ERA / Eraclea Masterplan

How do we reconnect the seaside in an infill agricultural land? How do we promote tourism  in a delicate lagoon environment? How do we enhance the virtues of a natural seaside landscape, while accommodating a connection with an inland river port? How do we accommodate the need for privacy in a high-end tourist settlement, while still providing a generous amount of public space and service facilities?
The coastline of the Veneto is one of the most interesting and complex ecosystem of the northern Adriatic Sea.  Eraclea Mare is one of the village still untouched by the glamorous lights of its neighbouring city Jesolo.  Here we were asked to design a new development for tourism in the “laguna del mort”, a natural landscape of fantastic quality where the sea, the land and the lagoon recreate a smaller scale venice lagoon, which is just a few kilometers to the south. We then thought of enhancing this very peculiar quality, perforating the infill mainland, to reconnect the lagoon with the inland river Piave.  This simple operation lead us to think of a new condition, gathering together the magic of Venice in a new form.  We gently flooded the mainland, blending land with water and vise versa in order to regain the connection with the seaside and the former connection from the lagoon to the river. Giving shape to this simple programmatic approach, lead us to an intense series of attempts to envision the proper mode to accommodate the 900 home housing program.  The housing had to be connected as much as possible to the boat stalls, in order to allow people direct access to their boats.  The idea of an archipelago village was then clearly in front of us.  Every house would have direct access to the boats stalls, would have its privacy protected, and still be directly connected to the service islands, were the more public facilities are scattered in a network of layered activities