Isabella Trabucco

Transitional Territories

A Project of Non Resistance: Venice 21st of March 2100

The project of Non-Resistance aims to reveal the potentiality of adaptation of society and environment to the new spatial condition that the climate crisis will bring in the year 2100. The project uses critical mapping and qualitative methods, such as photo and video documentaries, to explore the presence of systems, knowledge, methods and natural processes in Venice that can help shape the new conditions through time. The approach is not to resist the forces of sea-level rise, but rather to accept the water entering the lagoon and urbanized territories, and using this force to imagine the new inhabitation, environment, politics and socio-economic layers. By accepting the water flow, the design builds upon the natural sedimentation processes that could happen through the exchange of inland and seaward. A new foundation is therefore needed to redefine the spatial condition: the poles of the foundation sustain the inland and seaward territories. Four architectural typologies facilitate, partially block or free up the sedimentation processes and the new land formation. The design finally shows that through the poles of the foundation, there is a new definition of infrastructure. From being lines that connect but divide, the infrastructural grid becomes a space where programme can thrive and the adaptation to 2100 can happen.