New square in Meolo, Venice. Projects for the regeneration of a degraded historical site

Meolo is a small town in the Metropolitan City of Venice, crossed by the river of the same name. Its flat territory is located between the courses of the Piave and Sile rivers. The work we propose concerns the redevelopment of the central part of this town. The analysis carried out led to the finding that the space in front of the Town Hall was, and still is, inadequate in relation to the need for a centrality felt by the community. This space is insufficient to host the main recreational and meeting public functions. The purpose of this study is the formulation of hypotheses for a new definition of the central space close to the historic building that now houses the Town Hall. The historic square of Meolo was once the churchyard of St John the Baptist, a consecrated place that also housed burial sites far from the location of the current Town Hall. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, it has been a place of collective events and activities, including those of a nonsacred nature. Over the centuries, the churchyard has been built and the memory of this central space has been lost. Afterwards, the place of reference of the community was the open space not well defined at the foot of the Ponte dei Carri. The area was overlooked by the main historic buildings, seats of administrative and commercial activities, including Villa Folco (also known as Villa Dreina). In 1953, the Ponte dei Carri was demolished, and a section of the river buried. Arranged during the reconstruction phase following World War I, the area in front of the Town Hall remained a secondary square. Being originally part of a private villa, is not a real square in the perception of its inhabitants. It, however, constitutes today a valuable opportunity to redesign the lost unity of this historic town. The paper includes the results of students’ workshops developed in the framework of the courses on “Architectural and Urban Composition 2” taught on the master’s degree in Architectural Engineering at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering of the University of Padua. The working method is based on the belief that the study of urban morphology and the history of the city are basic to face a design theme. The history is considered as an indispensable tool to know the deep reasons of the urban structure which is the memory and the image of the community. The methodology contemplates the urban form as a result of its spatial structure. Progressing from the study of how the area has evolved through time, students defined new proposals for the area that involved testing new building types.