Catarina Martins, architect; Dr Karol Carminatti Baumgärtner, architect and urban designer; Marina Gaia. Architect; Martina Fragalá, architect, Mona Ivinskis, urban strategist and foresight practitioner
What makes a place liveable? And how can architects and urbanists foster sustainability beyond aesthetic gestures? These questions framed this year’s Sustainable, Healthy Cities: Building for the Future course, led by the European Cultural Academy in collaboration with the Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation, and The King’s Foundation. Tronchetto, the artificial island on Venice’s western edge, once a cruise terminal, now underused and disconnected, served as the case study.
Today, Tronchetto is found to be disconnected from Venice’s pre-existing centre. While the original city grew through winding, organic paths shaped naturally by its residents over time, in tune with the patterns of the surrounding wetlands, Tronchetto follows a rigid grid—linear, sterile, and impersonal. The absence of vegetation, public infrastructure, and pedestrian movement reveals how lifeless the area feels.
The design challenge: to envision a sustainable future for Tronchetto while addressing broader dysfunctions of central Venice and alleviating the pressures it faces. The group quickly understood that the island’s revitalisation was inseparable from rethinking its connections — particularly to Santo Croce, Dorsoduro, and the wider Venetian fabric. This approach would not only enhance Tronchetto’s urban potential but also address spatial fractures caused by swathes of underused land: deserted port authority offices, inactive railways, and storage yards, all contributing to a diminished sense of cohesion and safety for passers-by.
To complement this urban analysis, informal conversations with local Venetians revealed alarming social gaps: limited access to affordable housing, healthcare, and family infrastructure. Responding to these needs, the group sought to integrate a network of community-based uses, such as senior care centres, kindergartens, schools, public markets, and green spaces. Many residents voiced a desire to reconnect with traditional Venetian urban language: narrow alleys, canals, brick and stucco textures, and the rituals of neighbourhood life, long eroded by overtourism. A return to local food production and shared spaces emerged as a quiet but powerful thread.
The project also engaged with the pressing effects of climate change, recognising Tronchetto’s exposure to heat island impacts due to hardscaped, vacant lots and unused areas. Never distant was the ever more constant acqua alta happening in the heart of Venice, ringing the alarm to control rising water levels. With it, biodiversity and wildlife are lost and pushed away from the urban experience. Historically, Venetian water management, land reclamation and farming practices embodied early sustainable stewardship.
A SWOT and horizon scan analysis grounded various aspects into a clearer panorama, from which key design principles aligned with ESG* criteria emerged, including:
- Mitigating urban heat through green–blue infrastructure
- Promoting ecological regeneration and low-impact development
- Reinforcing identity and social cohesion
- Enhancing liveability and public safety
- Expanding multimodal mobility
- Securing spatial equity and land stewardship
- Enabling participatory governance
- Aligning with broader green transition goals
To accommodate this, the team adopted a morphological masterplanning lens, drawing from the pattern language of surrounding districts to stitch together old and new. From the Dorsoduro waterfront to Tronchetto, the intervention meant to blend urban acupuncture strategies within a macro-scale proposal. The intention was clear — the proposal should sew together the historical, dense, and organic urban fabric with the modern large-scale territorial one, echoing the gentle tide of the lagoon.
Tronchetto today compared to the authors’ proposal @Dr. Karol Carminatti Baumgärtner
This included reactivating dormant railway lines, expanding water transit, reducing surface parking, and re-scaling built mass to support walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods that feel safe and liveable. A new bridge line would weave port fragments, generating new urban centralities near the People Mover, while green sponge parks would mitigate flooding. At the edge of Tronchetto, the promenade would culminate in a natural pool with wetlands (following the ‘sponge park’ philosophy), inviting biodiversity back into the city, naturally filtering water for a new public space and helping with flood impact reduction.
On the rooftop of the existing car park block, urban farms could support local food cycles and collective activity, promote community life, reduce heat buildup from concrete, and attract important pollinator species. While preserving its hotels, Tronchetto’s harbour would become active, featuring a ground-level commercial area complemented by a Scientific Interpretation and Conservation Centre for wildlife. Nearby, the Smart Control Hub, health facilities, and early education centres would form the social spine.
This strategy allowed the team to explore how small-scale, localized actions, if coordinated, can activate large-scale transformation. Working with, not against, existing conditions proved central to addressing a wide array of ESG criteria without imposing abstract or external formulas. In rethinking Tronchetto, the project reframes sustainability as a modest but deeply generative act: a quiet stitching of parts, a choreography of care, an intricate tapestry. It reminds us that lasting change often begins not with spectacle, but with trust in the cumulative strength of thoughtful, rooted action. With this, Tronchetto invites us to reconsider meaningful sustainability, both as process and lived experience.
* Ecological resilience, Social inclusivity, and responsible Governance