Tramway Terminal in Venice
The West part of Venice had been transformed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by several interventions in order to modernize the ancient city. The railway bridge connecting the mainland and the dimension of factories buildings not only has converted the area in a place of equipment, but provides a different scale than the urban space previously defined by the historical buildings.
Although the presence of the important car park by rationalist architect Eugenio Miozzi characterized it, the space of Piazzale Roma does not maintain a stable and durable aspect during the time. This has been the site for several competitions and several revisions of the circulation roads, until the recent configuration in which the Municipality placed the arrival of the new tramway line Venice - Mestre.
In this complex space, characterized by an incremental development and by the presence of functional elements, the project recognizes the lack to provide and define an organizational element, not only characterized by the horizontal size but able to define also a waiting space, through the design of an apparently suspended volume, a sort of outdoor room.
The project provide the construction of an overlay on the new tramway median platform for waiter to get on the tram. The element is a rectangular prismatic beam 32.50 m long, supported by a single central footing point. The prism is hollow inside and contains all the technological signage elements, while outside is covered by steel plate painted dark shade matte. During the evening the element defines a very bright environment able to guide the streams of users, while outside three light elements mutually regulated by precise proportional relationships, marking the nature of the terminal for the new connecting tramway line Mestre-Venice.
