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ZATA — A Project for Piave river
with : YellowOffice, Annapaola Busnardo

Piave River-Santa Croce Lake and Lapisina Valley

Santa Croce Lake, a natural basin artificially enlarged during 1930’s, occupies a valley shaped by exogenous agents and Piave ancient pleistocenic glacier. This was once divided into two branches: one occupying the present Piave valley, the other flowing out in south east direction towards Lapisina Valley.
Here the Piave valley is characterized by a “soft” landscape, slightly inclined slopes, very different from the steep sides and harsh tract between Dolomites.
Santa Croce Lake constitutes the vital center of the system of hydroelectric plants Piave-Santa Croce, managed by Enel.

Piave -Palù

In this stretch, Piave river flows through a very rich landscape, marked by the ancient agricultural system of “Palù”, a complicated productive system of fields bordered by ditches, hedges and meadows, created by Benedictine to drain the swamps of springs that occupied this area. The “Palù” provided three types of production: forage in meadows, wood from trees (oaks, alders, poplars and willows), fish, shrimp and eels in the rivers.
The hydraulic system, composed by dams and drains, had the function of irrigating the fields, keeping levels and avoiding the flooding of irrigated fields by diverting water in excess.

Piave - Quero gorge / Montano basin

After the mountain stretch, Piave river pads along prealpine reliefs, “carving” its own alluvial materials: we are at the Quero gorge. In this area there's the transition point between two landscapes: ice age glacial valleys, and valleys shaped by the river itself. During the last glacial peak the great Piave glacier came to the Quero up to his forehead, without reaching the lowlands.

Piave - Montello

In this stretch Piave river goes along an area interesting both from the geological and natural point of view: Montello. This strange elliptical red-soil hill rises, isolated and well defined, 300 m south of the river Piave bed. Its surface is dotted with formations of Karst sinkholes and dug by caverns, among which the most impressive and famous is the Tavaran Grando one. The forest of Montello dominates the landscape: a real green lung for all the towns that surround it.
Today mainly formed by black locusts, the ancient forest of the Serenissima was once an oak forest, bound by strict laws, as soon as it was an invaluable resource of timber for construction for venetian shipyards.

Piave - Papadopoli river gravel bed

Along the middle path of Piave river there are wetlands, land within the river banks formed over the centuries as alluvial deposits, always morphologically unstable, due to the work of
input and erosion by the river. The most important of these naturalistically precious areas, is “Grave di Papadopoli”, which stretches for 750 hectares between the municipalities of Cimadolmo and Maserada. Human activity in the Grave area dates back to first millennium BC, with a Paleoveneti population settlement; in the Middle Ages, Benedictine monks and Cistercian reclaimed the stony lands for cultivation, planting precious grape of Burgundy and Cluny, still cultivated nowadays. During World War I, after the defeat of Kobarid and the arrival of Austrians, this was considered no man's land, a piece of land bearing between the Austrian and Italian front.

Piave - Springs close to Treviso

After Nervasa, Piave river enters into the lowland flowing within a channel “carved” between the alluvial materials. In the most depressed points, the groundwater outcrops along a strip of the width of some km. These outcrops generate numerous springs that feed many rivers of the Veneto plain: among them, the river Sile.

Piave – Reclamation landscapes.

In this stretch Piave flows confined by high artificial banks, and its bed gradually rises up compared to the surrounding plains. The landscape is almost completely characterized by the signs of drainage: canals, locks and ditches, which have made Piave one of the most intensely exploited rivers in Europe. The river flow, once mighty and impetuous, has now become problematically low. Once this stretch of river was also a stategic point for boats, which crowded the waters carrying goods from the high Piave basin to the coastline: Zenson was a key point for this system. From here on, in fact, the rafts were tied together in many units, and abandoned to the flows and to the strength of the mules that pulled from the banks.

Piave mouth - Laguna del Mort

The main mouth of Piave river is located in the Adriatic Sea, north-east of Venice, near the port of Cortellazzo between Eraclea and Jesolo. Moving west from here you find Laguna del Mort, a salt water enclave that is the remain of an ancient mouth of the river. Laguna del Mort shrunk with each passing year and, thus, has gradually withdrawn even the original mouth of the Piave river. The stretch of water has an area of approximately
125 hectares, and with the surrounding sandy clay banks, characterized by dunes and a marine pinewood), is populated by peculiar fauna and flora of coastal wetlands.
In 2003, the peninsula that separates Laguna del Mort” from the sea, together with its beach, has been declared “one of the 11 most beautiful beaches in Italy” by Legambiente.

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Piave river water ecosystem

The water ecosystem is enhanced and becomes a valuable infrastructure for the territory.

Green areas.

The green ecosystem is enhanced and becomes a valuable infrastructure for the territory.

Roman centuriation: 21 x 21 actus (745.92 x 745.92 m)

The interstitial space between the industrial areas is reactivated through a network of rafts that create new relations between the spaces.

At the intersection between the roman centuriation and the canals system some nodes are selected as points for the first stage of “rafts colonization”.

The green system expands outside the riverbed and continues along rivers and canals. Piave river progressively regains its territory.

The green system spreads along the irrigation system and encompasses the urbanized cores. The river environment is thus increasingly enhanced.

All the hamlets around become stops of eco-touristic routes and densify the local network of relations.

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A
RAFTS AND NATURAL AREAS

The raft works at the same time as support for informal touristic interaction with nature and crossing device in selected points of the river.

A-01 Observatory

A-02 Bathing raft

B
RAFTS AND AGRICULTURAL FILAMENTS

A raft is an amphibious object: it offers the opportunity to lose yourself reading your favorite book in the silence of nature, or stays as a discrete and protected island for fishing, or works as mooring post and pier for operations along the canals.

B-01 Parking raft
B-02 Leisure

C
RAFTS AND INDUSTRIAL AREAS

The interstitial spaces among the industrial areas are colonized by rafts that offer new meeting places for the inhabitants.

C-01 Recreational activities raft

C-02 Fitness raft

D
RAFTS AND URBANIZATION ALONG THE ROAD

These are devices that trigger a process of reforestation as means of protecting the soil where urbanization tends to grow in an uncontrolled way. At the same time they identify areas of excellent agricultural production, becoming basic infrastracture for farmers' shops.

D-01 Nursery raft

D-02 Market raft

E
RAFTS AND HAMLETS

In small villages the rafts assume a “urban flavour”, becoming fountains that evoke the nearby river waters, or storage system for bike rent.

E-01 Fountain raft

E-02 Bike sharing raft