The ancient village of Sottomarina in the Venetian lagoon and the demolished Church of Saint Martin Bishop

This work concerns Sottomarina, a village located in the Venetian lagoon, and it specifically refers to the demolished Church of San Martin Bishop. The idea of restoring the central area of the village where the Church rised has long been the object of discussion on the part of local authorities. The village of Sottomarina is one of the subjects recently investigated by our research group at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering of the University of Padua. The centre of the ancient village of Sottomarina in the Venetian lagoon was thought as an opportunity to reconfigure the lost unity of this symbolic and representative place, custodian of its memory and identity. The order and hierarchy of the elements that characterized the form of this old place have been reconsidered. The intent to regenerate the area and the observations about the relationship between the village and the Venetian lagoon lead to recognize in the demolished Church of Saint Martin Bishop a unique opportunity which allows to recover rituals and connections from the past. The working method is based on the belief that, in the study of urban morphology, is basic to analyse the history of the city, clarifying the relationship between permanent structures and temporary ones. The history becomes an indispensable tool to know the deep reasons of the urban structure which is the memory and the image of the community. The methodology looks at the city as a product of functional systems (political, social, economic), but overall contemplates the urban form as a result of its spatial structure. The life of the urban form is investigated in its physical specificity, the only one able of giving reason of its special nature over every social, economic and political aspect, certainly important but not sufficient.