and

or Mabil it was essentially modern, and to be separ-

unhealthy Venice to be financed with foreign monies

ated (if possible) from any connection with a purely

derived from trade (where else did Venice‘s original

English-derived or English-endorsed landscape taste.

money come from but from trade, though admittedly

Hence the Public Gardens imposed by the Emperor

its own?); nonetheless, his satire identifies as one pe-

Napoleon were in one fundamental way an experi-

culiarly Venetian dilemma the proper choice of suit-

ment with new urban forms and modern amenities,

ably modern facilities and forms 15.

pleasing some and alienating others for precisely the

Yet, notwithstanding that American lady’s vision of a

same reason.

landing strip on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the city had

The Public Gardens were later dismissed by the exotic

already entertained or would soon bravely enter the

French garden designer, Ferdinand Bac, largely one

new world of modernity. The train had been crossing

suspects because his own designs show he had other,

the lagoon since 1845; cars and buses would follow

more symbolist and therefore more modern notions

alongside it on the Ponte della Libertà in 1931 – 33.

of garden scenery, though his interventions and work

A pedestrian reorganization of the city and its trans-

for the Johnsons at the famous Contarini dal Zaffo

formation into a more land-based, urban zone in-

garden were not as extravagant as some of his other

volved bridges over the Grand Canal in front of the

Possible gardens: grounds for change

177

IX.7 & IX.8 Entry courtyard to the University Architectural School at Tolentini, designed by Carlo Scarpa. Here the design plays with both the horizontality of the Venetian site and, perhaps, its re-use of abandoned architectural fragments.

tiny chutes, while the miniature “canal” passes across the whole garden in front of the palace, the first element encountered on the raised lawn. The garden gathers this eclectic anthology of Venetian items, but denies them their expected roles: the little lion of St. Mark’s crouches to dominate the length of the “canal”; the wellhead is genuine but “dry”, with no cistern beneath. Textures crowd upon the visitor – different materials, the patina of humidity, the abrupt contrasts of plants with stone and metalwork. All of these details fill the visitor’s attention, owing in part to the relatively small space; yet their rich plenitude also seems to make the garden bigger than it can actually be. The main garden, small as it is, even has a further courtyard segment, glimpsed and then reached behind the free-standing wall that is decorated with a line of mosaic by Mario DeLuigi and from which we can look back into the main garden that is suddenly perceived as “larger”. It could be nowhere but in Venice, yet it avoids any hint of pastiche.

A third, Scarpa-like garden-courtyard has been inserted among modern ENEL office buildings off the Fondamenta Malcanton, behind the Campo di Santa Margherita. An antique wellhead stands in the middle, with stone drainage covers at the four corners of the brick courtyard Figure IX.13. Stone ledges surround it on four sides (the fourth is taken by the wall of a building), with very slight risers nonetheless executing a movement upwards to another square plot, this time planted, while beyond a third area is grassed.

Once perfectly visible through iron railings along the

182

IX.9 – IX.12 Garden of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. This wonderful creation is wholly modern in spirit, yet invokes an anthology of Venetian references and local garden elements.

calle, the hedge is now overgrown, the view occluded and the whole looking somewhat desolate. Whether it was ever used or was designed simply as a space-filler, albeit in the Venetian mode, to be looked at from the rows of office windows is unclear: it now seems to be enterable through a University institute on the rio.

IX

Possible gardens: grounds for change

183

There is a rather different, modern Venetian garden at the Guggenheim Collection, designed by Giorgio Bellavitis in 1983. It responded both to different spaces and to different uses, but in no sense did it lose sight of its locality, not least that it was appended to an unfinished palazzo and could itself play with different ways in which of a 20 th-century Venetian garden could be “finished”. Essentially a rectangle laid (in this instance) parallel to the Palazzo, it functions as both a foyer to the Museum and a place for the display of sculpture Figure IX.15.

In more recent years it has been augmented

by the Museum’s lease and purchase of buildings along the Rio delle Torreselle and the subsequent connection of their small back garden-courtyards to the original Bellavitis space Figure IX.14. In fact, this enlargement has produced what is wonderfully apt for a museum – a succession of small exposition spaces – while maintaining a typically Venetian collocation of discrete garden rooms. The original rectangular garden loses its rigidity and potential constriction in a geometrical pattern of various stonework that seems a witty reversal of pavement patterns elsewhere in the city: There white Istrian stone traces out forms that recall the outlines of parterre de broderie or real flower beds Figure IX.16, of the sort illustrated by Serlio, who said his designs could also be used for ceiling decoration or other things (“usus ad alia”) 27. Here at the Guggenheim the much more cubist forms draw out the space in unfamiliar shapes, which are then interrupted by low planting beds and the marble-pillared gazebo Figure IX.17; ivy on the walls mutes, too, the sense of built enclosure.

Four such modern gardens in Venice, three open to visitation and the fourth potentially visible to passers-

IX.12 A wall hides a small courtyard in the Fondazione Querini Stampalia garden.

IX.13 Courtyard in modern office building at Dorsoduro 3449, (1980s).

This modern space recalls, without slavish imitation, some traditions of the Venetian courtyard and garden.

184

IX.14 Garden of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, designed by Giorgio Bellavitis, one of the leading architects of Venice; it responds to the particular site and its use as a museum, while also re-imagining modern conďŹ gurations of the Venetian tradition of palace gardens. The sculptures are by Barry Flanagan (on the left) and Giuseppe Spagnulo (right).

IX

Possible gardens: grounds for change

185

IX.15 Garden of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, The sculpture in the left foreground is by Isamu Noguchi.

by, are hints of what a garden agenda might do for the city at its best. None of them contribute to what Dennis Cosgrove calls the “Disneyfication of Venice”, nor yet to what Henry James called “a battered peepshow and bazaar” 28. They are not in the same league by any means as endless emporia selling papier maché and Murano glass and carnival costumes throughout the year. Nor is it (though thank heavens nobody has IX.16 A Venetian pavement pattern of “flower beds”. This patterning of the pavements in open spaces and colonnades throughout the city seems to replicate the layout of flowerbeds.

IX.17 Another view in the Guggenheim garden: the view is of the grave of Peggy Guggenheim and her dogs. The gazebo is a survivor from her early garden of the 1950 s

suggested this) as if they had recreated a zoological garden in imitation of the collection of lions and leopards kept by Lorenzo Celsi at the Doge’s Palace in the late 14 th century 29. They do contribute, it must be admitted (two of them literally), to the sense of the city as a “vast museum”, which Henry James identified as early as 1882. But then he was shrewdly prophetic in his understanding of Venice as a “city of exhibition”, not necessarily referring only to carnavalesque theatricality, so much as to Venice’s larger skills of self-display, as when only five years after he wrote the Public Gardens were transformed into the site of the Esposizione Nazionale Artistica. This was itself translated into the Biennale of Visual Arts in 1895, to which music and theatre were added in 1930 and 1934

186

Towards Paradise [Site Plan]

Nourishment [Abundance]

Remember

[The Store Room]

Enlightenment [Contemplation]

N

10m 20m 0 scale 1:1000

40m

IX. 18 The site of Kathryn Gustafson’s 2008 garden, “Towards Paradise“, 2008

IX

respectively, and in 1932 the Esposizione Internazion-

Rather than clearing the site completely, three inser-

ale d’Arte Cinematografica (known as a “Mostra” from

tions were made into its dense thickets: the first was

1934), which continues in summer film shows in the

a “Store Room”, a recollection of older cabinets of

Campo San Polo. Venice has made itself so successfully

curiosity, now with the Latin names of flora and fauna

into a stage for festivals that an exhibition or festival of

inscribed behind its shelves Fig. IX. 20; then a luxuri-

gardens does not seem such an impossibility.

ant vegetable gardenFig. IX. 19; finally an open, oval

And this is precisely what the Architecture Biennale

clearingFig. IX. 21, grassed and where helium-filled

initiated by asking the distinguished landscape archi-

weather balloons held up cloud-like veils of white fab-

tects, Kathryn Gustafson and Neil Porter, to exhibit

ric (though these were apparently only there for the

in 2008. Their firm’s temporary creation was installed

opening). The poetry of this design, entitled “Towards

on the much overgrown site of the former Convento

Paradise” was undeniable, even if its gestures towards

delle Vergini see Fig. V.9 at the furthest extreme of the

locality were somewhat slight. In a recent lecture Gus-

Arsenal beside one of the towers that marks the entry

tafson herself explained how she was inspired by a

to the Darsena Nuovissima and faces across its canal

painting of paradise seen in the Accademia, a con-

the cathedral church of San Pietro di Castello Fig. IX. 18

nection that was necessarily lost on site; the “clouds”

Possible gardens: grounds for change

187

IX. 19 The vegetable and fruit garden in the Gustafson Porter Garden at the Biennale.

above the open grass mounds she also compared

of Venetian prototypes 33, but the blind, windowless

to Tiepolo-like cloudscapes in 18 th-century Venetian

blocks that turned their backs on the city as well as

painting, while the vegetable garden, as she told her

denying patients any outside views seem misguided,

lecture audience in an aside, was created where the

and the scale of the footprint much too large. Its advo-

original convent orto had been. Its wonderful profu-

cates laud its superimposition of a grid upon the irreg-

sion of this space, with plants grown in advance to

ular fabric of the city, a modernist re-formulation that

replicate the former institution’s self-sufficient broglio

was also advanced more generally over the western

was a stroke of genius, the more palpable for com-

Cannaregio area. But the problem with Venice is that

ing upon it after negotiating one’s way through the

the urban palimpsest cannot be ignored, and though

empty and desolate spaces of the old Arsenal 30.

Eisenman explicitly rejects them, his playful graphic

Le Corbusier saw Venice as “aujourd’hui encore un

explorations of Venice’s own unique spatial and laby-

admoniteur”31. He was presumably thinking of how

rinthine elements are much more attentive to this lo-

the city might still admonish and even lead some cre-

cal experience. Despite acknowledging the gardens of

ative thinking in urban development. Yet if his own

that area and their surrender to modern industry and

contribution may be gauged from the unexecuted

infrastructure (slaughterhouses, dye works, mills, fac-

proposals for a hospital at San Giobbe (cut off by his

tories), he plays only with built elements.

death in 1965), it must be confessed that they respond

Other proposals, that also came to naught, have failed

only partly to the Venetian context, though they obvi-

even more grossly to grasp the particular scale and

ously fascinate those who are excited by his architec-

scope of Venetian gardens. In a move that seemed

ture and by the possibilities of modernist urbanism

ironically to replicate Napoelon’s dismemberment of

in the city (Peter Eisenman saw it as “one of the last

the city and the installation of large swaths of public

Its planted court-

gardens (though this parallel was never apparently re-

yards would have been perhaps an acknowledgement

marked upon at the time), the communist city council

anguishes of heroic

188

modernism”) 32.

in the mid-1970s proposed to confiscate all the gar-

historical character and contemporary uses, which the

dens along a considerable stretch of the Dorsoduro

protest elicited, is a fund of ideas and suggestions for

to establish what would have amounted to a green

a much more sensitive and nuanced celebration of

ribbon of public open space; other parts of the city

Venice’s green spaces.

would also have been annexed for “Verde Pubblico”.

Napoleon, Le Corbusier and the communist city coun-

Given that most areas in question were privately

cil have not been alone in failing to produce any con-

owned, the outcry was not surprisingly huge, and

vincing proposals for the use of urban gardens.35 In a

dozens of residents lodged their formal protests, in the

variety of projects, some official, others exploratory

IX. 20 “The Store Room“ or Cabinet displaying the names of extinct flora and fauna, in the Gustafson Porter garden at the Biennale, 2008.

texts of which are many glimpses of the city’s already established garden

culture 34.

and emerging from University design studios, the is-

Peggy Guggenheim re-

sue of open green space plays a small role in what

minded officials of the public access to the gardens of

is often, admittedly, a much larger programme of

her own collection and its eventual donation to the

confronting environmental decay and urgent housing

city; Sir Ashley Clarke, former British ambassador to

needs. But the “lack of gardens” is isolated by Elena

18 th-century

property had

Bassi in Venice for Modern Man, and (on the basis of

recovered the “classic form” of a Venetian palace gar-

historical evidence) their replacement urged; a study

den, with “grass, shrubs, flowering plants and trees”;

of popular housing in San Giuseppe (Castello) in the

others who formally lodged objections included Al-

same volume eliminates overcrowding by removing

berto Gianquinto, Herbert Hériott, many academics,

built insertions in 16 th-century blocks and substituting

architects and artists, several religious orders (includ-

“green areas” between units. Several proposals seem

ing the Opera Pia Zuane Contarini) and even the So-

to urge a proper historical regard for a specifically

cietà Canottieri Querini (a rowing club). While each

Venetian situation, without necessarily showing how

protest inevitably had its own agenda, a leitmotif of

it might be exploited: Stefinlongo’s book Il “Giardino”

them all was the plan’s utter disregard of the histor-

del Doge. I Giardini del Popolo. Studi sul restauro ur-

ical, piecemeal patchwork of traditional courtyards,

bano ..., as its title indicates, is an exception, yet even

gardens and their close links to different built struc-

his review of the various forms of garden throughout

tures throughout the city. The reaction was effective

the city is transposed in the assembled student projects

enough to stop the project in its tracks (indeed, how

only to the outlying lagoon areas where islands afford

it could ever have been implemented without another

more scope for new design. Their projection of the

Napoleon is a mystery). However, the documentation

lagoon itself as an accessible and popular “garden”

of this network of urban open spaces, along with their

(p.59) envisions a recuperation of both historical struc-

Italy, noted how his own

IX

IX. 21 The Clearing for “Enlightenment & Contemplation“, the third element of the Gustafson Porter garden at the Biennale, 2008.

Possible gardens: grounds for change

189

IX. 22 One of the proposals for the Park on the Sacca di Mattia, Murano, 2007.

190

tures and the lagoon environment for consumption by

attention – playing fields apart – was paid to the per-

more than the daily tourist. As their choice of sites im-

manent inhabitants of either Murano or the lagoon

plies, the appeal to contemporary designers of “edge

generally. That the subsequent publication included

conditions” finds considerable opportunities around

three more historically informed essays makes even

the outskirts of a city that often seems restricted sim-

more conspicuous by its absence in the competition

ply to a historical core packaged for tourisms. Yet what

an informed knowledge of Venetian urban and gar-

emerges is largely new architecture rather than land-

den history (to call the Piazza di San Marco an “ur-

scape design (see, in particular, Venezia Novissima);

ban void”, for instance, simply beggars belief!). The

where the latter is invoked, it seems to draw its inspi-

first prize awarded to what one juror called a “post-

ration from non-Venetian sources (Beverly Pepper and

apocalyptic” proposal to cover the whole site with a

American land art in Lavorare sui bordi). A sponsored

green canopy of industrial, seaweed derived tubing

investigation of new urban designs for the Giudecca in

over picnic grounds was an indication that, in the fi-

2003 was almost by necessity obliged to recall its gar-

nal result, attention to the specific site and its mean-

denist history, yet the student projects display mainly

ing for visitors and residents alike held less interest

just a dutiful response to that precedence, scattering

for designers than their own creative adventures. At

trees, inserting picturesque mounding and meander-

its best, the competition will have perhaps provided,

ing forms as “visual buffer”. Many of the proposals

as another juror argued, a “field of possibilities” for a

seem thoughtful, yet apt and useful for any location,

future Venice, hints for a subsequent but as yet unde-

without sufficient regard to the Venetian context, with

fined self-fashioning.

the exception of the interface of public and private in

Indeed, much about this competition was initially

new housing and the renewal of traditional modes of

persuasive and suggestive: the choice of site – a sacca

collecting rainwater and run-off.

was the place where Venice had long since managed

A more sustained and determined effort to see how

to extend its land surfaces by dumping urban debris;

landscape architecture might contribute to new de-

and Murano itself, traditionally the site of large-scale

signs and urban forms in the Venetian lagoon was the

Venetian gardens and estates and where some ver-

large international competition sponsored in 2007

nacular gardening still persisted on open ground (see

by the magazine 2G for the 31-hectare area on the

pp. 100 – 01), surely invited some reconsideration of

Mattia 36.

its former gardenist profile, if only to set against the

The project invited designs for both a “lagoon park”

island’s current emphasis upon glass manufactory, the

(with a programme of jetties for lagoon transporta-

debris from which has filled this particular wasteland.

tion, boat rentals, sports facilities, performance space,

Some of the entries also reveal both acute under-

and a visitor centre) and what were somewhat oddly

standing of the Venetian situation and, its corollary,

listed as “lagoon prototypes” (a refuge, an observato-

a determination to reveal the lagoon to visitors with

ry, a landing stage, “energy way stations” and a “sign-

a very limited sense of Venicity (a limitation professed

posting system” for weather and tourist information).

also by some of the jurors). Thus one entry returns the

And while many of these items were indeed provided,

sacca to its watery marshland, with hides from which

what strikes a reader of the subsequent publication is

to watch the wildlife (utilizing, nicely, the Venetian

northern edge of Murano, the Sacca San

IX

rather the entrants’ exuberant manipulation of dig-

altana Fig. IX. 22). Another proposes a series of float-

ital imagery rather than any demonstration of what

ing archipelagos (gardens, fields, boathouses, stages,

the designs, if implemented, would look like and how

stadia), while yet another invites different pedestrian

they would enhance a modern visitor’s response to

excursions across a variety of inventive pathways and

the city. Furthermore, despite much lip-service paid

bridges (all in the interests of curbing boat traffic Fig.

by both jury and competitors to the unique physical,

IX. 23.

cultural and historical situation of Venice, few of the

short-stay tourist out of the city and into a richer la-

entries displayed any ability to localize their responses.

goon experience. In the final resort, the size of the site

The ecological demands of the lagoon were the con-

presented a very un-Venetian challenge (Napoleon’s

stant focus, to be sure, but for most entrants the solu-

public gardens being the only possible precedent); so

tions were scarcely site-orientated. Interestingly, little

Murano gets itself a park, in some versions of which its

Possible gardens: grounds for change

Many of these entries also struggle to bring the

191

IX.23 Another project in the 2007 2G competition.

192

IX

Possible gardens: grounds for change

unique lagoon situation is celebrated, but in too many

ling the gardens that Marco Polo would have encoun-

cases it simply receives features that characterize park-

tered in his Asian peregrinations, and it is indeed a

lands anywhere and would not be much of a draw for

“gift” offered to Marco Polo, or at least to his city.

visitors anticipating something particularly Venetian.

This small Chinese garden will be, it is claimed, “in

All of these explorations of a possible Venice have

harmony” with the original ambience of the island.

come as responses to the clamorous demands for

Plants will be those that grow in the Veneto, but “an-

“Trasformazioni urbane” in the last 15 years, and

notated with the traditional Chinese cultural senses”,

many reach away from the historical core simply be-

and indeed the whole is animated by an elaborate,

cause there in the outer sections on abused industrial

symbolical and mythological apparatus of associa-

land and in abandoned environments, the opportunit-

tions and philosophical references. There will, how-

ies for incisive and striking interventions are more ap-

ever, be gestures towards the symbiosis of Venetian

parent and tempting. As the protests from the 1970s,

and Chinese cultures – a traditional Suzhou archway

however, made, clear, it is the small-scale, more mod-

made of Murano glass, a transparent peach tree also

est and inevitably more subtle opportunities of the

of glass, and other sectors decorated with fluorescent

city itself that are its unique contribution, too often

coloured mosaics (shades here of the glass garden in

neglected until they are under threat.

the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili). But there will also be

So it still remains to be asked to what extent, and

electronic displays inside a grotto – a symbol, we are

how, a historical perspective of the Venetian city gar-

informed, of the “looking-glass in the depths of our

den can instruct and admonish (to echo Le Corbusi-

heart”. Shelves of writings on Marco Polo’s travels and

er) those in whose hands lies the future of the city’s

on Italian and Chinese garden art will be installed in

fabric and topography. Gardens are often, if emptily,

one of the pavilions. All of which could be welcomed,

touted in the various proposals that have punctuat-

perhaps, in the spirit of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities,

ed the city’s self-scrutiny as long ago as the 1920 s:

except that now we will have a real place, implausi-

during that and the following decade some efforts

bly and materially anchored in the lagoon, rather than

were made to “green” the city with trees – they were

the virtual impressions of many cities, “discontinuous

planted in Campo San Giacomo dall’Orio and along

in space and time”. Maybe this new garden on San

the Zattere in double formation; a Festival of Trees

Servolo will turn out, after all (but we didn’t know it),

In virtually

to have been included in the Great Khan’s atlas that

all cases the planners ignored both the special typo-

contained “the maps of the promised lands visited in

logy of Venetian gardens, with its freightage of myth

thought but not yet discovered or founded”.

and symbolism, and the various uses to which these

The larger issues are all too evident and the alarms

have been put. They also ignored the role that the

clearly raised: the authors of Venice the Tourist Maze

different kinds of open space – giardino (or to use a

even claim that it’s not meaningful to talk about Ven-

local dialect word, broglio), orto, campo, corte – have

ice as a city anymore, because the city is basically al-

variously played in both the real life of the city and its

ready a lost cause 38. Plausible economic revitalizations

various fictions, many self-constructed. At issue today,

don’t work – factories cannot be built. Houses prices

above and beyond the key technical problems, much

and the cost of restorations drive more and more

debated, of flood or tide control, is how to envisage

residents to the mainland, even though some new

a life for Venice in the 21st century. What role might

middle-class housing is being built around the edges

gardens play in the necessary and anyhow inevitable

(Castello, Santa Marta, Cannaregio). Bakeries and

self-fashioning that Venice must undertake?

butchers close down; their places are taken by shops

As this book was in press, came news of a new gar-

that seek to cater to the ever increasing visitors who

den to be created on the island of San Servolo; it is

look to take away a tangible souvenir of an authentic

to be a “Chinese” garden designed and built by Ye

Venice. The vaporetto service is so over-charged that

Fang from Suzhou, the south China city twinned with

the ACTV briefly instituted a service down the Grand

Venice 37a. It will be an epitome of traditional Chinese

Canal only for residents 39.

gardens – wandering streams, a pond, waterfalls, pa-

Assuming – optimistically, in the view of many – that the

vilions, pathways, seats, and even “mountains”, recal-

city survives its salt-water location for another hundred

was held on Murano in November

IX

1928 37.

Possible gardens: grounds for change

193